This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.
Sunday, March 26, 2023
3:31pm
I want a superpower. And it isn’t to fly or to be invisible. It isn’t to be strong and powerful or rich enough to have all the gadgets I need to fake it.
I don’t want to time travel, that would just get too confusing and besides I may never come back to the present if that was the case. I’d just pop all around until I found the moment I liked best and sort of hang out there. Which would get boring, and then I’d have to do it again and at some point the whole thing would just end in madness.
I don’t want to be immortal, god forbid. Whoever said there are worse things than death was absolutely correct. Some of those things include listening to the construction trucks that constantly beep their existence for the rest of eternity.
I don’t want to be a shape shifter and turn into a fly or a cat or a pigeon, because whatever I chose, one of them would inevitably be eaten by the other.
I don’t want to teleport, although it would make my trips to Kroger a lot more tolerable, as I would not have to spend 20 minutes gridlocked on Mallory Lane every time I forget to pick up lemons.
Telepathy would be TMI, and I wouldn’t understand people anyway.
There is, in fact, only one superpower that I want.
After I die, I want to come back for a few days every hundred years or so, just to see what happened.
I’ll let the universe sort out the particulars, like when it happens and how long I stay, though I want to come back at least to a place I’ve been before and not end up in a desert in Syria.
I want to come back because I’m going to die before they figure out how to cure cancer and Alzheimer’s and ALS, but I think one day they will, and it drives me nuts that I won’t be there to celebrate it.
I want to come back because there’s a good chance I’ll die before they finish the sidewalk construction here and I’d really like to see this town once it’s a town again and not a sand pit.
I want to come back because inevitably I’m going to start reading a book series and I’m going to die before the conclusion is published and it drives me nuts that I won’t know what happened.
I remember as a teenager reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. It took him 22 years to complete the set, but I had time to spare. The other thing I remember was reading something, somewhere, that a woman wrote to him. She asked him if he could please just let her know how it turns out because she was 80-something at the time and wasn’t going to last on this earth long enough for him to finish writing and publishing it all.
We were clearly kindred spirits, her and I.
I want to come back and find out if we’re still at war with [insert whoever we’re at war with], if there are still raging debates over whether women can be born with man parts.
I want to come back and see what kind of cars there are and what fuel they use. And whether we’ve saved the whales or the dolphins or the tigers, if we’ve become too enlightened to eat pigs and now keep them on pillows in our livings rooms next to our Pomeranians.
I want to know what our government is up to and whether AI has really taken over, and more importantly, is the best pizza in the world still in New York?
I want to know what kind of new vocabulary we’ve come up with, which buildings are still standing, what cocktails have been invented and if Cadbury egg blondies are as good as I remember them.
I want to see what’s become of technology, and rainforests. Or maybe I don’t.
But really, I do. I need to know. The fact that I won’t know drives me nuts.
So the next time the universe is granting superpowers (will we have superpowers in the future?) let my request be heard.
With one caveat: I reserve the right to cancel my superpower at any time, because the day I come back and there is NO pizza, and even the pigeons have become extinct, I suspect I may decide I don’t want to know anymore.
Or maybe I will. This is the thing about not knowing. You never know!
Photo: Hello Kitty wearing her Hello Kitty superhero cape. One can only guess as to her adventures.