I was thinking about desires and I must have thought too hard because the dam broke and my senses became inundated and soon died under the weight of it all. Especially my vision. But I shrugged off that vision and started browsing 
through recent pictures.
I took a deep breath and smiled, and gratitude replenished my starved body and life went on. I continued the physical activity of browsing and shuffling the mail until I was lucky enough to come across something truly mesmerizing. It was a small cut-off paper which fell down from an envelope I was opening.
It said that some friends would change their Eastern European last name, though easily pronounceable in English still foreign in its sound and spelling, to the ordinary English-sounding Smith. Their holiday card, which I just opened three weeks later, announced us that from that moment on they would be known as “The Smiths.”
Why? I asked myself.
So they can pass as WASPs, I heard my self answering.
I nodded thinking about my rejected submissions to the New Yorker. I could not remember whether they were rejected anonymously or had I had to sign them with my own Eastern European last name. I could not remember, so I posted one here, just in case the New Yorker rejected it because of my last non-WASP name.
