Saturday, September 27, 2008

The Invisible ...





The Invisible ...







It has happened again.

Caught me by surprise this time.

No sooner am I sure that I have this face and body pinned down, screwed on tight, rustproofed and lacquered against the worst of our Canadian weather with the finest varnish you can buy, when ... ~poof~ ... I'm invisible again.

I simply stepped out of the shower this morning, looked at the bathroom mirror, and there I was ... no where to be found. Oh sure, there were some faint pencil marks left over from the last sketch, but those quickly faded away with the steam as it seeped out the crack in the window and into the cool light of morning. Then, nothing. Empty. Void. Invisible.

Look as hard as I might, all I could see was the opposite wall, where row on row of perfect off-white tiles line up in absolute symmetry, except for that tile just there, the one with the miniature moon crater in it. I'm afraid that little design flaw was the result of a bathtub rocket experiment that went south in a hurry when someone (not mentioning any names) sparked up the chemicals too soon and sent a miniature space shuttle roaring by my left eye, circling once around the towel bar, and then insanely trying to burrow its way through the tiled wall and into the next room. That little event marked the end of my aeronautical career, but that's a whole other story.

I'm not sure how I started becoming invisible, but I have been blinking in and out for years now, and it's getting worse and worse Maybe it's an age thing. I think I first took a fade sometime around my 30th birthday. To be honest, I don't remember the specifics, but likely as not, I was probably paying for an item in a grocery store when I realised that the cashier didn't return my flirtatious smile or acknowledge the goofy nod of my head. Cashiers are famous for making people invisible. Maybe it's part of the job description. At any rate, I'm sure it was a quick dissolve that lasted only as long as it took me to say something like, "Sucks to be her today," and I promptly stepped back into visibility. Such is the vigour and saving grace of being young and self-confident.

By the time I hit my 40's, however, my experiences with invisibility became more frequent. Fewer and fewer people were seeing me, noticing me, listening to me, or bothering to understand me. Before long, I had to resort to wearing flamboyant Hawaiian shirts draped over hideous plaid Bermuda shorts just to be noticed in common everyday situations. I drove a souped up Ford LTD, and made cassette tapes of Depeche Mode and the Thompson Twins that blared out of quad speakers as I drove past the Dairy Queen on Saturday nights. I even considered getting one of those barbed wire tattoos to run around the length of my arm. I know. It sounds like a mid-life crisis to me too, but what is a mid-life crisis if it's not just someone's attempt to say, "Hey, I'm still here. I am NOT invisible!"

Oh, I can hear some of you asking, "What's your problem? Isn't what you're writing about just a part of growing old gracefully?"

What's the problem? What's the problem? Are you kidding me?

The problem is that, although I may be invisible, I'm never incorporeal. My body remains a solid entity. People just don't see me. So, when I'm shopping in the mall, people walk right into me, their tiny heads slamming into my bad shoulder and throwing out my trick knee, while their flailing, talking arms smack me in the groin or the mouth. Worse still, when I'm crossing at a pedestrian crosswalk, cars nearly run me down, swerve by me at the very last second to avoid killing me, while honking their horns and, for some reason, giving me the one-finger salute like it's my fault for crossing the road.

The problem is that I still need to be acknowledged. When I'm standing in line for my skinny vanilla latte at Starbucks these days, those young business types, dressed in the new black, just cut right in front of me without giving me a second glance, until, finally and fortunately, another invisible person shows up and hesitantly croaks out, "I think you were next ..."

The problem is that I still need to be heard. Too often, I find myself talking with a group of people, and I suddenly discover that no one is listening to anything I say anymore, because, these days, people like to listen only to themselves and hear only what they already believe to be true. So I often wonder if I should just stop talking altogether, stop forming opinions, stop thinking.

The problem is that, when I worked, I only mattered when I was young and wore suits everyday. When I began to mistake every day for casual Friday, I began to disappear more and more, especially when decisions needed to be made that affected my job. Sure, sometimes my "bosses" would ask for my input, but whenever I offered any kind of alternative to their plans, my ideas quickly became as invisible as me, the invisible person who submitted them. After a while, I spent most of my working days dreaming of retirement, making me a truly invisible employee, out of sight and out of mind, once and for all.

The problem is that there are always those traditional family get-togethers, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Splendid occasions, I admit, but I almost always suffer a bout of invisibility whenever these events show up on the calendar. I have no extended family to speak of, apart from a sister who lives a million miles away in Vancouver, a daughter who lives a million miles away in her head, and a son, who is a wonderful young man with a beautiful daughter, but who suffers from the same affliction as I do and becomes invisible in his own right. It's a tough gig to be outnumbered in the midst of a swarming throng of look-alike and like-minded folks from the other side of the "family." These are my son's in-laws, of course, a cast of thousands who never really look at me eye-to-eye, because quite frankly, I'm not there. Well, I guess I'm there for a second or two, like a soap bubble that explodes into a silly drip of water, hits the floor, evaporates in a twinkling, and disappears completely. Most of the time, everyone is happy to shuffle me into a folding chair at the kids' table where they stick a plateful of mashed potatoes, some jellied salad, and a turkey wing in front of me and fill my plastic wine glass with fizzy orange soda. If I were there, I might say something, protest, or at the very least, be embarrassed. Fortunately, for all concerned, I'm invisible.

Maybe that's just the way life is supposed to progress. Maybe, as we get older, we are supposed to learn to blend into our surroundings, like a chameleon happy to snap at passing flies, instead of making a ruckus about wanting a little attention. And maybe, just maybe, I should accept that I'm no longer the star of this drama called life, accept that I've finally become just an extra, simply someone to help fill in a crowd scene in this epic movie we all live through. Yes, maybe I should just be grateful to still be here, even if I have lost my voice and become irrelevant as I drift toward death with a generation of leftover still-alives who show up at an Eagles' concert and know all the words to all the songs.

Maybe, after all is said and done, I shouldn't complain. After all, some people have it worse than I ever did. Some people manage to be almost entirely invisible in a lifelong marriage. Some people have reckless teenage kids who are convinced that a parent is, by definition, invisible. Some people cherish an invisible love. Some people bump and grind through invisible sex. And, maybe worst of all, some people are dying from an invisible disease.

But I am complaining, because, well, there's an old saying: "What you see is what you get," and maybe that's true. The problem is that, too often, some people just don't see anymore, and so don't know what magic there is left to get.



Copyright © Kennedy James, 2007. All rights reserved. This post is the intellectual property of the author and his heirs and is not to be copied or reproduced in any form without the author's written consent. Please email for further information.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Are You Eggperienced?



Are You Eggperienced?






I can't eat eggs. Allergic. I'm 92% sure of the fact. Some people, who pretend to know better, say that I can't be allergic to eggs because of my penchant for eating cake.

"Cake has eggs in it," they say. "How can you eat a cake and not have a reaction if you're allergic to eggs? That impossible."

I beg to differ.

In the process of making a cake, something magical happens. The eggs become transformed into something that is so not eggs. I mean, cut into a moist chocolate cake, and pardon me, but you won't see anything that is remotely like an egg in there. Not a boiled egg, nor a fried egg, not even an egg-in-the-hole. I know my eggs. Trust me.

I ate eggs for years and years, and then one day, the medical community decided to test out a new flu vaccine that was cultured in some sort of egg base. In the early trials, they must not have got the whole vaccine gig right, because I was one of the first to try this little prick in the arm, and ever since then, I can't eat eggs. If I do, I get flu-like symptoms. Slip me an egg today, and tomorrow, I'll be crawling to the couch to either sleep or watch Judge Judy on the TV all day ... same thing, really.

I must admit that I do miss eggs. I miss mushing toast in the yolk and gobbling down long dripping hunks of yellow snot-like liquid. Oh, that's not a very pleasant image, I know, and I hope you're not eating your breakfast while you read this. Really, though, the consistency of eggs must seem familiar to you. I guess that's why some people like their eggs well cooked, "over hard" or whatever the phrase is.

I suppose I could try Egg Beaters, since that nifty little product claims to eliminate the yolk from the whole egg. You just get the whites and a bunch of emulsifiers like Xantham gum and guar gum. I have no idea what Xantham or guar gum are, but I'm certain I'm allergic to those as well. Anyway, what's an egg without the yolk?

I can eat Eggo toaster waffles, but I don't think those are anywhere near the same food group. I doubt very much that they have any egg in them at all. I'm afraid to read the list of ingredients. I suspect that they may contain a frightening amount of chemicals, pesticides, dyes and who knows what else. Google at your own risk.

No, I'm afraid I have to live my life eggless in America. Sure, it's a tough road to follow, and many people share my plight. There's not much you can do, short of ordering a tumbler of Benadryl with your omelette, but there are support groups, such as Folks Against Yolks, for people who crave egg salad sandwiches and the like. These groups have the usual twelve step program to get you off shell cracking for good, and for most people, the program is quite successful. I tried the to do the twelve steps, but I only made it to the the ninth. I couldn't bring myself to making amends with the chickens of the world. Going to an egg farm and apologising to those flightless feathered fowls was just too much for me. You see, although I am allergic to eggs, I am not allergic or in any way adverse to watching those oversized cockerels turning slowly over a hot grill and landing on my plate for dinner. While admitting that, I must also say that I love the dark meat and the white meat with an equal passion, political posturing be damned.

So I live and I suffer my sacrifice quietly, scrambling for excuses when a big fat guy hands me a glass of eggnog on Christmas day, poaching around the salad bar at the Hometown Buffet and looking for the potato salad that doesn't have flecks of yellow in it, coddling those intent on testing my resolve, boiling with self-loathing should I give in to the serpentine temptation of a devilled egg at a summer picnic. In fact, I am truly like a monk cloistered away from the oviparous world of egg eaters. Yes, like a saint almost. Who knows? Maybe someday they'll canonize me. Give me a cool title, like Saint Eggs-Benedict.

Whoops. I shouldn't make religious jokes. I'm not sure so sure about God's sense of humour anymore, not since he thought flooding the world might be amusing. So, yes, I apologise, but you see, some bacon-fried beast from Hell just keeps egging me on.




Copyright © Kennedy James, 2007. All rights reserved. This post is the intellectual property of the author and his heirs and is not to be copied or reproduced in any form without the author's written consent. Please email for further information.





© Kennedy James. All rights reserved.
All material in this site is copyrighted under International Copyright Law. Reproduction of original content, in any form and in whole or in part, save for fair use exemption, is prohibited by the author of this site without expressed, written permission.