The invisible age

I have now reached an age when people consider me insignificant. I am a single, elderly woman. I have no importance in their minds and my existence pulls no weight in the greater picture. Therefore they do not take my opinions or my needs seriously; my presence has no impact and my sanctity as a human being is ignored. I realized this to my unending dismay in that horrible court case where both the Richard Romanski and Renee believed it was perfectly all right to deny me my rights and ignore my written proof because I did not matter. I carried no weight in their world. I was not blonde, Christian and ethnically desirable.
I saw this again at Our Little Theater last weekend. I had gone there to do a set and one of the comedians didn't recognize me. He saw an elderly woman sitting in a small comedy club and could not figure out why I was there. I was not what he considered a typical audience. I should have been home baby-sitting the grandchilren or sleeping in front of a television set. So he turned to me with the kind of smile you give to deaf,incompetent invalids and he said, "And what brings you out tonight?" Of course I should have said something like "I like to hear dick jokes," but I didn't.
Instead I accepted that to him my presence, my laughter, my currency as an audience member did not exist. This happened again at Harvey's when one comedian could not believe that I was actually laughing at his jokes. Why was I "getting" them? They weren't about me.
You do not have to be old to become invisible. Sadly, society does this to black people, poor people if they "look" it, children and anyone who has a poor command of the language.
Perhaps our appearance (and this is how we are being judged) is a shorthand to give us a reading of a person, but this reaction is far more than that. It is a flagrant denial of another human being's status in society The viewer is putting himself on a superior level. HE belongs. HE matters. HIS wants are rights. The lesser people, those he considers beneath him need not be protected and their personas deserve no respect.
No wonder our children are turning to drugs; our elderly want to die rather than appear old. We have taken away their right to be themselves at any age. Yet it is each unique self that is the contribution we need to make it a richer world. What a sad loss for us as a society and what a horrible wounding blow to those who become invisible.