It’s not Nice not to Stare

On a lovely, sunny afternoon this past April, I was sitting in a Noodles & Company restaurant in Lakewood, Colorado, waiting for my “to-go” order to be cooked. I was not looking lovely, at all. My right leg was propped up on my left knee, and I was using my hands to hold my bare right foot up higher still. A pair of crutches leaned against the bench beside me. I’d just taken off a painfully tight Ace bandage, so my ankle was now visible in all its glory: black, purple, and blue swirled with neon green and yellow in a tapestry of bruising that covered me from the knuckles of my toes up to my knee. There was a spot of pale, papery white over my Achilles tendon. My ankle, under the bruising, was swollen to three times its usual size. I was not at all surprised when a small boy stopped to stare at this spectacle. I hoped he’d ask me what happened. It was obvious that this was a recent injury, and I had a good story that I wasn’t tired of telling: how a piece of lumber had fallen on me while I was backstage for a play I was acting in, how I’d gone on with the show because, miraculously, my character had an injured ankle, too, and how I blamed the whole accident on the actor who had said “MacBeth” in the dressing room, as every theater person knows that the Scottish play is very bad luck, indeed…

Sadly, my storytelling opportunity was snatched away. Just as the boy opened his mouth to speak, his mother strode up, grabbed his arm, and jerked him away, growling, “Don’t stare!” She didn’t acknowledge me at all.

I was constantly surprised by strangers during my two weeks on crutches. A few people would help me out, hold doors for me, and better yet, ask what happened to me and tell me about the misadventures that had put them on crutches in the past. Overwhelmingly, though, my experience in public places was of being completely invisible. Even on the day when I went to Super Target, and a wonderfully friendly security guard gave me a buzzing electric go-cart of a shopping cart to ride around in, shoppers fell over themselves to avoid seeing me. Small children watched me go by, but were jerked away by hissing parents. Adults looked up at the sound of the motor, then quickly became fascinated by shower curtain rings and wedge-soled shoes.

As my injury began to heal, my invisibility grew more complete. I donated my crutches to charity after two weeks, but I had a pronounced limp for months, rolling awkwardly over my stiff right foot on every other step. My friend Daryl called it “zombie walking” and I laughed because I knew that I would not be a zombie forever. Still, now it was not so clear to the general public that I’d had an accident, or that this was a temporary situation. Not one person held a door for me, even though strangers had often held doors for me when I was healthy. (After all, I am a 32-year-old woman, and not bad looking.) Children were still pulled out of view by hissing parents, and adults still looked up and then quickly away, but nobody asked me how I came by my limp. I felt less and less excited about shopping, or going to libraries, or hanging out in coffee shops. I stayed home more, and spoke more quietly, adding to the cycle of invisibility.

Now, four months later, I look completely normal. I don’t limp at all unless my ankle, which is still weak, has seen heavy exercise lately. A good hike or a tap dancing class will bring back the limp for a day, but otherwise I look comfortingly ordinary. People sometimes hold doors for me again, and children only stare at me if I’m knitting in public. I feel solid again. I’m louder, and easier to see. I worry, though, about those people who are permanently unusual, whether from a disability, a simple physical difference like a deep skin color, being very tall or very short, speaking with an accent because their first language was not English, or liking to wear unusual clothes. The standard in American culture, as in many others, is that it is not polite to stare, but in practice this means that we resist the urge to acknowledge any difference—awful or beautiful or neutral—and in this supreme effort, we refuse to acknowledge an entire person. This well-meaning attempt to be polite, taught so well to most of us that it feels like a reflex by the time we become adults, often causes us to shun people for being interesting. The unusual becomes invisible. Even now that I’m visible again, this effect makes me very sad. I know it’s painful for everyone who is obviously unique, and it’s also a great loss for everyone who refuses to see them.

I saw a surprising example of this on a recent Sunday morning. My Sunday morning ritual these days is to stop by Vic’s coffee shop on Main Street in Louisville, Colorado (Colorado readers, please visit Vic’s. It’s a lovely, cozy place.) to sip green tea, eat a chocolate croissant, and knit while my talented friend Brian plays his guitar for the patrons. A surprisingly large number of people come in on most Sundays—with clipless bicycle shoes clicking, small children in tow, and friendly dogs tied up on the sidewalk outside—order their complicated coffees, and leave. A few folks sit down at the comfortable tables to read the newspaper and chat. Few pay any attention at all to the man in the corner who is improvising amazingly intricate melodies on a guitar.

Well, one fine Sunday morning, while I was staring over my knitting at Brian, trying to figure out how he made that last lovely trilling sound, a group sat down at the next table over. A mother was there with a baby in a carrier, a girl of seven or eight, and a friend, an adult woman much like herself. Mom and her friend were chatting away when Brian ended his tune with a flourish. There was a beat of silence, and then the little girl began to clap. I realized, all of a sudden, that nobody ever claps for Brian at Vic’s. Though I love his music, and I’d even told him so from time to time, it had never occurred even to me to clap when he finished a song. Why not? So I’d raised my hands, about to join the little girl, when her mother grabbed her hands, held them apart and hissed, “Stop that!”

Oh, yes. Now I remember. I don’t clap because I’ve been raised, as every kid whose parents value standard American politeness has been raised, not to draw attention to anything. No matter how unusual, how painful, or how wonderful a person’s difference is, we’re not supposed to admit that it’s there.

Well, I say, forget all of that! It may be polite to avoid staring at all costs, but it’s nicer—perhaps I should say kinder, or more useful for creating a better world—in any case, it makes more sense, I think, to admit when something is strikingly different about another person. We all know that everyone is unique, and it’s not likely that that a person with an obvious, visible difference hasn’t noticed it. If you notice in a respectful way, perhaps with a nod and a smile when you catch the person’s eye, it’s just another way to make contact with someone new. If someone has chosen to be different in an interesting way, like a lady wearing a beautiful headscarf, a teenager sporting a green mohawk, or my sudden change from light brown hair to flaming red, that person may enjoy telling you why they made that choice. It’s surely better for you to ask than to pretend it is’t there. If someone looks like he or she may need help, offer it, and if you’re told he or she is doing fine, you can admire more people for the creative ways they’ve found for taking care of themselves. And for heaven’s sake, if someone is different because they’re doing something wonderful, acknowledge their talent and encourage them to do more. In any case, we must stop punishing people for being interesting. Please, let's not let any human being become invisible because we’ve been taught that it’s not nice to stare.