The Invisible ... It has happened again.
Caught me by surprise this time.
No sooner am I sure that I have this face and body pinned down, screwed on tight, rustproofed and lacquered against the worst of our Canadian weather with the finest varnish you can buy, when ... ~poof~ ... I'm invisible again.
I simply stepped out of the shower this morning, looked at the bathroom mirror, and there I was ... no where to be found. Oh sure, there were some faint pencil marks left over from the last sketch, but those quickly faded away with the steam as it seeped out the crack in the window and into the cool light of morning. Then, nothing. Empty. Void. Invisible.
Look as hard as I might, all I could see was the opposite wall, where row on row of perfect off-white tiles line up in absolute symmetry, except for that tile just there, the one with the miniature moon crater in it. I'm afraid that little design flaw was the result of a bathtub rocket experiment that went south in a hurry when someone (not mentioning any names) sparked up the chemicals too soon and sent a miniature space shuttle roaring by my left eye, circling once around the towel bar, and then insanely trying to burrow its way through the tiled wall and into the next room. That little event marked the end of my aeronautical career, but that's a whole other story.
I'm not sure how I started becoming invisible, but I have been blinking in and out for years now, and it's getting worse and worse Maybe it's an age thing. I think I first took a fade sometime around my 30th birthday. To be honest, I don't remember the specifics, but likely as not, I was probably paying for an item in a grocery store when I realised that the cashier didn't return my flirtatious smile or acknowledge the goofy nod of my head. Cashiers are famous for making people invisible. Maybe it's part of the job description. At any rate, I'm sure it was a quick dissolve that lasted only as long as it took me to say something like, "Sucks to be her today," and I promptly stepped back into visibility. Such is the vigour and saving grace of being young and self-confident.
By the time I hit my 40's, however, my experiences with invisibility became more frequent. Fewer and fewer people were seeing me, noticing me, listening to me, or bothering to understand me. Before long, I had to resort to wearing flamboyant Hawaiian shirts draped over hideous plaid Bermuda shorts just to be noticed in common everyday situations. I drove a souped up Ford LTD, and made cassette tapes of Depeche Mode and the Thompson Twins that blared out of quad speakers as I drove past the Dairy Queen on Saturday nights. I even considered getting one of those barbed wire tattoos to run around the length of my arm. I know. It sounds like a mid-life crisis to me too, but what is a mid-life crisis if it's not just someone's attempt to say, "Hey, I'm still here. I am NOT invisible!"
Oh, I can hear some of you asking, "What's your problem? Isn't what you're writing about just a part of growing old gracefully?"
What's the problem? What's the problem? Are you kidding me?
The problem is that, although I may be invisible, I'm never incorporeal. My body remains a solid entity. People just don't see me. So, when I'm shopping in the mall, people walk right into me, their tiny heads slamming into my bad shoulder and throwing out my trick knee, while their flailing, talking arms smack me in the groin or the mouth. Worse still, when I'm crossing at a pedestrian crosswalk, cars nearly run me down, swerve by me at the very last second to avoid killing me, while honking their horns and, for some reason, giving me the one-finger salute like it's my fault for crossing the road.
The problem is that I still need to be acknowledged. When I'm standing in line for my skinny vanilla latte at Starbucks these days, those young business types, dressed in the new black, just cut right in front of me without giving me a second glance, until, finally and fortunately, another invisible person shows up and hesitantly croaks out, "I think you were next ..."
The problem is that I still need to be heard. Too often, I find myself talking with a group of people, and I suddenly discover that no one is listening to anything I say anymore, because, these days, people like to listen only to themselves and hear only what they already believe to be true. So I often wonder if I should just stop talking altogether, stop forming opinions, stop thinking.
The problem is that, when I worked, I only mattered when I was young and wore suits everyday. When I began to mistake every day for casual Friday, I began to disappear more and more, especially when decisions needed to be made that affected my job. Sure, sometimes my "bosses" would ask for my input, but whenever I offered any kind of alternative to their plans, my ideas quickly became as invisible as me, the invisible person who submitted them. After a while, I spent most of my working days dreaming of retirement, making me a truly invisible employee, out of sight and out of mind, once and for all.
The problem is that there are always those traditional family get-togethers, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Splendid occasions, I admit, but I almost always suffer a bout of invisibility whenever these events show up on the calendar. I have no extended family to speak of, apart from a sister who lives a million miles away in Vancouver, a daughter who lives a million miles away in her head, and a son, who is a wonderful young man with a beautiful daughter, but who suffers from the same affliction as I do and becomes invisible in his own right. It's a tough gig to be outnumbered in the midst of a swarming throng of look-alike and like-minded folks from the other side of the "family." These are my son's in-laws, of course, a cast of thousands who never really look at me eye-to-eye, because quite frankly, I'm not there. Well, I guess I'm there for a second or two, like a soap bubble that explodes into a silly drip of water, hits the floor, evaporates in a twinkling, and disappears completely. Most of the time, everyone is happy to shuffle me into a folding chair at the kids' table where they stick a plateful of mashed potatoes, some jellied salad, and a turkey wing in front of me and fill my plastic wine glass with fizzy orange soda. If I were there, I might say something, protest, or at the very least, be embarrassed. Fortunately, for all concerned, I'm invisible.
Maybe that's just the way life is supposed to progress. Maybe, as we get older, we are supposed to learn to blend into our surroundings, like a chameleon happy to snap at passing flies, instead of making a ruckus about wanting a little attention. And maybe, just maybe, I should accept that I'm no longer the star of this drama called life, accept that I've finally become just an extra, simply someone to help fill in a crowd scene in this epic movie we all live through. Yes, maybe I should just be grateful to still be here, even if I have lost my voice and become irrelevant as I drift toward death with a generation of leftover still-alives who show up at an Eagles' concert and know all the words to all the songs.
Maybe, after all is said and done, I shouldn't complain. After all, some people have it worse than I ever did. Some people manage to be almost entirely invisible in a lifelong marriage. Some people have reckless teenage kids who are convinced that a parent is, by definition, invisible. Some people cherish an invisible love. Some people bump and grind through invisible sex. And, maybe worst of all, some people are dying from an invisible disease.
But I am complaining, because, well, there's an old saying: "What you see is what you get," and maybe that's true. The problem is that, too often, some people just don't see anymore, and so don't know what magic there is left to get.
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