Escape Characters

Visibility

I remembered something the other day. Something from my childhood that, really, I am surprised I remember at all.

It had to have been sometime in grade school, and, apparently, at a point where I was still the type of kid to play outside. It was a sunny day, though not especially beautiful. We were at my aunt and uncle's house, probably for our weekly Star Trek night where we would get together at each other's houses and watch the latest episode a week early than the rest of Anchorage (my uncle knew a guy at the TV station).

I'll admit, I didn't really care much for Star Trek then. I didn't understand it very well, and being that it came on TV so late, I rarely made it through an entire episode without falling asleep on my aunt and uncle's couch.

But it was usually a fun occasion. We would have some huge amount of food for me to gorge myself on before and after dinner. My aunt and uncle had a nigh-retarded Cocker spaniel, a hyper-active Rottweiler, and a spiteful, hateful, malicious cat, which I liked to play with on occasion. My uncle also had a cool computer and a Super Nintendo. And their house had a small backyard, which, when the animals were being surly/difficult, the computer was being used, or the TV was being watched, I would go outside and play in.

The backyard had that weird, unhealthy looking seeded grass that came with the rest of the new construction in the neighborhood. I was instructed not to "hurt" the grass by digging in with my shoes. I was also instructed not to go into trees behind the house. Which, by process of elimination, meant that I really didn't have anywhere to go. They could tell by my footprints I'd been in the grass, but they couldn't tell if I was in the trees, and so I choose the path of deniability.

Within a minute I found why they didn't want me poking around in the trees. Being a relatively new house in a new neighborhood, the construction crews, most likely short on time and with little foresight regarding children playing in backyards, left behind whatever construction trash they weren't legally bound to haul away. Laying at the base of a tree was a wicked-looking rusted circular saw blade. Which, being a child, and male, I thought was a fantastic find.

I don't remember exactly after that. I know at some point my parents saw what I had found, saw me playing with it, and instructed me to immediately drop it. I don't remember if I was in trouble or not. Probably so, as I wasn't supposed to be in the trees, but then again, it wasn't my fault somebody left a monstrous ninja-star just laying around for some kid to find it.

Everyone has a story like this. Something inane at the edge of your memory, worming its way back in after years for no great reason at all. It was this memory I was thinking about when my grandmother was showing me photos of my ancestors. Folks, related to me by some bloodline, who all led hard, interesting lives, but folks who remain unknown to me altogether save their names and fading, stoic pictures. My grandmother was relating her latest efforts and discoveries in our family's genealogy, with these new pictures coming from a distant and genealogical-minded relative.

Looking at these vaguely familiar-looking faces, I couldn't help but worry. It worries me that, in the end, we all lose our visibility. That is to say, the ability for someone to see us for who we are, what we are, or possibly were. I live in a world where, with a few minutes of effort (second or third page in on Google), one could find my collected works of writing online, along with photographs taken of and taken by me. My life, or at least parts of it, are documented, recorded, and at some points, provided analysis for and commented upon. Given hours worth of work, or even weeks, you could reconstruct my daily life through IM logs, cell phone calls, etc. Break into my computer and you would find my correspondence with near everyone I know for a good number of years.

I live in a world of high visibility. So, when I see a photograph of a person whom even with endless effort may well be forgotten for all time, it strikes me as tragic. It strikes me with the realization that no matter what we do to archive our lives as we live them, we, our living selves, are the only true sources for the kind of visibility I think would be necessary to know who a person is or was.

Some years from now, a genealogist, potentially my ancestor, will come across my name. They may find that I am a son, a brother, and so far an uncle. They will find that I was born on the last day in July, 1985. Someone alive may be able to tell them what I did for a living. Tell them where I lived, where I went to school, maybe show them a picture of me when I was young. And, pending a lot of things, will know the other date that is inevitably important to a genealogist.

This memory, admittedly, is not terribly important. It could just as easily have been a dream, or something I made up, fiction for which to pad this article with. Were I a greater writer, I may have been able to come up with something better, but alas, dear readers, you get to hear about an anti-climax regarding saw blades. What's important is that I am the only person who has this story to tell, and any of my stories like it. And that, unless I write them or somehow otherwise record them, even if I remember them, nobody else will.  And thus, I unapologetically submit my memory to the Internet, adding only further to the noise of humanity.

Maybe it will serve as better filler than the hyphen in "Josh Rhoades : 1985 - 20XX."