While talking to a fellow blogging friend earlier about the dearth of bloggable things happening in my life at the moment (not the best situation to find yourself in during a month when you’re supposed to be posting every day), she suggested the title of this post…
“If you could have a superpower, what would you choose?”
Given that nothing remarkable happened during the remainder of my journey home apart from noticing a rather swarthy man leaving the train station in front of me replete in a black leather jacket, designer stubble, and lovely white Crocks, I’m persevering with the Superhero idea.
So… which superpower would I choose?
I resisted thinking about it for long, almost in fear of appearing to be a complete and utter geek, but given that everybody I know has already put me firmly in the “geek” box, locked it, and thrown away the key, I guess I should just surrender and get on with the rest of this post (the post you thought you would be reading before I started rambling on about my existential crisis).
The truth is, I can’t decide on a super power. No matter which one I come up with, I find often lethal downsides to it.
Flight
Sounds great on paper. You can zoom around the sky like a super idiot. Only problem is how you learn to do it without killing yourself - unless you have the Superman style “dense molecular structure”, you’re going to splat yourself against the nearest telegraph pole, multi-story building, or freeway sign.
Strength
If you have no limit to your strength, how exactly do you calibrate that? Do you get super touch sensitivity too? Because without it, your life’s going to be pretty miserable. You wouldn’t be able to hug your better half, because you might break every bone in her body. How much cutlery would you accidentally bend to pieces while cutting food? How many door frames would you rip out while closing doors?
X-Ray Vision
I’m sorry, but admit it - if any normal person was given X-Ray vision, they’re going to start looking through the clothes of anybody remotely hot standing nearby. The Yoda speech from Star Wars comes into play - something along the lines of “x-ray vision leads to perversion, perversion leads to stalking, stalking leads to being caught, and being caught leads to suffering”…
Speed
Ever noticed that they never show the places where fast super heros started out from, and stopped? Or anybody they met along the way? Imagine the ripples in the tarmac, or the piles of earth where you screeched to a halt - this is simple physics after all. If anybody got in your way while going fast, you’re going to pretty much kill yourself and them if you hit them. We’ve all walked along behind women and old people in the high street - we all know you can’t predict which direction they might walk next. Carnage…
Time Travel
Quite apart from all the problems surrounding paradoxes, and contravening the conservation of mass laws (which “The Time Travellers Wife” did with gay abandon), Time travel would just lead to the hero either revisiting past wrongs, or laying bets on anything and everything. I guess it might be fun to orchestrate the perfect robbery though, as Bill Murray did in Groundhog Day…
Give me some ideas… which superpower would you choose, and why ?