To practice my Spanish I watch YouTube videos. One of my favorite channels on the platform for this is Easy Spanish. My favorite subset of videos on this channel is street interviews. They come up with a fairly simple question then rope in people that are in parks, walking on the street, etc. to answer the question. I recently watched one set in Lima, Peru where the lady was asking if they could have one superpower, what it would be and what would they do with it. As could be predicted, most folks were giving answers such as invisibility, to able to fly like Superman and ESP.
This started me wondering about a couple things. First, how does Superman keep the bugs out of his eyes and mouth? Secondly, if I could choose one superpower what it would be? How would it function? And what would I do with it.
What came quickly to mind was the ability to heal. To be able to put my hands on a person and cure whatever physical or mental ailment they had seemed like the most desirable. I sometimes physically hurt in dealing with or observing folks struggling with some infirmity. I have wished more times than you can imagine that I could magically flip a switch for someone dealing with emotional or mental issues. How phenomenal it would be to correct some physical malady and watch the change in their lives? I know that we all have innumerable examples of such situations.
All this brought to mind a short story I read a while back by Percival Everett, The Fix. The basic premise is about a man working in a rundown restaurant and he starts fixing things for the owner. Turns out he can fix anything. Against his wishes, his ability to do this becomes well known and he is in high demand. Then one day a parent brings in a child just severely injured in an accident. The man at first declines, but the anguish of the parent convinces the man to do something. He does indeed fix the child and brings it back from the edge of death. From that point on the man’s life becomes a living hell. In the end, he commits suicide by jumping off a bridge. He could fix anything, except the overwhelming need from people for him to fix things, their lives included. It is the type of story that burns a deep groove on the hard drive of your brain.
I had been thinking about this long before I watched the street interview from Lima or read The Fix, but not calling it a superpower. In my fantasies I was an Edgar Cayce style of figure. In this version , I would have set up shop and would be able to control the flood of demand for healing…for a while. In another scenario I would attempt to only use my healing power among people in my circle, knowing that if my ability became well known, I would be overwhelmed. However, all of my fantasies involved a physical cost to me. I had various scenarios, but most involved me being sick or incapacitated for a period of time after each healing. The worse the infirmity was, the longer the period. Somewhere in my psyche is the ingrained meme that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Or perhaps I strongly believe in a chain of cause and effect which none of us can escape. All iterations of my fantasy end more or less like the end of the short story. I am overwhelmed either by the demand or the physical cost. In some mode I take myself out of the equation.
I am not going to bother with a 5 cent psychoanalysis of my fantasy. I suspect by this point you have come up with several of your own.
On second thought, I do believe I really only want to fly like Superman, but with a bug shield.