Excuse Me While I Disappear: Tales of Midlife Mayhem

by Laurie Notaro

That was it, I finally understood. I was not really invisible, but I was now the ghost of who I used to be. Someone whom society valued, saw potential in, and considered vibrant and young and worthwhile. I was the ghost of someone who mattered.

The brilliance of growing older is that with each passing day, you lose an equivalent amount of fear. I have less tolerance for unexperienced voices who think they know more than a person twice their age, and I’m not afraid to say so.

Now, I live in Eugene, Oregon, where people are so far to the left that they have almost looped around again to the right, and they have no problem demanding that other people not ruin their nature walks by doing laundry.

People act poorly because other people have let them act poorly, and they have been able to get away with it for a lifetime.

It may have taken my entire tenure there to get all of my coworkers to see me, but leave it to an invisible woman to yell so loud when it counts that no force can drown her out.

I know I have a vintage body, but I would like to have had a heads-up about things such as my lowest fat roll turning into a skin hammock almost overnight, even though I have never had kids.