As I dropped Amy at the party, another mother looked at me blankly and said she had never met me. Well, our children were in the same class for the past two years and I’ve seen and talked to her at Open House, field trips, class parties, an end-of-the-year swim party, other children’s birthdays and around the town. Other than that, we haven’t met. Having invisibility as my super power is something I have been aware of for a long time. It’s a useful skill and I will make a wonderful ninja as soon as I learn to walk across the room without tripping over my own two feet. Perhaps I am invisible so that I can trip and feel no embarrassment, since the trip was unseen. Whatever the reason I have the invisibility gift, it is something that works to my advantage, since I still follow my high school English teacher’s lessons on people watching for entertainment and information.

On the other hand, Doug walks into a room and immediately creates a stage. There are no strangers. There are only people who have heard of Doug and simply haven’t talked to him yet. We took the youngest boys to miniature golf and one of the few people, playing on the nearly empty stretches of plastic grass, was one of Doug’s juggling friends. The two adult children seriously considered tossing golf clubs back and forth, but decided against it only because of the suffocating heat that made everyone feel like they were breathing molasses. The next day, we went to the mall to get information on local activities. In the amount of time that it took me to revert to event coordinator mode and survey the scene, Doug was in the very center of the circular tables, tossing a diablo. As I was still in survey view, I watched the people in almost every single booth space holding their cell phones up to capture the spontaneous entertainer. Somewhere in the ether are a series of pictures of Doug from every angle that could be pieced together into a 360 degree panorama. I am in the background watching, but you can’t see me in the photographs. I was using invisibility mode. Doug was only aware of the exhibitor he was was discussing diablo techniques with, while I was entertained by the performer AND the audience. In the end, the experience was different for everyone, but the end result was the same. We both had fun.