I’ve been mulling superpowers this evening. Not in the geopolitical sense: merely the skillset that you wish you had and actually haven’t. MsDD has been off school today with a tummy bug and we have just whiled away a few minutes in deep discussion.
MsDD suggests that complete control of the space/time continuum would be quite cool. Personally I think that’s a little non-specific and over-ambitious. Maybe just wear a watch and check that you have everything you need before you leave the house.
Omniscience would be an intolerable burden, I feel. Imagine knowing everything all at the same time: the stress of that knowledge would be unbelievable and probably enough to push you over the edge.
I can’t see the point of an ability to shapeshift, either. Yes, you’d no longer have to contend with a #lowboredomthreshold but if you had made yourself into, say, a monkey, you’d constantly be wondering what it was like to be a bird or a suitcase or a blob of mercury. It seems to me like a recipe for complete discontentment.
There would be no point in invisibility either, I think, because you’d be able to hear what people were saying about you behind your back and then be unable to divulge your immaculate source. And teleportation is a no-no, at least for the time being. Imagine if it went wrong which, inevitably, it would and you’d end up in Crewe with an ear in the place of your elbow and an eye where your left buttock should be. The view from down there might be interesting, though.
And I can’t really see the point of being Spiderman unless you pledge to fight crime with every sinew. What would be the point in normal life, except, say, I could fire a restraining silken web out of my hand at the first sign of Raffles doing a runner.
The thing with such a high degree of development is the responsibility that would go with it and I don’t think l’m really up to coping with that. You’d have to be ready to administer numerous complaints fairly and in a balanced and open-minded way and there would be endless calls on your mental and physical energies.
No, my superpowers would be more mundane and readily available to a few human beings I know, rather than gods on Mount Olympus. I would love
a) Perfect pitch. Imagine being able to sightsing anything, or know that you were always in tune or, when not, exactly what needed correcting. For a singer, especially, that would be great.
b) A photographic memory. Imagine how easy that would make the whole exam thing.
c) The ability to sleep anywhere. My husband can, and does, fall asleep anywhere. Standing up on a pin. That’s a standing joke in our family but it’s a bitter one. I am a light sleeper and as soon as I wake up my mind starts humming and I so resent those people, like the OH, who seem to be able to withdraw so totally from life and enjoy the repose of ten thousand innocent and gentle things.
Those are my eminently doable but still longed-for superpowers. What would yours be?
Photo by andertoons
Your choices are fab! Mine’d probably be the ability to identify (and mimic) all accents (and ideally to be fluent in any language I wanted).
Actually what would be really cool would be having the ability to be able to mentally do a kind of real-life photoshop. Say you’re in your bedroom and you want it to feel just a little bit magical, you could put a little white fluffy cloud floating in the centre of the room, and have the bright blue tint and rippling effect on your walls like being underwater. Being able to add new crispy golden leaves to the brown trampled mush on the pavement. Putting an enormous oak tree in the garden to read under and then deleting it once you’re done. Getting rid of the newspapers and empty coffee cups and sweets wrappers in train carriages. Making the sky the exact shade you’d like it to be. No self-edits like better skin, smaller waist etc because that way madness lies, and I think no gains like ‘picturing’ more money, or fancy presents for others; just sensory/aesthetic changes to make a moment more beautiful or magical for a little time.
Liking your thinking Cara. Liking it a lot. Although there are times when I look in the mirror and wish for an “Enhance” app.
Perfect pitch can be an intolerable burden for those that have it. My daughter can hear the pitch of any note or sound and can even tell you what combination of notes (to a double flat or double sharp) any given sound is comprised of. All sound is tremendously intrusive and distracting for her and notes that are even fractional off pitch are painful to her ear. More than once I have had to get our piano tuner back because she objected to just one note!
I have a near photographic memory and yes it does help with the whole exam thing but it is a very temporary transient form of learning and not useful long term.
The ability to sleep anywhere…I can sleep anywhere and often do. I just can’t do it for very long; not even in bed. So if the ability to sleep can be considered a superpower I’d plump for that.
But actually the superpower I would really like is the ability to forgive and forget, to let things go; that would be really useful but it would need to be combined with the capacity to love otherwise the temptation to use my superpower passive aggressively would be too strong!
So Sleep and Love: my would-be superpowers.
I know what you mean, Sarah, about the torment of hearing things off key. I now have a sufficiently trained ear to judge when a piano is out of tune or, more commonly, when someone else is off and it really grates for me when, especially in modern (popular) music, there seems to be no appreciation of key or harmony. I modern classical music it’s called innovative our experimental. I can more or less hear when I’ve gone off too but it would be good to be able to pre-empt that!
As for sleep and love: you probably have those already, don’t you?
I blogged about this some time ago and after much thought I decided that i would choose the ability to travel anywhere….anytime…in an instant. No car journeys or endless queuing at airports ….No more hours of SITTING ….unless I absolutely wanted to, of course. ….A romantic trip on the Orient Express or something similar, would still be acceptable.
I thought that it would simplify my life as my family and friends are so ‘far-flung’.
After more thought I think I would still choose this ‘Instant Travel’ Super-Power.