My superpower? Invisibility

I remember when I first started teaching and a very wise old(er) teacher told me when asked about how students felt about teachers – “honey, we are just furniture to them”.  And she was right.  Furniture in the sense that we are very functional, available when needed, and can be ignored when we are not needed.  It might not seem very appealing to be considered furniture, but it is actually quite handy and gives you access to worlds you might not otherwise have.  For instance, being furniture makes you virtually invisible.  Even now as I am re-entering the teaching world at the uni level I can walk across campus and hear and see all sorts of things that I never would be exposed to normally.  So as I was walking back from my tutorial today, I heard a girl telling her mate that she drank too much and should cut back.  I heard another talk about his future plans and yet another couple grinning ear to ear as they parted.  It feels a little like the angel in Wings of Desire – essentially hearing everybody’s thoughts because they don’t notice that I am there.

So I started thinking about how I blog in the same light.  I don’t really notice the people out there in the public who may be reading, just the ones that I know about.  So my blog feels quite invisible in the huge mass of stuff out on the web.  However, occasionally something reminds me that I am revealing my personal thoughts to a quite public audience.  It can be alarming when this happens.  In RL every once in a while, someone approaches me that I don’t recognise.  They start talking to me as if they know me and it takes me a bit to realise that they must be one of my current or former students.  I don’t really recognise them, but they know me.  And I realised that my invisibility doesn’t work all of the time – sort of a flawed superpower.  If you stand up and talk in front of students enough, they will eventually see you and you will have lost your invisibility.  What is more ackward is that because I don’t recognise them, they are invisible and I am the one seen.

So if I blog enough, I am bound to lose my invisibility occasionally as well.  Sort of the price you pay for personal discourse in a public forum.  It is not too bad – really just my 15 minutes – but spread out over many years and presenting itself when I least expect it – 900 seconds of fame (?!) wrapped up in a lifetime of anonymity.