I’m familiar with the whole range of invisibilities. There’s the comfortable, elegant, pleasant invisibility of reading in a library where everyone is immersed in a different story—a different world—and no one pays me the slightest mind, or of admiring some sublime natural beauty on which everyone’s eyes are fixed and knowing you’re safe and untroubled and unwatched. This invisibility is like armor, protective and oddly freeing.
Then there’s the awkwardly uncomfortable invisibility of a crowd, where someone doesn’t see you until they’ve inadvertently bumped or tripped you and then it’s all “I’m sorry”s and “no worries”s and I feel like I’m the one who ought to apologize—for so inconspicuously occupying space that my invisibility has caused an awkward moment. In highschool, I accidentally startled a friend on numerous occasions by being too quiet behind her locker door, so she was invariably startled when she closed it and found me standing there.
And, of course, there’s the downright dangerous invisibility of being a pedestrian or cyclist in the intersection of 19th Street and Flint Avenue in Lubbock, Texas. On Monday, for the second time in two years, I nearly lost life or limb in the same abhorrent intersection. Both times, the offending party was an inattentive left-turning driver in a pickup truck. Once I was cycling through on my green light when the roaring truck bore down on me and forced me to come to a screeching halt. I don’t know whether the driver even saw me after the fact, or if he ever registered the uncouth bird I flashed at him.
On Monday, I was walking through the intersection and its innumerable puddles with the comforting neon white stick figure giving me the right-of-way for a generous 26 more seconds when a white pickup came barrelling through on a determined left turn. I dodged clumsily, but it was just coordinated enough that the driver-side bumper flashed past with centimeters to spare. Its gleaming tires threw up a generous splash of muddy water up my side. I looked toward the driver, aghast. She rolled her window down as her vehicle rolled nonchalantly away. “I’m sorry,” she called, ruefully. “You should be!” I hollered back. “Watch where you’re going!” Rather shaken, I turned and trudged unfeelingly through the final, enormous puddle separating me from the safety of the sidewalk. There, invisibility regained its usual comfortable mantle.
It was the first and only time I’ve ever yelled at a student. I just hope she isn’t one of mine.
The incident was an uneasy collision of two fraught relationships of mine—those with vehicles and with teaching—as I was on my way to my instructor-of-record orientation for the new semester when it happened. I was disheveled, soaked, shaking, and—in all honesty—less than charitably disposed toward students when I took my seat and settled in for two hours of administrative minutiae.
In hindsight, “watch where you’re going” wasn’t the best advice. She was, after all, watching where she was going, just not the crosswalk—or its occupant—in between. From within the monstrosity of a truck, it was only in hindsight that I became visible as a tiny shocked figure in a dripping left wing mirror. Hindsight is 20/20, but the world would be a much safer place for cyclists and pedestrians if foresight was just a bit more unclouded too.
Natasha (Strydhorst) Unsworth (‘16) is a science communication researcher and practitioner working on her Ph.D. at Texas Tech University. Natasha hails from Calgary, Alberta. Some of her favo(u)rite authors are C. S. Lewis, Francis Collins, and Bill Bryson. Her favourite earthly place is the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and her favourite activities are reading and enjoying the great outdoors—preferably simultaneously.
