Can you show me your ID please?It is a moderate nuisance in my life that I don't have any 'proper' ID. My driver's license is long lost, and, without forking out $26 and the slightest bit of effort to get a Birth Certificate out of Internal Affairs (always loved that for a Goverment department's name), I've managed to do without any serious form of ID for my entire adult life.

Until today. Here I am: two days of stubble sprouting from my face, 6  foot 6 inches tall in my big shoes and wearing what might passably be called 'formal work clothes'. I was standing at the checkout of the supermarket buying a bottle of merlot, apples, tomato sauce and the latest copy of Staple. The 'key!' call goes up from the 15yo girl doing the till, and the duty manager, an older sub-continent looking gentleman come across to give the alcohol transaction the ok, and eyeballs me up. I have never, not even when I was sixteen and buying riggers from the Kaiapoi Pub have I been stung for ID, but now...

"Can you show me your ID please?"

I had to laugh. But then I realised he was vaguely serious, and, flustered, had to admit ... "uhh, no, I, um, never. Uh. I've never had any. I'm thirty-one! I have two kids!"

He bought it. I'm sipping the merlot now. And it wasn't until afterwards that I realised I had lied about my age.
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