People like to think of themselves as observant and attuned to the universe, but in reality, most of us are driving down this road of life on autopilot. The brain gets tired and it focuses on just the things it needs to survive. that’s why no one is noticing your new haircut. They don’t need to.
But still, one would hope when there’s a huge change or weird anomaly, someone will notice. This thread started on r/AskReddit by u/Riryiskool makes it seem like no one would even notice if aliens landed. They asked the Reddit crowd,
“What was your ‘How didn’t they notice?’ moment?”
A strange question, but the answers were even stranger. A lot of folks admitted that they were the ones who didn’t notice stuff. Some didn’t have an excuse, some thought it was likely just a habit of the mind, filling in the blanks and erasing convenient truths rather than notice something new. Whatever the reason, these responses will make you wonder what you’re not noticing in your own life. Look around. It’s cray out there.
1.
I was playing hide and seek at a friend’s with her younger nieces. I was a teenager and not super committed to playing games with a couple of eight year olds, and as a joke I put myself in a corner between a wall and a bookshelf, picked up a pillow off the bed, and held it in front of my face. I was immediately visible once you cleared the doorway – I’m not a small person, and from the chest down I was just a person standing, completely unobstructed.
The kids came through, looked right at me, and kept searching with growing confusion. The friend, my age, came in behind them thinking I’d gotten somewhere in the closet, and I had to actually wave to catch her attention. Her dad even came through to join the hunt, and I had to actually clear my throat to get him to notice me. Nobody was able to spot me on their own. I was just standing in plain sight holding a pillow in front of my face, but nobody noticed.
Once everybody figured it out they were in hysterics – no one believed I’d been just standing there the entire time, they were certain that I had been hiding elsewhere in the house and then got caught after I’d moved. Nope. Y’all just can’t see! —healthycopingmech
2.
One day my sister mentioned in front of my dad that she’d been helping me rearrange furniture at my house. Mentions my boyfriend. My dad is all surprised: “you and your boyfriend sleep in the same room?!”
…by that point, we’d been living together for six years. It was my bf’s house. My parents had been over DOZENS of times. Where did they think I slept?
“Oh, we assumed you slept in the guest room. By yourself.” —AdditionalAlias
3.
Dads are weird af, when my brother was 17 he wanted to get his ear pierced, so he asked my mum, she said ask dad, so he asked my dad and dad said yes, so my bro got his ear pierced. FIVE YEARS LATER, my dad stops my brother and asks him ‘what the fuck is this’ while pointing towards his earring, my brother, my mum and myself just start laughing, he then gets pissed cause we’re laughing, and he asks why the fuck we’re laughing, and why wasn’t he informed about my brothers earring, we told him that he’s the one who said he could get it. Then he just said ‘oh,’ and that’s it.
My mans gave the green light and he forgot, then noticed five years later despite my brother wearing earring everyday for those five years.—sakee31
4.
I went for a job interview when I was six months pregnant. I wore a fitted pencil skirt and a fitted short blazer over the top. To my eyes the pregnancy was obvious, I was very slim and I had a belly that poked out at the front, well defined by the fitted outfit I wore. They didn’t ask anything about it during the interview so I assumed they were okay with it and didn’t volunteer it. Got the job and on the first day, at orientation, I got introduced to two other women who had been hired the same day for other roles in the admin office I was in (one was accounting assistant, one was admin co-ordinator, and I was admin assistant/receptionist). The two other women were also pregnant (one looked enormously so) and as it turned out we were all due within the same week. The woman who hired us said to me happily that they were very excited to have us all start, and I would be getting trained by the new admin co-ordinator so I could take over some of her responsibilities when she went on maternity leave.
I had to tell them that I was also very pregnant as well and would be needing to go on leave at the same time as the other two girls. The organisation was stunned and didn’t know what on they were going to do when we all went on leave. Fortunately they were very comfortable with me coming back to work and bring my baby with me after two months off. It worked out great and I stayed working there for around eight years. Incidentally all three of us gave birth within a day of each other hahaha. —Trin20k
5.
When I was about 13 I shaved my little brother’s eyebrow off. I don’t know why. I panicked and drew it back on with a marker with little hope that I would get away with it and avoid my mom’s anger. Somehow I got through the first day, then the first week, every day getting ready for school and re-drawing his eyebrow on with a marker to hide it from my mom. After a couple weeks it had largely grown back and I realized that by some miracle I got away with it. Years later I came clean to my mom and she still refuses to believe that she didn’t notice. —tj_w
6.
We had a friend who had his hair mid-back length, until he cut it short and dyed it neon green overnight. He more or less went invisible for a week because everyone kept looking for the old hair, you literally had people asking where he was while he was standing in front of them. —360nohonk
7.
My friend came to work wearing new glasses one day and when she was showing them off to me I mentioned that I was surprised because I had no idea she needed glasses.
She had been wearing glasses most days (on and off) for a YEAR since we started working together. Multiple people confirmed this when I didn’t quite believe her.
Maybe I need glasses. :v —Assrocket33r
8.
I was the one who didn’t notice. My now-husband, way back in the early days of our dating, replaced our giant, bulky, old CRT TV with a nice, new flat screen with his Christmas bonus. He did not tell me any of this. I came home from work one day, wandered past the tv and him playing video games, into the bedroom, back past the tv, then the kitchen. Took me a good 45 minutes before I went ” wait something is different and I don’t know what”. He still had to point out to me that what was different was the old TV was missing! —sunshineandcloudyday
9.
My sister got chewing gum stuck in her hair and I had to cut it out. It left her with a pretty big bald patch right on the top of her head. We couldn’t tell Mom because she’d banned us from chewing gum (in case it got stuck in our hair). So every morning we styled her hair into a pony tail and carefully covered the patch. Which then started growing in stubbornly sticking up like a unicorn horn and we had to keep flattening it. It was agggges until it finally blended in with her normal hair. Mom never noticed. —JustJenR
10.
I was buying weed a few years ago. I pulled up to an apartment complex and was waiting for the weed dude when a window in the apartment in front of me opened. A second later a little girl(maybe 10-12) crawled out. I was 21 so and buying weed so my thought was, do I yell up, no she could fall, catch her nope there’s bushes under there. Then she fucking jumped to the balcony next to the window, climbs over the railing, and tries to open the door, but she’s locked out. She knocked and some irresponsible/seemingly confused parent opens it and lets her in! No one else saw! —843OG