Walter

Now you see him, now you don't. Now you do...

Walter

Walter realized he was invisible. You’d think such a thing would be immediately apparent, but it took Walter a while to realize.  And it wasn’t so much that his body mass wouldn’t obstruct a person’s view past him, it’s just that no one saw him. He was the person in a room that no one noticed. He was the person who would pass you on the sidewalk, and you only noticed that there was some presence that needed to be worked around.

Walter realized he was invisible.  And maybe it was for the best.  He had tried to tell jokes in a group and, yes, people noticed him.  His punchlines landed with a thud, and people quickly found someone else to pay attention to.  He tried to dress in the latest style, but never pulled it off.  People noticed the mismatched clothes, and saw no reason to notice the person wearing them.

Walter had a sense that he was perhpas too aware, noticed the dynamics of a situation more than others. Where others blissfully went forth, unaware of the ramifications, Walter considered nearly everything. And when one does that, one is bound to find contrary indications of what to do or say, or not do or say. By the time he worked things through, the situation had moved on and left him behind.

Technically, Walter was not invisible, yet invisibility was his natural state.  Any time he did anything to gain notice, it did not go well. He got used to invisibility, felt comfortable enough with it. There were advantages at work.  When something needed to be done, nobody thought to assign Walter to do it.  Walter sometimes saw assignments that he could do as well or better than anyone else, but over time he learned to not volunteer.  He wouldn’t get the assignment anyway, so why bother. So, he sat in meetings, filed papers. Wrote papers, even, that no one read.

Then he would go home to his apartment.  He lived alone, paid his rent and utilities on time.  When you handle all your responsibilities, nobody notices. Fred Mitchel, two doors down, got noticed.  He owed people money, and they would come by to demand payment.  His girlfriends seemed to have issues with Fred, and often expressed them in a very vocal manner.  Even the cops visited Fred, once.  As with everyone else, the cops walked right past Walter’s door, to get to Fred’s door.

There were no high points in Walter’s life, but at least there were no low points. If he wanted to guess what he would be doing exactly five years from now, he could easily presume that he would be doing exactly the same as today. But he never wanted to guess. To what end would he try to predict the future?

One Saturday morning there was a break in his routine.  He saw a mouse in a corner of the kitchen counter.  His first thought was that he should get rid of it, but that thought was immediately overruled by a curiosity concerning the mouse’s activities.  He watched silently, the mouse not noticing him. The mouse seemed very deliberate as it moved around the counter, looking for any tidbits to eat. Walter watched him for the better part of an hour, then the mouse disappeared into a little hole that Walter had never noticed, right in the corner, just above the backsplash.

Sunday morning, the same.  The same for the mouse, and the same for Walter. Walter sat and watched, and contemplated.  Is that all he was?  Was he just a mouse who looked for scraps in somebody else’s house?  Was that so bad, really?  What else was a mouse supposed to do?  What would this mouse do differently, given the opportunity? Walter had to ask himself, what would HE do differently, given the opportunity?  And what opportunity?  Fred, two doors down, seemed to create all kinds of opportunities for himself.  True, they frequently did not turn out well, but Walter realized that at least Fred was in charge of his life. Everything that happened, happened as a result of Fred’s choices.  People responded to him, not the other way around. As Walter regarded the mouse, he wondered about that. He contemplated people responding to Walter, instead of Walter responding to people. It intrigued him. He wondered if he could do that, and how would he do it?  And wasn’t there a risk?  He had tried things before, and he just embarrassed himself.  Better to just keep quiet, quite like a mouse.

Still, Walter was intrigued. He sat in a meeting the following Tuesday, and watched everyone else as they participated, some making useful points, others just wanting to be participants, to be noticed. Of course, Walter said nothing, as usual, but he noticed for the first time that there was a dynamic, apart from the basic purpose of having the meeting.  Some of the participants worked together to investigate and resolve the issue, but others, Leslie in particular, just want the notice.  She wanted to be ‘validated’ but had no particular interest in resolving anything.  How very different from himself, Walter thought. Leslie, in her way, failed to fit in every bit as much as Walter.  She just didn’t know it, wasn’t self-conscious about it. And really, nobody else seemed particularly conscious of it.  Leslie would say what she had to say, and then the conversation would get back to the efforts of the productive people. Bill and Linda were somewhere in between.  They didn’t drive the conversation, but they participated to some extent, contributed to some extent. And to some extent they were just getting a word in, just to be part of things.

Walter had never before thought in these terms, in terms of why people do and say things, and not just in what they do and say.  He recognized the obvious.  They are human. The next Saturday, he watched the mouse. He sat there quietly and contemplated. It was all quiet now, Fred’s party having broken up at about three AM. No, Walter concluded, he should not be quiet like a mouse. But he didn’t want to be like Leslie, needlessly calling attention to herself for the sake of her own ego. To some, such considerations come naturally, learned, presumably in childhood.  But for Walter it took some contemplation. He had time on his hands to contemplate.  He needed to go to the bank, but it wouldn’t open for another hour, so he could just think. Did he need to try to reinvent himself, or just create a new, improved version of his old self? Maybe, he smiled, I just need to learn to tell a joke.

He went to the bank, as he did once a month, on the first Saturday. He went to the check writing stand in the middle of the lobby, his back to the door, to organize his paperwork. A gunman came in and swiftly moved to the teller’s line, going right past Walter as if he didn’t matter. The gunman waved his gun around, shouting at the tellers to put all their cash on the counter in front of them.  Walter watched, anxious, but surprisingly unafraid.  The gunman might have been on drugs.  Walter could see that he was erratic, even considering the situation. The gunman was shouting at the tellers, blaming them for his problems, hadn’t even started picking up the money, which the tellers had quickly placed on the counter as ordered. Walter continued to assess.  The manager, off to the side at her desk, put her hands up and said quietly to the gunman, “We don’t want to cause you any trouble.  The money is there. Please take it, and go.”

The gunman quickly turned to the manager and aimed his gun at her. Everyone froze. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you!  You just want me to go away, so you can go back to your nice, easy life and not bother with me!  Well, today, I’m not going away, and you will pay!”

Walter knew that the gunman was about to shoot.  The gunman raised his gun, almost imperceptibly higher, to get the shot off.  Walter shouted “Hey!” as he rushed at the gunman.  The gunman turned, but not in time. Walter lowered his shoulder and drove it into the gunman’s side, cracking several of the gunman’s ribs.  They both went sprawling, and as they did so, Walter, reached around with his arm and engaged the gunman’s right arm, the arm holding the gun, in a half-nelson style hold, and yanked.  He dislocated the gunman’s shoulder and the gun fired harmlessly into the ceiling, and then fell from his hand. Both men went down, Walter hanging tight to the gunman so that he could not move.  Walter shouted, “Someone get the gun!” 

Only the manager had the presence of mind to do as he said.

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