Blogfest 2009

I know exactly what superpower I would pick. It’s actually a riff on a talent I already have—and that is the power of TIME. Meaning, I almost always know what time it is, within a minute or two. It’s not the fanciest of talents, but it comes in handy. However! If I was a superhero and my power was time, I would wear a cute little outfit with a cape and a fancy diamond encrusted watch. The power would entail me stopping time, speeding up time, and slowing down time. So if somebody was falling out of a building, or there was a nuclear bomb about to launch over New York City, I could stop time and figure out how to keep those things from happening. I would also be able to do time travel, which has always been a dream of mine. I would pop into the 20s and go to a speakeasy and dance all night. Or I would go to the 60s and wear my hair in a high ponytail and go to the soda fountain and listen to The Shirelles. I would also probably pop in at a civil rights rally, see The Beatles in concert, and go to one of those bungalow colonies like in Dirty Dancing. Pretty groovy superpower, right?

Well, I’m sort of trapped here because I can’t choose between two.  I would like to be both 1) endowed with super strength and 2) a healer.  It might seem that these serve two completely different purposes, but they’re connected in a way.

The strength part is so that I would never again feel intimidated by anyone or anything.  As it is, I’m a wimp.  I’m not a black belt in karate, I don’t know tae kwon do, oki doki, or deja fu, I’m strongly pro-gun control (and I certainly can’t shoot), and I know I would forget everything I’ve learned in self-defense lessons if an angry lion was trying to climb inside my window (don’t laugh; I saw the video of this happening!).  But if I had super-strength, I wouldn’t be afraid to walk the streets of San Francisco at night.  I would run around, saving the weak and innocent from the strong and evil, and I would also ensure that the villains weren’t killed, just held for trial.

But then I would also want to heal anyone who’d been wounded, even using my life force if necessary.  I can’t think of anything sweeter than that: to heal the good guys, while the bad guys sit around trussed up at my feet like Thanksgiving turkeys.  Put it this way: if I could prevent injury to innocent people, I’d give up my healing power in order to save the innocent with super strength.  If I couldn’t stop violence or accidents from harming people, I’d give up anything to be a healer, and I’d cure as many people as possible.  I could even go from hospital to hospital, curing patients.  Yes, I think healing wins out over strength in the end.

Invisibility, hands down! I went through this period in my life where I wanted to be a spy, and can you imagine how invisibility would come in handy to a spy? Eavesdropping, making a quick escape, avoiding rabid salespeople at the mall…It’s like the ultimate camouflage.

For years, I’ve been answering this question (which comes up more than one might think) with “teleportation,” because when I was a teenager, nothing upset me more than the fact that so many of my friends – specifically the friends I felt understood the Real Me – lived so far away. (And by “so far away” I mostly mean, just over the state line in New Jersey, but – not to sound like a crotchety old lady – this was the mid-90s and so before email and cheap long-distance. I was allowed twenty minutes per month of long distance, and I remember I made a chart for my bedroom wall where I could allot specific minute counts to various friends.)

At the time, I saw this as the great tragedy of my life. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth every time I thought about the injustice that all those should-be-lifelong friendships that would probably fade away within a year. (As most of them did.)

I quickly decided I needed either a private jet or a super power. But it suddenly occurs to me that these days, most of my friends live within a couple miles, and the ones that don’t are always available by phone. Or email. Or text. Or Facebook. Or Twitter. Or…you get the idea.  While I’ll admit that teleportation could still come in handy when I have a craving for a day in the Caribbean followed by dinner on the Italian Riviera, maybe that’s thinking too small. Maybe I should finally reconsider this super power thing.

Fortunately for me I watch super-power-filled Heroes and The 4400, so I’ve got plenty to choose from. (Ignoring the fact that most of those characters are miserable and always whining about how they’d rather be normal.) It’s a tough call, but I have to go with invisibility. That way I could satisfy my curiosity and find out what people are saying when I’m  not in the room (almost as good as telepathy) – and, if I got really desperate for that Caribbean vacation, invisibility could come in handy for sneaking aboard a private jet.

If I could have any superpower, I would want to ability to get inside any living thing and inhabit their body and their life at will, at any moment…with all the skill sets they possess. I would want to be able to feel someone’s life to the core and really inhabit their being for a moment or a while, and take that insight back into my own life.