A slow group of people is walking in front of me. When I move off to the side to try to pass, this one guy in the group keeps moving off to the side as well, or flinging his arm out, or otherwise getting in my way so I can't pass.
I'm crossing a crosswalk. This one lady walks kind of diagonally from behind me to right in front of me, forcing me to either stop walking in the middle of the street or step out of the crosswalk into traffic.
I'm in a crowded elevator. Since I'm the last one off, I stand in the back corner. This golf shirt man stands in front of me, chatting with his buddies, just a little too much in my personal space. Then he takes a half-step backwards, crashing right into me as though he didn't see I was there.
I'm in line at the grocery store, at a cashier with a short conveyor belt. The guy in front of me is standing about halfway along the conveyor belt with his food. Because I have a buggy in front of me, I can't yet reach to get my food on the conveyor belt. Then the guy in front of me's food starts getting scanned, but he doesn't move forward, and instead completes the transaction from his place by the conveyor belt, thus preventing me from unloading my cart.
Every once in a while this happens - I have a day when multiple people seem not to see me. It always happens in clusters on the same day. About 90% of the people who don't see me are men - I don't know if that's significant.
I haven't noticed any particular patterns in dress or appearance on days I'm not seen. I've even had it happen on more than one day when I was wearing my bright fucking red raincoat that's so bright fucking red the profanity is in fact necessary. I'm not a small person (plus I almost always wear heels) and the people to whom I'm invisible are rarely significantly bigger than me (and sometimes are smaller than me). I do present as an adult now, I'm almost always standing tall and doing eye contact, I walk almost aggressively, I have noisy joints that snap crackle pop of their own accord and I probably smell a little more than I should. So why am I invisible some days?
4 comments:
Wow. This would upset me. Does it upset you?
And in your grand tradition of noticing the least important part of the post... you call it a buggy? Does everyone here call it a buggy? I call it a shopping cart. I've seen the word buggy in grocery store parking lots here in suburbia. I've wondered if people use it in normal speech.
Sociolinguistics is always relevant! I think the word buggy is actually a bit old-fashioned and cart is more common. I know I got "buggy" from my mother through the normal childhood language acquisition process, but many of my peers don't use it and I'd be surprised to hear it from the mouth of someone younger than me.
Although I do remember hearing it from a kid who was younger than me when I was about 13. I was delivering newspapers, with my big pile of papers in one of those little old lady bundle buggies (you have to call those "buggies" because it alliterates) and some younger kid mocked me for having it, saying "Do you push a baby in that buggy?" Which doesn't even make sense, but I clearly remember the word use from a kid who was younger than me. So maybe it is a suburban thing.
In any case, it's part of my active vocabulary so I use it when it pops out, but I don't hear it around me. A child growing up in my community or a newcomer integrating in my community would never acquire it as part of their active vocabulary.
As for the invisibility, it doesn't upset me as much as it baffles me. I wish I knew why it happens. Getting stuck behind slow people annoys me, but I always get stuck behind slow people whether I'm invisible or not and it always annoys me.
Thanks for this excellent reply. :)
My OH reckons he's apparently invisible (in the way you describe) most of the time too. And he's a big lad.
If someone gets too close to me, I tend to get even closer to them: just edging closer and closer. (Unless they give off a pervy vibe). Often 'accidentally' catching them with a random gesture or bag slung 'carelessly'. It's funny how they clearly don't like it!
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