Invisible

from The Comedy of Neil Simon

by Neil Simon

(introduction)

In the beginning, I was a boy. A plain boy. A nice, plain boy. I went to school, I ate breakfast, I listened to The Shadow, I dreamt of being Joe DiMaggio, I went to the movies a lot and once was thrown out of a theater for laughing too loud at Chaplin in Modern Times. No sinister signs, no black omens. A nice, plain boy . . .

Well, perhaps a few telltale hints to a discerning eye. I would go with my parents to visit a "distant" relative, distant in those days meaning a forty-minute trolley ride across the river to the Bronx, and once there, I imagined myself invisible. No earthly creature could see me because no earthly creature talked to me for hours at a time, save for grown-ups, when they offered me a cookie or a nice apple. I refused, hoping this would discourage them from further contact, enabling me to mask myself again in a cloak of obscurity. Hours would go by. They would talk, I would listen. I got to know them better by listening than if I had engaged them in conversation myself. On the trolley going home I realized again that I could not be seen by the human eye. People talked to each other, not to me. They looked at each other, not at me. Unobserved, unnoticed, unheeded, I could go about my curious business, storing up vast amounts of valuable information like accents, hair styles; those who shined their shoes and those who did not, nose blowers, nose wipers, nose leakers and those with various other nose habits too indelicate to mention. Occasionally I would be noticed, invariably by another young boy my own age and alone with his parents. I would have to be careful. If the other boy noticed what I was doing, I would be exposed. I stared at the Wrigley Chewing Gum sign above the heads of the occupants on the other side, hoping and praying the interloper would get off before I did. Success at last. There he goes. Stubby arms and a fat behind. Bad athlete, good student, and probably gets an allowance. Oh, terrific, his underwear constantly sticks in his crotch and he pulls at it in a really ridiculous way. I have him now. Let him dare to threaten to expose me, to reveal to the world my existence, and I shall shame him with vivid descriptions of how he gets off a trolley.

Home to bed and dreams of victory and triumph. The Shadow knows.