A friend of mine, with whom I drink some strong coffee and grapple with the world's dilemmas every Thursday morning — which explains why, as you no doubt have noticed, many vexing global and local problems are suddenly and mysteriously resolved on that day each week — told me recently about his strange encounter.
He was walking along a city footpath, approaching a busy intersection, when he noticed an elderly woman standing at the traffic lights, which were showing green. She looked uncertain and distressed. When, hesitantly, he asked her if she needed help, she replied that she didn't know where she was.
It was immediately obvious to my friend that she didn't mean she was simply having trouble with directions — this street or that? left or right? — but that she had no idea where she was or how she'd got there.
Compounding his feeling of helplessness with a nervous politeness, he said, 'Perhaps if you tell me your name ...? Or do you have a phone number I could ring for you?' But she didn't know her name and she couldn't remember a phone number that might be useful or, indeed, any phone number.
The traffic lights flicked through their cycles, cars and buses and trucks crossed and passed in long impatient queues, motors ticked or growled, a fire truck went wow-wow-wowing on its urgent business, and the two people continued to stand in silent bewilderment at the corner, the one irresolute, the other profoundly lost.
And just when my friend was thinking to find a quieter place for her while he worked out what to do next, she turned to him, her face alight. With one deft movement she opened her mouth, removed her denture and held it towards him. On the 'gum' was clearly inscribed her name and a phone number.
It was a strange business — a sort of happy ending undercut by the heart-rending reality of the woman's plight, her disorientation in a world she once knew, her severance from a past she once owned, and the reasonable certainty that things were not going to get any better for her.
For all that, it's impossible not to see the comic potential of the scene, someone whipping out dentures to prove identity — identitures — yet impossible also not to feel callous and guilty in