I Don't Know Kung Fu.

Super Powers.

For a while I have be going on about everybody having a super power. Your super power doesn't necessarily have to be useful, nor helpful to oneself. In fact, your superpower can just be a localised ability to bend reality in a given situation a little better than anybody else. What may seem a benign and useless power may be invaluable one day if you find yourself in a highly improbable situation.

For example:

Sinéad (my wife) has a superpower that she always loses her luggage on long-haul flights. You may be tempted to say that this is merely bad luck, but you’d be wrong. Her metaphysical power diverts the bag to either a different plane, or to stay on the tarmac at Charles-De-Gaulle. While initially seeming like an irritating and masochistic power, imagine the following scenario:

While on holiday in Thailand we leave our bags in the room. A cleaning lady in the employ of Triads from the Golden Triangle stuff the lining of her suitcase with heroin. When in the airport, the bag gets checked through. We get on the plane. Sin’s special power does its work and the luggage is lost before it’s X-rayed or sniffed. We get home without being sent to the Bangkok Hilton for life. Sinéad’s luggage turns up a week later, and we keep the Horse.

Not too shabby.

Another example:

Jim (my friend, his mother calls him James) has a superpower that he can terrorise Carnaval Folk. His special power is to be able to walk into a carnival and win by throwing hoops over things, throwing balls in basins, hurling frogs onto lily pads or knocking down three old tin cans with a couple of softballs. The Carnies are forced into handing over stuffed toys, confused about how he beat the system. This power has a downside in that Jim cannot get on a carnival ride that goes more then a foot of the ground. It is hard to see what use Jim’s power is now that he is engaged, and he no longer needs to impress girls. Maybe a steady relationship nullifies his power (sex is his Kryptonite?) but we’ll need to go to a funfair to find out.

Me:

Until recently I didn’t know what my special power was, but now I have found out. Nobody wants to sit beside me on the bus. You may not think that this is unusual, but let’s apply Bus Theory.

Bus Theory states:

When entering a bus you will instantly calculate where you want to sit. You will choose your seat in the following order:

1. Empty double seat, near quiet people
2. Empty double seat, near nobody
3. Empty double seat
4. Empty single seat near quiet small lady
5. Empty single seat near quiet small man
6. Empty single seat near quiet normal sized lady
7. Empty single seat near quiet normal sized man
8. Empty single seat near small lady
9. Empty single seat near small man
10. Empty single seat near normal sized lady
11. Empty single seat near normal sized man
12. Empty single seat near quiet fat lady
13. Empty single seat near quiet fat man
14. Empty single seat near fat lady
15. Empty single seat near fat man
16. Empty single seat near noisy small lady
17. Empty single seat near noisy small man
18. Empty single seat near noisy normal sized lady
19. Empty single seat near noisy normal sized man
20. Empty single seat near noisy fat lady
21. Empty single seat near noisy fat man
22. Stand
23. Empty single seat beside crazy/aggressive/unbelievably noisy person

At worst I come in at no.7 on this scale (or no.13 depending on your point of view), that means for people not to sit beside me, they are perceiving me as a no.23. So often as not I get to sit alone or be a “Number 52” (the last person someone sits beside on the bus as most buses have 53 seats). I think you agree that this is not a terrible special power. I do have a secondary aspect to this power in that I can work out the Bus Theory calculation abnormally fast.

Often my enemies defeat me by later taking an iPod out of their pocket as soon as I sit down.

One day I will smite them.