I'm one of those people that can blend into a crowd and not be noticed. At school I was a skinny, shy, mousy thing; not someone people would be drawn to. In class I would put my hand up to answer a question, the teacher would look at me for a few seconds and I would know that she couldn't remember my name. She'd seen me in the class. She knew I wasn't a problem, got on with my work but she just couldn't bring my name to the tip of her tongue. If you teach then you know about these children. I teach a Joseph (or is is Jacob?) that I have this problem with, even though he's been in a class I have taught for what will be 7 years this year. Sometimes she would just wave her finger at me, raise an eyebrow and say, "Er, yes, you, what do you think?" and other times she would just resign herself to my invisibility and ask someone else. I wasn't one of those children that got overlooked. I was Mary in the school play, I sang solos, played the flute, got chosen for competitions and country dancing festivals, picked to tidy the classroom or be the one who used the scissors (I don't know why this was an important thing in my infant school, but it was.) On paper, all the teachers knew my name but somehow my actual physical presence didn't quite match their expectations and there was no recognition when they looked at me.
If you look at lists of the best and worst superpowers to have, invisibility always comes near the bottom. People think it's a pointless power to have. They say that the only people who choose it are teenage boys who want it to sneak into girls changing rooms to see them naked or people who want to know what people are thinking of them. I like my superpower and it's not for either of those reasons.
Being invisible means that you can do what you like and no one notices. Actually, that's not entirely true. They notice the thing but they don't notice you and so you can go on and continue as normal.
My power doesn't work on children. Children I have taught shout my name in the supermarket and tell their parents what I have in my trolley and even babies catch my eye and smile with recognition. One girl, who I had worked with for 20 minutes at a workshop three years before, told her grandad loudly that I was her flute teacher when I passed them in the High Street.
However, adults are completely susceptible to my power. On Sunday, I had taken some children to a church service to sing and play the flute. It had been a particularly funny service, with the lady leading it suggesting that my headteacher was full of hot air and then accusing him of having a 'limp one', as asked if she wanted him to tie it up. Before the service we had been introduced and had shaken hands. She was someone who I recognised and whose name I knew. As soon as it was time to call the choir and flute group up I could tell that she had forgotten my name. She looked at me as she said, "so I'd like to ask...err...whoever is responsible for the singing bit to come up." That evening, I went to see a concert and the same lady was in the room. I smiled and waved but there was that moment, a pause, and then she looked past me. She sat across the row from me telling someone about the church service and how she'd had to make the headteacher behave because she knew he was going to let the balloon go. True invisibility means that you don't have to hear what people think of you because they just haven't noticed you. She did talk about how brilliant the children were and how much pressure she had felt with such a full church.
This morning I worried about losing my power. Yesterday's blog had been shared a bit and I got scared that my life of eavesdropping and being able to do things without being noticed was over. What happens to superheroes in comics when they lose their powers? I did a bit of research and am relieved to say that I feel as though I can breathe again. They always get them back. Spiderman lost his through unrequited love and when the world needed him again he just focused very hard and they came back. Luckily, the real invisible woman (Susan Storm of Fantastic Four fame) has never lost her powers and the likeness between us is uncanny.
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