In The Big Inning...

I've subscribed (or, maybe, made up) to the philosophy that everyone has a superpower, just that usually the power is virtually useless. Generally, I've found that if you pin someone down and poke them enough with a pencil, eventually they'll figure out what theirs is. Of course, maybe I should stop the poking, because it might coerce them into making something up. Nevertheless, the powers I've witness have genuinely been impressive. Mostly because of how they're usually always present, and quite consistent, but still rather useless.

My own superpower is the ability to have subway doors stop directly in front of me. This is actually moderately useful, mostly when I'm fleeing the authorities and run into a subway station, just as the train is arriving, and I save myself a few extra steps. Admittedly, this doesn't happen more than once or twice a week. A strange caveat to this is that I need to get accustomed to a particular city's transit system before the power kicks in. If, for instance, I were to go to Chicago, it would take a while before the doors would stop in front of me, but eventually, they'd come around. It's usually quicker if I go to a city that I've been to before (say, Boston). I guess the subway's more attuned to my door-attracting frequency. Actually, having the doors stop directly in front of you isn't optimally useful, as if the subway is full of people exiting, then you have to most out of the way. I'd prefer a slight offset so I'm standing right next to the doors, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

I've posed this question to my friends before, and, after a long bout of pencil-poking, they usually discover their own powers. Sadly, some of them are even less useful than mine - some, even, negatively useful. One of my friends has the ability to never be able to tell the age of a woman accurately just by looking at her. I guess this is really an "inability", but I'm sure we could construct some absurd situation in which this non-skill would be useful. Well, I'm not so sure of that, now that I think about it. Another friend has the ability to always miss the bus by less than 10 seconds. Once again, not that useful, unless you're the guy that just barely missed the bus in the movie Speed. Then, you'd be thankful for that power. Yet another friend is able to always time his arrival at the microwave with the instant that the food completes cooking. You'd think this was useful, but in fact, it results in a lot of burned fingers and tongues, so I'm told.

As it turns out, some people do have useful powers, but they're my grandparents, which implies to me that these powers only get stronger with age. My Grandma Judy is actually able to control the weather. However, she lives in LA, so she rarely needs to do so. Maybe that's why it's nice there all the time. My late Grandpa Barry had one of the most useful powers I've ever seen - he was able to find parking spaces at will. This power has only gotten stronger in death - he has now become the god of parking. If I'm circling and I'm really desperate, I can summon his power by thinking about him really hard and asking for his assistance. It may take a while, but it rarely fails.

So, I ask you, the three of you that actually bother to post comments, what are your superpowers? I'm sharpening my pencils right this minute...