So I’ve been walking through Solihull’s Mell Square and abruptly notice that I’m on a street where my mom once worked in a pub. I’m trying to work out where the pub was, since everything’s changed and what I think is the right place is now a tea and cake shop.<\/p>\n
There’s also a McDonald’s where I once sat with an extremely nervous stomach because I was an hour early for my first day writing for McDonnell Douglas. That hasn’t changed, but it doesn’t have the stopping power that the memory of my mother does.<\/p>\n
But still, the whole street was familiar enough that I really did come to an actual stop. I like to think that I’m aware enough of my surroundings that I never just halt, I never make people behind me have to dodge around to the side. This time I did, this time the realisation of where I was halted me.<\/p>\n
Only, I also then realised that nobody noticed. It’s not like I think anyone should, but you know if you stand still in a shopping area you’re going to get approached by sales people or fundraisers. And there were plenty of them around, they just entirely ignored me.<\/p>\n
When you’re even ignored by religious groups with megaphones in their hand and no possible chance of luck in their day, something has happened. You’ve crossed a line somewhere.<\/p>\n
You’ve become a woman over 30.<\/p>\n
Speaking of women, a teenage one just tried to walk straight through me. Now it was my turn to dodge but she didn’t notice and somehow that seemed even stranger. I truly do not expect to be noticed but I’m a man, she’s a woman and while this should not be true, it is: women have to have built-in threat assessment skills. Hopefully she does, and of course it’s good that she recognised I’m not a problem, but out of the 1 to 5 DEFCON ratings available, she put me somewhere around the same level as a glass door.<\/p>\n
I can’t be unhappy about that, but I am. I can’t be unhappy that sales assistants ignore me when I walk into stores now. I don’t know whether I am.<\/p>\n
Although maybe I exude something, maybe the religious groups can detect an atheist at a hundred paces. And maybe Apple Store staff eyeballed me instantaneously because they could smell a potential sale.<\/p>\n
But, actually, give them credit twice over. Not only did they not ignore me, but the staff member I asked about keyboards for iPads, got out her phone and showed me the Amazon listing for the non-Apple one she’d bought herself.<\/p>\n
On and off, I may have spent an hour with her as I tried out some things and she got different experts over to help me. In the two main cases, those experts eventually figured out that the reason I couldn’t do something was that the iPad didn’t do it.<\/p>\n
I’d feel good about that. I like a tiny, tiny reputation I have in very, very small circles about being able to find the limits of things being tested. And here I was, immediately pushing at the edges of what the Final Cut Pro video editing app and the Logic Pro audio editing app can do.<\/p>\n
Except it really was about an hour I spent there. I found out every detail about the main woman’s university course that it was conversationally polite to find out. I asked her technical questions that I think she enjoyed answering — and seemed to clearly enjoy that I genuinely didn’t know and so was paying full attention.<\/p>\n
Only, at the end of the hour, I shook her hand and I vow to you she had not thin clue who in the hell I was.<\/p>\n
I should’ve nicked an iPad and seen what happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So I’ve been walking through Solihull’s Mell Square and abruptly notice that I’m on a street where my mom once … Continue reading