Here is a list of things that are still invisible despite advances in education and social awareness.  Children, women, the handicapped, the UNDERCLASS and the aged; all are invisible.  For those who run the world or just our little part of it, the habit of ignoring the poor, little people, women, the crippled and us old ones is ingrained. Each new generation comes along and tells the little, the female, the unlucky and the old how it will be.

I have gotten used to being an invisible artifact in the company of old women.  They clack and clatter about important things and when I try to edge in with a remark along the same lines, they form ranks and exclude me as effectively as if an iron wall drops between us.  I don’t mind this although I sometimes think the things women talk about make more sense than topics invariably chosen by the male cohort.  One thing is sure.  They hear a hell of a lot better than I do and I have to check with them to make sense of the things I think I have heard spoken.

There has been a lot of talk how women are treated like children.  They are and we do that a lot.  We discredit them as world thinkers, sports analysts and old enough to have the same experience in the world that men do.  Women have come a long way, and if that means they are liberated to the point where they think they enjoy being near naked and unafraid of rape out among crowds of men they still have a few screws loose in their thinking machinery. Yet we cherish them and want to hug and protect them as we do little children.  Their clear soprano voices tell us this as well as smooth child like skin and helpless behavior… at times.

While I am at it, children are invisible because they are discounted as not being there yet.  Until they pass some tests, they will still be an underclass.  Older children, the ones who do not have the thinking ability according to I.Q. tests are classic examples.  They cannot reason as the mature do and then become invisible and never are asked their opinions because we reason that they have no opinions.  They are invisible.

Whatever happened to the notion that along with age comes wisdom?  The aged get to a point where they become invisible and their opinions are not sought.  If anything, they are asked what they did and how they did it to become so old and relatively sound. When they tell you it is daily ingestion of prunes and oatmeal and never drinking or smoking we gently laugh and pat their heads and then they become invisible again.

I think the practice we civilized people have of segregating the children, young adults, the handicapped, the poor, the non-English speaking and the elderly into separate social groups makes us invisible to each other.