My Superpowers

[tesla]

Here are my known superpowers to date, in no particular order. Some are cool; some are lame:

• Seeing blond where it doesn't really exist


• The ability to sleep anywhere, under any circumstances


• A surprisingly good (although not 100% accurate) internal clock


• Catherding, literal and figurative (I can also say my name in Kitten)

What are yours?

How do you define "superpowers" for the sake of this conversation?
I'm defining my "superpowers" as skills, useful or useless, that I'm better at than anyone else, as far as I know.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

My superpower will not be posted to the Internet, but I am really good at it.

K.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

the ability to sing along with any song i've heard a verse and a half of.

hm. i know i recently discovered another one. but i am forgetting what it is.

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a cool one. That would be useful.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I got one of them, but I made one up a couple of years ago when someone was soliciting 21st Century Super Powers: the math-prodigy ability to factor enormous numbers into prime factors mentally. I thought it had legs as a maguffin, but it doesn't seem to have caught on.

[soarhead.livejournal.com]

I also have an accurate internal clock. I pretty much know what time it is without reference to clocks. This does not prevent me from occasionally looking at my phone to verify the time. Its sort of a fetish I have. Strangely, it also allows me to not need things like wakeup calls as I just wake up when its 'time', even when I'm in the wrong time zone.

What does 'seeing blond' mean in practical terms?

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

Just that I seem to classify huge swaths of the population as "blond" whom other people would see as being - well, "not blond," I guess. Brown-haired.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Perhaps dishwater blond looks lighter to you than to others. I have called that mousy non-color "hair-colored hair". I guess people who start out with very light hair pretty often end up as dishwater blond as they get older. I wonder why that happens.

K.

[arkuat]

I thought about this one good and hard, and then wondered about minnehaha's comment, and realized that I'm not sure I actually want to know what my superpowers are. How I continue through life without having any idea what it is that I'm better at than anyone else... oh, wait. Perhaps doing that is my superpower? Nah. Couldn't be.

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I'm not sure it's possible to sit down and think hard about the question and come up with them. Mine seem to be things that I never really realize about myself until some odd circumstance brings them into focus.

For example:

guppiecat and I were sitting at a restaurant on the West Bank. We'd been there for over an hour, but I wasn't really thinking about it. All of a sudden I became aware that I had to check the parking meter right now. When I got to the the car I discovered that there were only 2 minutes left on the meter. On its own, that would be odd but unremarkable. But I have similar experiences several time each week at work; I don't bother carrying a clock because the alarm in my head goes off 4 minutes before a meeting is scheduled to start. I don't set a timer when I bake cookies.

I really thought nothing of it - thought everyone did this - until a coworker pointed out what a handy skill it was and how he wished he had it. Obviously I'm not unique - look at soarhead's comments above - but I understand it's not common, either.

Also, apparently out of sheer perversity, it doesn't always work. Occasionally I burn the cookies.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I have the uncanny ability to spell "supersede" correctly.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I haven't tallied mine yet, but I know they include:

* finding mutant clovers (four-, five-, six- and even seven-leafed).

* making (sometimes useful and interesting) stuff out of whatever's handy.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

bonzlizard also has the clover superpower, I am told.

K.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Aha! I knew there was a reason I liked her so much. )

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

And that is such a difficult one to explain, since it requires actual control over the physical world. I'd like to see you exercise it someday. Maybe at the Minnstf picnic you and bonzlizard could have Clover-Off.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Since it relies on serenpidity as well as perceptivity, I'm not sure anything so organized would work.

[guppiecat]

The super powers I can think of without putting too much effort into it:

* Organization - I tend to be better organized than most, to the point where I can count on one hand everything I have lost/misplaced, and I know exactly where I was when I did it.

* Throwing away other people's stuff - This sorta goes with organization, and is a skill I only rarely practice (luckily).

* If the definition of "anyone else" extends to "anyone else I know", then I would have to add vegetable carving and fruit arrangement to the list. This, however, is clearly a low level power, as I have seen photos of people much more skilled than I.

Now, if you throw out the definition, I have the following silly forms of classic super powers:

* Telekinesis - I can move things with my mind, if they are sufficiently light, not fixed in place, and within arm's reach.

* Telepathy - I can read people's minds with around a 60% accuracy, if I know them well and they're not trying to hide anything from me.

* Flight - I can fly up to a height of about 2.5 feet for extremely limited times and distances.

* Strength - I have the proportionate strength of someone my height and weight.

* Invisibility - I have the ability to not be seen, if all observers have their eyes closed.

* Time Travel - Sadly, my speed is limited to one second per second.

[arkuat]

I'm hypersensitive to misuse of the word "comprise", and can accurately correct the situation? But that's a superpower I share with many other people. Just not most other people.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Let us get our ninja gear and strike at the next person who says or writes, "comprised of."

K.

[shadowflyer.livejournal.com]

YES! Ninja Editor says: Kill that sentence and leave NO witnesses!

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Mine is the ability to glance at a page of text and see only the misspelled words. This ability seems to be quite rare in the general population, but given the nature of LJ cohorts there are probably at least a couple of other people reading this post that have the same power.

It's not the most useful skill in the world. In fact, it's more of a curse than a blessing. Of course, that's probably true of some of the more conventional comic book super powers too. Telepathy, for instance.

[cloudscudding.livejournal.com]

Heh heh heh.

Um, the ability to appear blonde even though I'm not?

The ability to wake up without an alarm before any important appointment. Note: sometimes this is annoying because I will wake up an hour earlier than strictly necessary.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

I am unsure, today, what my superpower(s) is/are. But happy birthday! And it was very enjoyable talking with you over dinner last week.

[a-pollard.livejournal.com]

I have great ability to act indifferently towards peoples birthdays and not with them happy ones on time....

That being said, "Happy Birthday".