This week’s weblog tour question is something to the effect of, if you could be a superhero, what would you choose as your superpower? As usual, you’re invited to answer for yourself in the comment box.
I’ve thought about this for a little while now, and although I said two weblog tours ago that I always wanted to be the Phoenix, that isn’t what I’d choose for myself.
I’ve always wanted to fly, but that wouldn’t really help anyone. And I’d kind of like to be telepathic/empathic, but I’m almost that way now with living people and I’m definitely that way with characters I’ve created. If you’re telepathic, you probably pick up hurtful thoughts that zoom across people’s heads without them really meaning it. there’s too much potential for your own feelings to get hurt if you read minds.
That’s when I realized what I’d really like to be able to do: I’d like to be able to heal hearts.
It’s not a power I’ve seen in comic books, but that’s okay. I’ll be the first. I’d like to be able to read others’ emotions (receptive empathy) but at the same time, I’d like to have the prescience to know what they need inside. I want to be able to draw out the pain in others and shine healing light on it with the right words or the kind of comfort or insight that person needs.
I’ve realized in the last year or so that we’re all walking around broken. Even the ones who look like they have it all together are often the ones pulling it together hard just to avoid dealing with a long-ago buried pain. When things like that come home to roost, they can destroy everything we’ve worked for so hard. And then there are the people grieving a child or a spouse, or a broken relationship, or a lost job, or a book rejection (gotta plug myself here) or just an endless stream of disappointments in life.
The right word or the right gesture at the right time could give a person the ability to go on. I’d like to be able to give that to the person.
Some saints had the ability to read hearts. Padre Pio and St. Jean Vianney and St. Philip Neri all had the ability to know when someone had a serious spiritual impediment that was keeping him or her from full union with God. In order to be able to do that, I’d need to be able to read my own soul. But this might be a couple of steps below that kind of ability, and it’s the kind of thing that everybody needs.
If you can’t save the world, maybe you can save one person’s world. Or a bunch of people’s worlds.
—
Other stops on the weblog tour are:
http://meganeileen2005.typepad.com/ twinkletoes
http://thatsloanegirl.blogspot.com/ CathyF
http://wryexchange.com/ Wry Exchange
http://www.absentmindedhousewife.com/ beckygoesape
http://verycontrary.wordpress.com/ Contrary
http://amandagorby.blogspot.com/ amanda_tg
http://whatsmylife.blogspot.com/ grinningcomb
http://nolechica.livejournal.com nolechica
http://addierambles.blogspot.com andra
http://la-eme.livejournal.com MsMoonbunny
http://mischief0617.wordpress.com/ CrowGirl
http://www.housewife2000.blogspot.com housewife2k
http://fatgirlartist.blogspot.com/ Amy Rose
http://lulupop.wordpress.com Lulupop
http://chrisnada.livejournal.com/ Cnada
http://robandkrista.blogspot.com/ CelticGemini
http://anime-coroner.livejournal.com/ AllyKat
http://www.drunkenhousewife.com/ The Drunken Housewife
http://ladyj3000.blogspot.com/ LadyJ3000
http://heartstart.livejournal.com Heartstar1
http://hijinksshenanigans.blogspot.com/ Hijinks’s Shenanigans
http://deltatangosgbs.blogspot.com/ afbluebelle
http://sarahesperanza.wordpress.com/ SquishyMooMoo
Invisibility. For good AND nefarious reasons…
😉
In grad school, one professor in a SFF course asked what we would do with the power of invisibility. He went around the room forcing us to answer, and most of the guys admitted they’d be hanging out in women’s locker rooms.
He got t me and I said I’d remove the plates and VIN from my car and drive at 150 mph down the Thruway. 😉 Some powers just don’t lend themselves well to the good of humankind.
I’ve always wanted to fly. When I was younger, I read a book called “The Crystal Warriors” that described the sensation of flying in such a wonderfully descriptive way that I’ve wanted to be able to fly ever since. I don’t really consider that a superpower though…just an innate ability I wish I had.
As far as a superpower, I wouldn’t go with any of the “normal” ones like invisibility. I’d like the ability to speak with animals and bird, and to see through their eyes. There’s a lot of stories about people being able to do that with ONE specific animal or bird; I’d be able to do it with all of them! No idea what I’d use the power for though…that requires too much thought.
Hee! The difference between 20 and 40! Nakedness is so passe. Nah, I’d sneak onto overseas flights and sit in the first class section…for me it would be all about gaining access to places I would not otherwise get to see. And I’d mess with (ok, haunt) people who were mean to me or to my kids.
Life and death. I’d like to be able to point to anyone I wanted to, a murderer, a rapist, a terrorist, and say, “You don’t deserve any more of this life.” and pull their life away to store it up. Then I could find some good person dying young or some child who might never get a chance to grow up and pull out that stored life and say, “This is for you, a long life. Make good use of it.”
If I had the power of invisibility I’d do stupid things like sneak into the White House and leave a wet slimy toad in Bush’s bed or something.
Ivy, I really don’t think you know what you’re asking.
The slimy toad trick is good, though. Leave one for everyone in Congress as well.
Morally, I’d be a lot closer to the Dark Knight than to the last son of Krypton. 😉
Hey, I just realized I could be the super villain. And then Ladyknight could have her birds spy on my secret lair until I was out and then she’d page Kit who would sneak in invisibly and steal the rod of gathered lives or whatever and bring them to you and you could return them to their intended bodies, thus winning the trust of the people you’d saved. That would give you the opening to talk to them and help heal them.
Or maybe I should just go knit a sock.
sock-knitting would be a cool super-power too, you know.
How about this? You point your rod of doom at the murderers, rapists and terrorists and pull the evil out of them like a bunch of fibers, which you then spin into beautiful sock yarn. Afterward you give a pair of lovely socks to the now-reformed criminals and tell them to wear these as a sign of their new commitment to goodness.
That’s a nice gem for a short story. 🙂
No, no, no! Don’t you see? If you spin their evil into a pair of lovely socks, and someone else accidentally wears the socks, then the evil in the socks will seep into the other person, and they’ll become a thief, murderer, or rapist! Then the socks will dissolve, because their evil’s gone elsewhere, and no one will be able to figure out why that person has started acting so weird, and …
My imagination need to take a break. I read too much fantasy, I think.
What if the socks only work in pairs, and you lose one of the socks in the dryer?
I like the idea of knitting their consciousness into socks, then giving the socks to charity. That way those who are so arrogant and heartless as to commit these crimes, who revel in holding power over others, will find themselves without power, being trod upon by the humblest and most helpless.
Not to mention that the working poor are usually employed in jobs that involve physical labor. Meaning the socks would get sweaty and smelly.
Right, and the person who thought to get by through taking might learn something about earning. I can picture the socks going to some single mom, maybe a young widow maybe divorced, working two jobs to provide for her children and watching the children, feeling isolated from their mother, taking just the route he took that got him turned into socks to begin with. Only he’s seeing both sides now, the kid whose mom is out at the time and the mom who is struggling to keep the rent paid and food on the table.
See there is a story in there.
My power would be understanding and patience. Understanding often brings patience, but understanding without patience to make use of it is heart-rending. Patience without the understanding wouldn’t be as bad.
So often, one of the kids needs something, and I don’t quite know what. Sometimes we can wait it out, or figure out how to help them work through it faster, but sometimes something as simple as realizing she isn’t getting out the door faster because she needs to tie her shoe would make a world of difference. Sometimes she just needs to get something off her chest, or an adult to spray detangler in her hair, but we can’t see past the first sentence repeated ten times, and the bell about to ring, and her yelling, and then crying because we blame her for being late. If only we understood, before anyone starts the hysterics (and everyone in our house is equally guilty of starting them), what tiny thing is needed, we would all be better off.
Ivy, I would sneak into the bad guys’ lives and torment them into confessing, apologizing, self-castrating, jumping off a cliff, garroting themselves with your socks, whatever the situation dictated.
Kit, that only would cover half the plan. None of this is of any use to anyone, just gets the bad guy out of the picture. The rod of life and death would have helped the sick and the mind-into-socks trick would have warmed someone’s feet. I like the duality.