The Invisible Woman Revealed

I confess; I was starting to get annoyed. As I stood patiently at the reception desk, waiting for assistance, other hotel guests approached the desk and received attention immediately. I was still waiting. A pretty, young blond woman was working behind the desk at the upscale Gatwick area hotel where I was staying with my co-worker, Trish. In frustration, I turned to Trish and said in a loud, exaggerated voice: “I can see you, can you see me? I don’t think this young woman can see us. We may be invisible.” Trish, momentarily stunned by my outburst, started to laugh.

“Can I help you?” the young woman sheepishly asked.

“Well, yes! Why else do you think we’d be standing here at your desk?” I snarled. After she politely answered our questions, Trish and I left the hotel lobby to find a restaurant for dinner.

“I've never seen you angry,” Trish stated. “That was hysterical!”

“All of a sudden I felt invisible and it made me furious,” I replied. “More and more often I feel like people don’t see me anymore.”

Last winter my husband and I, along with another couple, attended the Armed Services Bowl in Ft. Worth. Security there was heavy. Entering the football stadium just ahead of my attractive, youthful friend, Marlyn, I heard the young security guard's request: “May I look inside your bags?” I turned and said quickly, “of course.” He checked Marlyn’s bag for prohibited items and then turned to the next woman in line, totally ignoring me with my gaping tote bag exposing four pint-sized water bottles.

“Wow,” Marlyn exclaimed. “How come he didn’t check your bag? And you had your own drinks in there.”

“Each year after 50 you get more and more invisible,” I joked. She laughed. “You wait,” I thought.

Years ago, a much older friend told me that when we get old, we start to get invisible. “People stop noticing you,” she had explained. “You get ignored. It’s not meanness; it just happens.”

“I’m five feet nine inches tall. I can’t believe people won’t notice me,” I had countered.

“You wait,” was her reply.

I’m only 60 years old, but I think I’ve been fading for about ten years. If this keeps up I’ll be a shadow by 70, and totally invisible by my 80th birthday. The truth is I don’t want to be invisible. I don’t want to be ignored. Neither do most of my contemporaries, fellow retirees, and friends. I’m not willing to go quietly and submissively into obscurity and beyond.

I checked out the Internet to see if there are any web sites that specifically address the issue of invisibility in older people. Google provided me with 583,000 results. Of course they didn’t all answer my questions, but apparently the world is full of invisible old people. Several web sites addressed the issue of better marketing toward the “invisible elderly.” Well, market to me, baby!

When I was young, my parents taught me to be courteous toward older people and promised me that one day, when I’m old, young people will be courteous toward me. I have two questions. How old do I have to get before I notice this courtesy? And is it possible that people aren’t really becoming less courteous; that it’s just a visibility problem, like in a winter whiteout? If that’s the case, it’s no wonder that man entering the post office ahead of me let the door slam in my face. He probably couldn’t see me.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man believed there are some advantages to a state of invisibility. Sure, I can go to the supermarket in my bedroom slippers or forget to zip up my pants after a trip to the bathroom, (both unintentionally), but these little gains do not improve the quality of life for the aging, and they hardly offset the difficulty in finding a new doctor who will accept Medicare patients.

The other day I was enjoying lunch at a popular Southlake restaurant with four of my fellow retirees. We were seated at the bar, talking about health, money, food and friends, and laughing a lot, as usual. A woman, probably in her thirties, was seated close by. She approached us on her way out and announced: “You ladies are so cute. I’ve really enjoyed listening to your conversations. You seem to have a lot of fun.” Afterward, as we walked to our cars to head for home, I told my friend Judy: “I’m not ready to be a ‘cute’ little old lady.” I suppose, now that I think about it, being cute is a whole lot better than being invisible.