If you could have a super power...

Here at Pushing Paper Uphill I like to ponder the big issues and at some stage I will do that.  For now, though, I've been thinking about superpowers.

When I say superpowers, I don’t mean it in the geo-political sense ie countries that have really big populations, economies and defence budgets.  I'm talking about superhero abilities not possessed by ordinary people (or that don't actually exist), like being able to crush cars with your bare hands or being invisible or shooting spiderwebs out of your wrists or the ability to get people’s attention with a supersonic whistle through your fingers (I consider it a superpower because try as I might I can't do it).

It is an often asked question of celebrities in interviews: what superpower would you like to have. Prince William was asked recently and he said he’d like to be invisible. See, because fame sits uneasily with him is what he is saying…subtle isn’t he? Sometimes I’ve thought being invisible would be good because I’m nosey and I could spy on people but I’m also neurotic and I’d worry that the invisibility would somehow malfunction which would lead to awkward situations if I suddenly apparated in places I was not expected to be.

Anyway, the other problem with superpowers is that once you nominate one, you would have to be kind of specific about what you actually wanted and having one would usually require other superpowers in order to use it to its full effect. Example: flying would be cool because you could avoid traffic jams. But what if you could fly but only really slowly? If this was the case you’d probably look down at the cars and think “I could use one of those”. So what you really want is the ability to fly at varying speeds, with the top speed being possibly at the speed of sound or even light. And if you could do that, you would also need the ability to not be torn to pieces by g-forces and to always have neat hair.

Telepathy would be a handy power, too, (again because I’m nosey) although you would have to qualify it by saying you want to be able to hear people’s thoughts but only their interesting thoughts, rather than their boring old inner monologue “…did I turn off the iron?…walk sign…I need to get some cheese…”. You might also need to specify that you want to be able to choose when to read someone’s mind. A lot of life’s dilemmas were explored in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the pros and cons of mind-reading was one of them. When Buffy got the ability to read minds after being scratched by a telepathic demon, at first it was cool and she discovered there was no difference between what Cordelia thought and said (that people were like that was a major revelation to me), but then Buffy couldn’t control the telepathy and ended up hearing everyone’s thoughts at the same time which nearly killed her. There was one other person in Sunnydale who had a similar affliction and he had to live in isolation so he wasn’t bombarded. So if you can read minds but without discernment, it makes you not want to be around other people and if you aren’t around other people then you don’t ever get to use your mind-reading ability. It’s a paradox.

I work with someone who swears by the wisdom of Ricky Gervais’ mate, Karl Pilkington. She told me that when he was asked what superpower he would like, he thought he wouldn’t like any of them but eventually decided he would like the ability to call bullshit wherever and whenever it is spoken - sort of theworld’s arbiter of bollocks. I think he would be a busy man. He would also need the ability to be in a million places at once.

But inspired by this lateral approach to superpowers, and with my recent experience of redundancy still fresh in my mind, I have decided there is a need in the world for someone with the preternatural ability to ensure no one gets a job beyond their talent, intelligence and capability. Yep, I would like to be some sort of guardian of the meritocracy. And there would be some people very surprised to find themselves cleaning toilets…