One of the games I love playing with little ones is hide and seek. Not that I enjoy looking underneath every bed in the house for my giggling grandchildren but because of how they believes they’re invisible when they’re standing in the middle of the room or behind the curtain with their sneakers plainly visible.

And so it is with people in their cars. We think when we’re in our vehicles, nobody can see what we’re doing. That might be true if our windows are tinted midnight black with a reflective coating Superman couldn’t see through, but not all of us have that luxury.

Most of us are quite open to the world in our cars, but we forget that from time to time. Like I did the other day.

It was one of the fresh fall afternoons when the air was crisp and the mercury had dipped below scorching. I rolled the windows down and enjoyed a cool breeze on the way home from the grocery store.

No car ride with the windows down is complete without music blaring, I thought, so I slipped in a familiar Barbra Streisand CD.

All the lyrics came back and I started humming along. But then, I couldn’t resist and I found myself singing along. Pretty soon, I was belting out the songs, word for word with the diva, not a care in the world as I drove down the highway.

Was I off key?

Oh yeah.

Did I care?

Not in the least.

Because for those few minutes, I felt free and young and talented and totally uninhibited.

Until I stopped at a red light and noticed a car next to me. Immediately I shut my mouth and pretended I didn’t notice the driver giving me a funny look. To cover up, I started talking to myself.

Now 20 years ago, that would’ve gotten me an even stranger look, but with hands-free cell phones, I looked totally normal having a pretend conversation when there wasn’t anybody in the car with me.

The driver next to me didn’t have to know I was covering up the fact that I was pretending I was standing on a stage, belting out pitch-perfect songs to a packed audience.

I kept on pretending like I was talking – really singing the chorus quietly to myself – and I’d glance over every few seconds to see if he was noticing anything.

He could’ve cared less about me because he had his own show going on. First he took a few selfies, complete with Elvis Presley lip curls and a cavalier raised eyebrow.

And then he did something that made his opinion totally worthless – he started looking up his nostrils in his rear-view mirror and, believing he’d found something, went on an exploratory mission to find it.

And I thought singing in my car was a little off.

But people do all kinds of crazy things in their car, thinking nobody can see what they’re doing. They pluck their eyebrows, floss their teeth, and cram handfuls of popcorn, Fritos, Cheetos, and Doritos in their mouths while sitting in traffic.

I’ve seen women put on mascara and eyeshadow while waiting for the light to turn green, and men shaving in their cars – yes shaving – when waiting in traffic.

Once, while driving on Highway 59, I saw someone reading the newspaper and another driver – who came whizzing by me – with a paperback book propped up in the middle of the steering wheel.

I suppose they thought nobody could see what they were doing in their vehicles. They, like my little grandchildren, were invisible to the world.

But it’s a free country, and an imagination is a wonderful asset. Especially when you’re behind the microphone, er, I mean the steering wheel.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.