Being Invisible

I don't know when I turned invisible. But, it has surely happened. Here are just two examples of recent incidents when I was pretty sure others weren't, at least one person wasn't, seeing me.

Just the other day Prashan wanted to borrow a book from the public library. So I took him to the Aspen Hill branch of the Montgomery county library. He found his book. I picked up a couple of Sci-Fi books for myself as well. With the three books in hand, I went to the counter to check them out. Since I knew I had a fine to pay (virtual smack to Prashan), I decided not to use the self-checkout. The woman at the checkout desk was counting a large stack of dollar bills. She knew I was there, but she didn't even look up at me, let alone ask me to wait a minute. The stack was pretty big, so I was resigned to waiting for awhile until she was done. Then the guy at the far site of the counter, behind the "returns" sign, called me over since there wasn't anyone at his location. Just two seconds after I walked over, another person came with a bunch of books to check out to the bill-counting-woman. She stopped her counting and helped that person with the books. So, my guess is that I must have been invisible to her as she clearly had no trouble stopping her counting to check out books.

Last week I was walking down the hallway and a manager in our department was walking down the other way towards me. I know the guy, we take care of his machines. He didn't even acknowledge me even though I said hi or hey or something to the effect. When we approached each other, he reached over, two inches from my nose, to knock on the door on my side of the hallway. I must have been invisible or he must have been in a mega-hurry to reach that door. But, how did he manage to avoid hitting me if he didn't see me? Proximity censors?

In numerous other occasions people would look right through me when I'm waiting for a service or waiting for them to move so I can get to where ever I was going, or something like that. So, you see, I know I've become invisible. It would be a pretty neat trick if I could turn this thing on/off at will--my will, that is--and make me invisible to everyone at the same time, not just one person at a time.

{sigh} Thems the times we lives in ...