The power to be invisible is a tricky thing. When you desperately want someone, anyone, to notice you, and they just plain DON’T, you
can feel painfully evaporative. It is a
toss-up which thing is worse: neglectful
invisibility or open derision, teasing and shaming. It would seem to me the sad fact of being a
human being means, at one time or another, we may experience any of the
above. On the other hand, when you want the ground to open up a swallow you,
it never does. Cruel fact: we are not in charge and we just have to roll
with it.
When I was teaching junior high school I had the opportunity
–and I took it – to tell this personal story to help the kids work with the
whole business of letting stuff go mentally (not that I am an expert; I am not)
… among other things that are basic life lessons. I saw it happen so innocently in class. The boy lost control of his pencil and it
flipped forward into the open back pack of the girl sitting in front of
him. He reached in to take the pencil
back out and she went off on him like fourth of July. Her reaction was not anywhere appropriate for
a classroom environment, but it provided me an opportunity to educate that I
wouldn’t miss for the world: I stopped
them - “Okay People. Let me tell you what just happened here.” The young man just wanted his pencil back and
was clueless as to why this girl had yelled at him.
“Guys. This may seem
like it is going to be embarrassing for a minute but just stick with me. Do you want to know why girls go crazy when
you go in their purse?” YES, WE DO! Someone
shouted.
I continued as
follows:
“As a general rule, Gentlemen do not go into women’s
purses. That is a no-fly zone. Even if you are asked to fish something out
of there to help her out, it’s best just to hand the purse over and let her do
it herself. Chances are, you can’t find
anything in it anyways. Mine is like a
bottomless pit of miscellaneous stuff, but I digress. Let me tell you a story.
When I was in junior high school, I had Math class with Miss
Bradley. I would ordinarily not carry a purse to class except for the times during the month when I needed to if you catch my drift. <insert one kid groaning here; and another
girl telling a boy WHY that would be; a few shades of pink later.>
So in my
purse was one thing. And my purse was
held closed with a little snap thing. When
I entered the class, sometimes I would put the purse on my desk for a minute and
The Mean Girl would snatch it and throw it across the room like Joe Namath
sending a football to the end zone. I
was MORTIFIED. If the floor could open
up and swallow me alive, it would not have been too soon. Guys, you have to understand this. In a girl’s brain, if that pad fell out of
the purse onto the floor it would not just be one thing. It would be hundreds of them, falling
continuously until they stacked all the way up to the ceiling with my name
written on every one of them. And THAT
is why you shouldn’t go into girls’ purses if you can avoid it. Because we are just weird like that – nothing
in that department is a small deal: it’s
a BIG DEAL to us.”
The girls did not cheer for me telling the story but instead
they looked a bit relieved. Somehow I had
spoken our gender-wide portion of fear to the Other Side and it had been
understood. Why? Because humiliation is a common piece of our
human existence. What humiliates girls
is not necessarily the same thing that humiliates guys, but we all understand –
and want to avoid – humiliation. It is
the better specimens of humanity among us that want to avoid humiliating others.
Our desire for invisibility is not that far from what
happens in the animal kingdom. Invisibility
is a subtle form of defense from predators.
Chameleons change to reflect the colors that they are near so they seem to
blend-in. It keeps predators from seeing
them. Some animals’ coats are colors
that blend with their environment so they can hide. With people, we have no such luck.
I think of the elderly lady sitting alone in the corner
booth of the restaurant. I loved this
particular restaurant because it had a woodsy-theme to the inside (clue: moose head hanging outside the restaurant)
and there wasn’t a bad view in the place.
Mostly my friends and I would sit against the window to look out to the
agricultural land that surrounded us.
They made a mean steak, too, but I sidetrack to food topics too
easily. Anyways. This woman was most likely in her late 70’s
and she always sat in the same booth every time I was at the restaurant. She had a sort of beehive hairdo colored a light
reddish orange. I don’t know how tall
she was because I never saw her stand up and leave. For all I know, she could have lived there.
One Friday night, my dinner companion and I sat two tables
away from her. In the middle of the
meal, the waitress greeted her and visited.
Then she waved another waitress to the table and they sang “Happy Birthday”
to her. How sweet. She smiled politely, the kind of smile you
make when you are trying to make the other
person feel good but you don’t feel so good yourself. It is a social-courtesy-smile. At the end of our meal, I walked over to say
Happy Birthday to her as well. After all,
some day that may be ME sitting in the corner.
She thanked my friend and I for our well wishes but barely retained
eye-contact with us. Her eyes traveled
out the big picture window beyond the rolling lands to somewhere I could not
fathom. Then she said the unthinkable. “My husband was trying to hang on to make it
to my birthday. He just couldn’t do it
anymore. He died two weeks ago.” And just what do you respond to that?!
Her whole world had flipped upside down, inside out two
weeks before her birthday. Here
strangers and waitresses were wishing her well and the only voice she really
wanted to hear WAS HIS. Her ability to
be gracious under this strain and not burst into tears was astounding to
me. I can barely write about it or
remember it without getting something in my eye.
Months later, the restaurant closed. I wonder where she spends her birthdays
now. I hope she found the resilience to
make the most of the time she has been given as a unique gift to her. But if it was me, I’d probably be looking for
a corner table in a restaurant with a view, just trying to be invisible.
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