Might not be the umbrella. You're not the first woman who's complained about being invisible -- earlier this week, waiting for the elevator at Federal Triangle Metro, a woman turned to me and demanded to know: "Am I invisible?!" She'd been jostled about just as you described. And she was wearing bright pink, hardly a fade-into-the-woodwork colour. Moreover, she was a double amputee, both lower legs artificial. (She was wearing long trousers -- I hadn't noticed it until she drew up the trouser legs and pointed my attention to it.) Invisible? Hardly. Yet, to some, she was ...
I will never understand why everyone is always in such a g-d hurry. There's no way they're all on their way to emergency brain surgery. Another 10 minutes or so just won't matter. Really.
Well, ten minutes might make a heck of a lot of difference when you're dealing with a bus schedule at the other end of the Metro ride. I can testify to that and am still not done cursing the woman who, while blocking the escalator, flung that same statement over her shoulder at me when I politely asked if I could please pass so I could catch that train waiting at the platform.
But the egregious thing is not that other people are in a hurry, it is that they. Do. Not. See. You. Looking right at you, but not seeing. As if you don't exist. As if ... dare I say it? ... you are not even worth seeing.
I thought a bubble umbrella, by virtue of being clear, would give me more visibility, but somehow it seems to render me invisible.
3 comments:
Might not be the umbrella. You're not the first woman who's complained about being invisible -- earlier this week, waiting for the elevator at Federal Triangle Metro, a woman turned to me and demanded to know: "Am I invisible?!" She'd been jostled about just as you described. And she was wearing bright pink, hardly a fade-into-the-woodwork colour. Moreover, she was a double amputee, both lower legs artificial. (She was wearing long trousers -- I hadn't noticed it until she drew up the trouser legs and pointed my attention to it.) Invisible? Hardly. Yet, to some, she was ...
I will never understand why everyone is always in such a g-d hurry. There's no way they're all on their way to emergency brain surgery. Another 10 minutes or so just won't matter. Really.
Well, ten minutes might make a heck of a lot of difference when you're dealing with a bus schedule at the other end of the Metro ride. I can testify to that and am still not done cursing the woman who, while blocking the escalator, flung that same statement over her shoulder at me when I politely asked if I could please pass so I could catch that train waiting at the platform.
But the egregious thing is not that other people are in a hurry, it is that they. Do. Not. See. You. Looking right at you, but not seeing. As if you don't exist. As if ... dare I say it? ... you are not even worth seeing.
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