At least once a day, I’ll be walking down the street on a predictably straight path, and a fellow pedestrian will make a beeline straight into me. I’m good at swerving, so contact is rarely made, but still, I always wonder to myself, am I invisible?
Tonight I went to pay for my dinner at a bar, and the waitress was momentarily confused; she thought I was a new customer. I probably could have walked out without paying.
Anybody else here feel invisible?
Can you see this post?
I can see you! 
Swerve? Swerve, schmerve! I think on the side walk you need to occupy your space – shoulders back! head up! stride! – and then drop a shoulder and plow into anyone who thinks they’re going to walk through you. A cheery “Sorry!” tossed over your shoulder should then suffice, even if you’ve knocked them on their ass.
And the waitress was either overworked or a bit dim or both. Nothing to do with you.
It’s possible you are only intermittently invisible. That would explain the waitress eventually seeing you and the sidewalk thing.
It’s not so bad. After a while you get used to it.
There’s a definite silver lining: if you don’t exist, people can’t ask you for favors.
If they’re young and attractive and of the opposite sex, and you’re a bit older and not getting younger and have no obvious signs of particular wealth or power on display, well, yes, you are invisible. Take heart, it happens to all of us eventually.
Absolutely. Actually, you don’t even need to plow into them. Just brace yourself for the contact. They’ll go asprawlin’.
Why is the first post blank?
Where have I seen this before?
140 views. 9 comments. You are visible to at least 6-7% of the population.
Don’t worry Jodi.
Can’t help with the waitress, though I’d forgive waitstaff forgetting me if it was at all busy.
Walking along though, do you make eye contact with the people who plough on without acknowledgement of your existence?
I used to find that walking along in a crowded mall or on a footpath or whatever, if people were coming towards me - I was almost always the one to move out of the way whilst they kept walking apparently unaware that there had even been the possibility of a collision.
I used to wonder if maybe most others were unobservant, oblivious or just rude. Or maybe I was so unremarkable an event that I barely constituted a blip on their various radars.
Then I realized something. If I looked directly at some oncoming person’s face and they noticed it even momentarily, they never got out of the way. If I made sure I looked anywhere but directly at them, they often got out of my way or at least joined me in my sidestepping by stepping an equal distance in the opposite direction. I don’t know why this is, but it works for me 99% of the time. If I’m walking along and I get sick of dutifully avoiding every other human juggernaut, I begin to ignore them completely - just plough on like they do - and they start getting out of my way.
My theory is that most people are (probably justifiably) wrapped up in their own little worlds and this is coupled with the fact that many people are, to some degree, lazy. Many such minds will see the strangers around them as: person shaped obstacle, person shaped obstacle, person shaped obstacle. Unless there is some degree of eye contact. Eye contact makes an impression on most brains, and they’ll probably then at least register you as another human. If their brains clock you noticing them, even just quickly or vaguely, something tells their body that you, being a sentient being and having noticed them, will obviously avoid hitting them of your own accord and they don’t have to do anything. If you ignore them, or appear to, their pre-occupied brains aren’t quite hip to your sentience, and they autopilot their way around another person shaped obstacle.
I find that if I go about my day screaming random obscenities, people seem to take note of me.
Couldn’t hurt to try.
Yep, I’m invisible. I’m a middle-aged woman, w/a middle-aged (size 12-14) body. If it weren’t for my name-tag (see an earlier post for the company I work for), most people wouldn’t see/acknowledge me.
But God knows I exist. That’s what counts.
Love, Phil
Maybe if you took off the shroud, people could see you better…?
I too am invisible. People bump into me. People do not notice me.
Someone who disputed the claim that I can make myself invisible went to a store with me. She could not believe how I could be undetecable. She realized it when even she, standing beside me, felt that “you were not there.”
I’ve been known to scream “What am I? Fucking invisible?” in a crowd and have the people next to me literally jump, like they didn’t know I was there.
As Father MulCahey on MAS*H once said “I am frequently mistaken for beng absent.”
I frequently seem to be.
Once, in grad school, someone came into our office (shared by three grad students and a LOT of spare equipment, looked around, and sat down at my partner’s desk (our desks are end-to-end, facing each other), looked around again, and started writing a note. I cleared my throat, and he JUMPED! He had no idea I was there, not six feet away.
It’s not like I was hidden - I was sitting at my desk. There was a large window behind me.
Here’s a post I wrote about that back in 02:
I’m invisible when I’m driving sometimes. Some days everyone seems to pull out in front of me, I figure it out after the first couple times and expect it the rest of the drive.
Interesting theory. I sometimes think I’m not invisible, it’s just that KIDS TODAY have no respect, and they expect you to move out of their way. I’m talking about teenagers at the mall, mostly. It’s aggravating!!!
Sometimes I inadvertently drive my invisible car. That sucks too.
I was just going to post this. Happens to me at least once a week. Hal even jokes that I must have hit the invisible button on the car again.