If you could choose your superpower, what would it be?
I know my answer. I’d be able to teleport– or, as Lady Elaine Fairchilde did in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, go the purple way— or, as you learn to do in your later years at Hogwarts, disapparate. Oh, how I would love to be able to click my heels together three times and suddenly I’m across the world, visiting friends wherever they are. Wouldn’t it be awesome to just visit for a few minutes instead of sending an email? Why do my people have to be so spread out? How did that happen? I don’t mind flying– I quite like it, in fact, and I would miss take-off, and being able to see the world from above– but I could always teleport into an airplane for kicks, after all, and I DO dislike all the trappings of flying. Packing? Ugh. Setting the alarm for 5am? Blech. Taking motion sickness meds? Ick. Getting to the airport early and then sitting on the runway for 3 hours because US Airways only has one de-icer and it only drives in 1st gear and there’s an ice storm and 10 planes are ahead of you in line? CURSES!
I guess that’s the point of most superpowers: they release us from the constraints of corporal being. Of course it takes a long time to get from Florida to Rwanda, of course it’s hard, because that’s what makes places places and makes bodies bodies. That’s life. And I know superheroes don’t usually get to choose their superpowers, and they don’t usually like the ones they’re given. But! Couldn’t I just have this one little superpower? I promise never, ever to take it for granted.
What superpower would you choose?
* Stolen from the Crash Test Dummies’ “Superman’s Song.”