What super power did you want when you were a kid? Heck, even as an adult, is there a super power you’d like to have?
Mine has always been to be invisible. Not that I would want to do anything bad or play tricks on people like slamming doors or eating their food, I just want to go about my life, doing my thing without interference and judgement from others. Well… that, and I wouldn’t have to wear clothes, which would be great, since clothes are really annoying sometimes.
I actually experienced the next best thing to being completely invisible when I spent almost a full month travelling around Australia by myself. Ok, a bit of a disclaimer here…the photo above is the van that I spent a month in driving around Australia. It was a little hard to be invisible in THAT, but just because the van stuck out like a sore thumb, didn’t mean I did! It was, hands down, the best vacation I’ve ever had…sorry to all those of you who have traveled with me in the past. Let me clarify; it wasn’t my very favorite country to visit, that would be Ireland, but it was my favorite time on vacation. And I’ll tell you why…
Because I was, basically, invisible! It sounds selfish, or wonderful, depending on how you look at it, but for almost a month, I did exactly what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. If I got tired as I was driving, I pulled over and took a nap or a hike. I stopped and got food when I was hungry, or opened the back of my van, made myself a cuppa on my cute little hot plate and grabbed something to eat from the cooler.
For most of the trip there was no one depending on me, no one expecting me anywhere, no one asking anything of me. I had no time table and no need for a watch. I could slip in and out of shops, restaurants, grocery stores and museums without anyone giving me a second look or remembering me a moment after I was out of sight. At any given time, no one else in the world who knew me knew where I was. Except for the 3 or 4 times I talked to my dad on the phone, and the sporadic email/Facebook/texting I did with friends and family (depending on the service in the area I was visiting, which wasn’t very good most of the time) I could have been in any country in the world, or in Anytown, USA.
It was so liberating and so emotionally heady that one night, I swear my feet weren’t touching the ground. I had checked into my motel room and had driven down the street to a local pizza joint for take-out. I had driven pretty far that day, so it was an eat-in-my-room-in-my-jammies kind of night. I walked out the door, the delicious smell of piping hot pizza and warm cardboard wafting up to my nostrils, and as I made my way through the parking lot, a feeling of euphoria came over me and it felt like my heart was singing and my feet were dancing. I looked down to check. Nope, my sandal-clad tootsies were just shuffling along. I swear I never saw a bluer sky, heard more beautiful birdsong or felt so totally well from my head to my toes as I did on that autumn evening in Murray Bridge, South Australia.
I drove three thousand Aussie miles. You know how a GPS will take you down roads that few locals will travel because they are so inconvenient (translation: barely passable)? Well, I’m sure Charlie (my GPS) took me down roads like that, but you know what? I didn’t care! No one was waiting for me at the end of the day and if I saw parts of Australia that most tourists, or natives, never saw, that was fine with me.
After all, I was, basically, invisible!
