"Matt!" said a voice from round the corner. I put my cup down on the kitchen counter and peered around, inquisitively.
There was nobody there. Just the vending machine, humming away to itself. That's a bit weird, I thought. Actually, the more I think about it, this happens a lot. Maybe I've just got one of those names that sounds like a lot of other stuff and I'm mishearing it. There was a time after all, when the local bus driver would say:
"Cheers Matt!" as I hopped off at the bus stop.
I wondered for weeks how he'd got to know my name before it dawned on me that he was actually saying 'mate'. The delusion that I might be famous enough to be recognised on sight was suddenly replaced with a more familiar feeling of anonymity. Plus, I was not the bus driver's 'mate', whatever he seemed to think.
It's a little bit onomatopoeic as well. Sometimes the sound of a notebook slapping against a desk or a book closing suddenly sounds a little bit like my name - OK not much, but it carries the short vowel sound and closing consonant - in a hurry it could sound like it. Mattt...
There was no-one slamming books shut in the kitchen.
I puzzled for a while in front of the vending machine. The Lion Bars and Bountys and Mars Bars and NikNaks were staring back at me. In went two shiny coins, out dropped a KitKat Chunky. Well, what can you do?
Have I been tricked by a sentient vending machine?
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