In Plain Sight

    “You should see this!”

    “You can get arrested for doing something like that.”

     “Funny, but it’s nothing like that. Have you ever noticed how oblivious people have become to their surroundings? I can see the street and the path along the river from here. This telescope allows me to see their faces, as if they were as close to me as you are. They look like zombies. They move like people, but they seem to be unaware of others and…everything around them. They pass others as if they don't exist.” 

     “They are probably just absorbed in where they are going, what they are going to do when they get there. I’ve zoned out before, run into a sign, step in some dog…, you tend to not pay attention when your mind removes you from the world. It is as if you have become somebody else. It’s like when we went over to the coast. To be honest I don’t remember anything about the trip there, and I was driving.”

    “I get it. But I don’t remember you looking like you were dead. These people have no facial expressions, they move like they’re all suffering from stage 4 arthritis. Are there any alerts you are aware of. Some mystery ship land somewhere and suck the life out of everyone. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen people who are so engaged, and not engaged at all, in the same moment. Come here and look at this.”

    “You’ll have to look for me. I can’t stop now or this birthday cake is going to look like a tortilla with attitude. Keep me posted. I haven’t seen you this interested in the neighbors and our neighborhood in, well…ever.”

    It could be I’m making way too much of this observation thing. She may be right, I’ve finally recognized the fact that I not only have neighbors, but they are not what I expected. Now that I think of it, the people at work look different as well. Maybe I need glasses. Maybe it’s me that’s changed. I may be turning into someone I don’t know. Perhaps it is me who has been invaded by an extraterrestrial. I hear stories about  things like that, I guess it could happen to me.

    I would think though that if I was taken over by an alien or foreign power I’d know it. I look the same, at least I think so. Gina didn’t scream when she woke up, and found me staring at that mole on her cheek she’s been worrying about. Jim, the guy across the hall, said, “Hi” this morning, like he does every morning. He didn’t run for the door. 

    The problem with this scenario, is once you get an idea in your head it seems to multiply on its own terms, by its own means. Next thing you know that news you thought you remembered has taken hold of your suspicions and has begun to paint a picture of a world you don’t recognize.

    I remember in school, when Jerry got everyone to slip out of class when Mr. Henderson, our so-called civics teacher, had fallen asleep. We just had to come see, the basement, the janitors closet, Bill the custodian was dead. Jerry was sure of it. He’d seen him, poked him, shook him, he was absolutely dead and we had to go with him and see. 

    Bill, a nice guy, said nothing about the things he saw and heard. His problem was he had a tendency to drink, and take his medication for the injury he incurred attempting to retrieve our football from the flat roof of the boiler room. We went, I went, mainly to see if I could get old Bill up and at um, before he got threatened again by principal Olsen. She’s a perfect piece of work. That’s the problem, she has expectations, none of them human, and everything that deviates from perfection is the devils work.

    We got Bill up and out to his truck. He’d sleep it off and not remember any of it by the time it got dark and cold, and he woke up wondering what he was doing in his truck shivering. 

    That stuff I can understand. But the people I’m seeing, they don’t look normal. I wonder if there is anyone to call about stuff like this. I could call 9-1-1, but the last time I called the woman got upset cause it wasn’t what she thought qualified as an emergency. Thinking Bill was dead that first time, as far as I could tell, qualified.

    We got agencies for everything. You’d think they’d have an agency that’s looking into deadpan people. Maybe they do and I just don’t know about it. Gina’s no help. When I find something out of the ordinary she throws her wet towel on it. I don’t think she believes me. It all started I think, when that rock in the water turned out not to be a seal. It sure looked like a seal, and so what if it wasn’t. Would it have hurt her to pretend it was a seal. 

    Not only are people beginning to look like zombies they are acting like them. No imagination. No one gets up and starts dancing in the street like they do in the movies. I’m starting to feel we as a species are doomed to become grouchy old people who yell at kids for walking on their artificial grass.

    “Hey, how’s the turtle watching going?”

    “How’s the birthday cake coming? Who’s B-Day is it anyway?”

    “Yours dummy!”

    I guess I should pay more attention to the mechanics of daily life, and not get caught up in all the distractions. It just seems like they say, “if you see something, say something,” you should.

    The problem with that is, it seems to cause me more problems than if I keep my observations to myself. Take that woman out there now. Pink shorts, barely a shirt, bright red rimmed sun glasses, and high healed flip flops. Now I’m supposed to ignore something like that. There’s got to be something in the water if it’s not aliens.

    “Hey, you got to come see this woman. She’s dressed like a Christmas tree, got a scowl on her face like a pit bull, and she’s carrying something that looks like a gun with a flower stuck in the barrel. Why do people all seem so angry?”

    “They aren’t angry dear. They are suffering from political fatigue. Don’t worry, it will be over soon. The elections are just 8 months away, and then two years later we have another one, and maybe by that time we’ll get lucky and have another pandemic to take our minds off our political infatuation.”

     “Thanks! You think people look like they do because they vote, or because they don’t?”

     “Let it go.”