Invisibility cloak

18th October 2019

For reasons I’m unaware of, people can tend to behave in cafes as if the barista can’t see them. For example, I was drinking coffee at a local cafe when I saw a customer drop part of his breakfast on the floor. It was Shakshuka, I believe.

The piece of bread and an egg dropped to the concrete which, judging from the amount of labradors in the area, didn’t allow for a 2-second rule, let alone 10.

Shockingly though, he looked around, seeing whether he was being watched, and proceeded to pick up the piece of bread, anyway.

He dusted off the dog hairs, sand and soil (or tried to anyway) and then ate the bread. He seemed to think he was invisible as if there was one of those glass panels around him, the type which you can only see through from one side.

Invisibility is sometimes confused with ignorance. You can’t use ignorance as a convincing argument in the courtroom, but I believe you can’t condemn too much if the person doesn’t have a clue, like when you spot someone with spinach caught between the two front teeth, or, in my case, when you see a man’s penis sticking out of his tiny running shorts on the train. Yes, he had earplugs in and stared out the opposite window apparently unbeknown to the anatomy hanging out like a limp snorkel, feeding air into the groyne.

“Excuse me, sir,” I wanted to say the same way you might if you saw a stranger drop a phone without realising. “But your penis is sticking out of your shorts.”

“Oh yes,” he’d say. “So it is. Why thank you.”

“Cheerio, then.”

If you think you’re alone when you’re actually being watched, then your behaviour is also permissible, I believe.

I was driving east of Perth to the city’s industrial area with my brother Zak. The road was apparently called a highway, even though the speed limit was 60 km/hr and there was only one lane that barely fit the width of a hatchback. Plus, there were roundabouts every thirty metres.

Hardly a direct or major road, which is the Dictionary definition of a highway in case you were wondering.

I stopped at one of the roundabouts and, here, I heard a noise on my right side which resembled something you’d hear during a gladiator battle: sporadic screaming, people banging swords on shields, horses dying.

Naturally, I craned to my right to look for the source of the sound. And there, in a black Commodore, was a woman with long black hair abrasively nodding to what she probably thought of as music.

The headbanging was incessant, the same back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then she stopped to sneeze. The racket continued and the car filled up with a soft mist of phlegm.


Apparently, the violent discharge wasn't effective enough, because she shoved her index finger up her nose, using the same graceful approach she used for dancing. There were no cars around, so I could’ve entered the roundabout, but I was too captivated by the woman’s ability to make her knuckle disappear. I would’ve admired the scene for longer had the truck behind me not beeped a horn which, I’m certain, was designed for a supertanker.

Invisibility is a superpower I’ve always wanted. The idea that you can walk around, completely undetected from the hawk-like gaze of the public, free from judgement. Unfortunately, there is no such thing, especially in the case of the gentlemen who dropped part of his breakfast.

“You forgot the egg, mate,” his friend said because while he’d salvaged the bread, the egg remained in pieces on the dirt-laden floor. A few people were watching keenly now as he contemplated the loose yolk and whites.

“Do you think he’s going to eat that, too,” a person murmured from behind. I bet that he would.

But no. He didn’t pick up the sloppy remains. He merely used his boot to kick the egg under the table. Perhaps he believed the egg was now out of sight. He walked to the neighbouring table where his friends were, apparently believing that he’d adequately covered the evidence, even though we, the pack of bystanders (which included the owner of the cafe), could see the egg in plain sight. Yes, he wasn’t invisible. You could see that on the owner’s confused and very angry face.

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