ELDERMAN - THE OLDEST NEW SUPERHERO: THE HIDDEN VIRTUE OF INVISIBILTY AS AN OLD MAN

Back in the late 1980s, shortly after I had moved from New York to Los Angeles, I stopped a young female student on the sprawling UCLA campus to ask for directions.

“Excuse me, do you know how I can get to Pauley Pavillion? I asked. “Yes sir, I can help you,” and she patiently explained how to get there. I was so taken aback by having someone maybe 10 years younger than I call me “sir” that I really didn’t pay attention to the rest of what she said, and I slinked off, and for all I know, ended up dazed and confused somewhere on Wilshire Boulevard.

My age – 35 or so at the time – made me easily identifiable and visible.

Cut to: 2022. I am wandering around another elitist California campus (I had returned east for a couple of decades before returning to California for a yearlong fellowship) carrying a plate of cafeteria food, looking for a place to sit. The few empty seats at tables in the food court were surrounded by undergrads, grad students, or junior faculty members - they all looked the same to me, young, confident, fully engaged in conversations with their peers.

I balked at sitting at one of those tables, but the choices were limited, and eventually I sat at a table with another half dozen or so people anywhere from 35 to 50 years younger than I.

No one said a word to me. That was to be expected. When I tried to reach across the table for some ketchup (I’m not a very high-class guy) but couldn’t reach it, I asked my table mates, “Can you pass the ketchup, please?”

Then a very unusual thing happened. No one looked at me. No one said anything. No one passed the ketchup. That was okay, I suppose. I mean, does anyone really need ketchup? But it was still strange that there was no response at all.

A few days later, I went to a class I had signed up for. I got there a bit late, and seats were hard to come by. I squeezed my way into an aisle where I saw an empty seat.

“Is this seat taken, “I asked the student next to the empty seat. Nada. No response. I sat down and enjoyed the lecture.

When the class was over, I walked outside and had a revelation of sorts.

I’m invisible!

In a brief moment of paranoia, or a flashback to a very rare drug-infused episode from my college days in the 70s, I literally lifted my arms up toward the sun and tried to see if I could look through them, if they were translucent. If I were in fact, invisible.

Turns out I wasn’t technically invisible. Kind of a relief. But I certainly wasn’t visible in the conventional sense that people saw me, interacted with me, and responded to me in the way they would someone who they felt it was important to acknowledge.

For a while, this bothered me much in the same way that being mistaken for an old man by a UCLA student more than 30 years earlier had bothered me.

Then I had a mini epiphany. I wasn’t a ghost. I wasn’t dead. I just “wasn’t there.” And after the initial shock wore off, I looked at this as an unconventional sort of superpower.

It seemed I could go pretty much wherever I wanted without consequence, and since I wasn’t “visible” no one would say to me, “Hey, you don’t belong here” which has led, interestingly, to another television series idea of mine: “An Old Guy Goes Into…” about well, an old guy going places that seem odd or unwelcoming or age-inappropriate to see if anyone notices or cares.

The invisibility has its downside to be sure. On occasion, I have what I believe to be important, insightful, relevant things to say that I think would add and uplift the discussion, but they rarely find an opportunity for expression in the cacophony of younger, louder voices.

More often, there is a strange kind of peace in being part of the scenery. Don’t get me wrong. I think I’m a smart, energetic guy with much left to offer. And if I feel unfairly ignored, I’ll let people know about that and make sure I have my say before blending into the wallpaper. Being at Stanford for a year put that to the test, and I think I passed.

But there is comfort in being the quietest person in a room full of unquiet people who don’t listen very well, and who seem to believe everything they say is a gem that ought to be immediately recorded for posterity.

Invisibility has its liabilities. And its merits.