The bank clerk scrolls down and down this list of titles and honorifics, this enormous list of different ways to present ourselves, and I just want an option that doesn’t reflect my marital status, because why did all the available male titles not reflect marital status whereas female ones did? And come to think of it, why do titles reflect gender anyway? Why does anything reflect gender? What is the point of gender?

I was asking a question I am not intelligent enough to answer. And I wasn’t expecting this moment, in the bank, on a seemingly trivial and pointless mission, to be my introduction to gender studies and queer theory, but you don’t necessarily get to choose the learning moments of your life.

And in case you’re sitting there thinking, “Well. If if it’s SO important to you to have a title that does not reflect your marital status or your gender, why don’t you just become a rabbi?” Well, my family lapsed HARD. None of us is becoming a rabbi. We’d never make it. They can see the bacon in our eyes.

ÉTIENNE ROEDER: There are some words that still exist. There are some expressions you could still tell that these people that the people come from the East or the West. For example, in the Western part, they say ‘Plastik’, and in the Eastern part, I would say they say ‘Plaste’ because there was a company in the East - there was actually just one company in the East that produced plastics and that was called Plaste und Elaste, and because of that, all the people would call plastics ‘Plaste’. And you you could still tell today if someone says ‘Plaste’ and instead of ‘Plastik’ that this person is probably from the Eastern part.

ESTHER-MIRIAM WAGNER: ‘Plastetüte’ - plastic bag. I mean I remember going to school with a plastic bag and being sent home because it was a West German bag. This was a very precious item - you would keep a ‘Plastetüte’ for months and you would reuse it and reuse it and reuse it until it was just tatters. That was a precious object.

MATTHIAS EINHOFF: My son, when he tries to identify if someone is coming from a West German or East German family, he asks them how they call the thing that you put your bathroom things in: East Germans say ‘Waschtasche’ and West Germans say ‘Kulturbeutel’. And that’s the ultimate identifier whether you come from a East or West German family.