Maybe Waldo doesn't want to be found.

He tries so hard to blend in, besides identifying his striped shirt and his thick black rimmed glasses really doesn't mean that he's been "found", in the deeper sense of the word. And once you point him out haven't you ever found yourself thinking, "Who is he anyway?" Lucky are the sea of forgettable faces that surround him who can continue to lead their lives safe from your prying eyes.

Anonymity. Normally, the term is negatively connected to notions of lacking individuality, unique character, or distinction. And although that dictionary definition is ordinarily valid, let's look at it from another perspective: everyday we are called into being something or someone, by competing environments and the ideologies that we accept as natural.

This idea is demonstrated by something as simple as our name. When someone says it, whether over the telephone or shouting it across a busy street to get our attention, everything attached to that name (positive, negative or indifferent) by the person calling it, is thrust upon you. When or if you answer, you take it all on, absorb everything it means or take the opportunity to redefine it for that person by the way you carry out that interaction. Even in trying to rectify the perception of others we accept that there is a fixed identity that needs to be refuted or replaced by another. So what if you stopped responding? Who would you be?

Do we really want to connect? All we do is bond by sound wave, pixels, profiles, text messages and e-mails. It seems we don't want to match the digital to the real. We go to great lengths to avoid conversation by pretending not to recognize people we know all the time. Even the call display on our telephones simply mediate how you'll answer or if you'll answer. Because do you really ever need to know who is calling?

Toronto, a city of 2.5 million people, has a wonderful ability to cloak you, give you space, allow you to reinvent yourself everyday. You don't have to move to another town to start over. You don't have to fly halfway across the world to see a face that isn't separated from you by six degrees or less.

So the next time someone calls you Susan when your birth certificate clearly says Sharon or you answer a phone call that is for the wrong number or you meet John or Jane Doe, be glad that clean slates still exist.

My tongue still gets twisted whenever I try to say the word. Anonymity. Exactly.

Learn more about this author, Sabrina Wright.
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