My so-called super powers

Mamacita says:  I have super powers, but they’re not the super powers I would have chosen.  They’re not the super powers I wanted. If I had been allowed to choose my talents, I would have picked singing, dancing, and astronaut skills.   I don’t even have a green thumb – heck, I can kill a cactus in a couple of weeks just by walking past it.  However, like a talent for sight-reading music containing a lot of sharps, and the ability to perform mathematical calculations involving numbers over a hundred without a calculator, my super powers are real.  They’re just weird.

1. 1.  I can make the phone and/or doorbell ring by merely thinking about going to the bathroom.
   2. I can turn on the cable and the TV with perfect coordination three times, but the fourth time will involve an expensive house call from the cable guy and, for some reason I for the life of me can’t figure out, the landline phone.
   3. I know nothing about sports and care even less, but every year I put a few dollars on whatever team nobody else wanted, or the team wearing the colors that take my fancy, or the team that hasn’t appeared in the news for rape or drugs or booze, or the team on which nobody has smoked for years or, better still, ever, and every year I win something.  It’s to the point that I have to chase down and play hide and seek with the guy collecting money; people don’t even want me to have a look at the weird forky team matchup thing.  Last year I won sixty dollars, and I just PayPal-ed the guy ten dollars and asked him to put it on any team that was left over.  It’s a gift, but I have no idea what I’m doing.  We generally go out to eat on the winnings.
   4. All I have to do is step into the shower and before I’m even wet, someone will need me to drive them somewhere really important and they have to leave immediately.
   5. I am the only person in this house who understands the mechanism and righteousness of the toilet paper holder.
   6. I know where the light bulbs, batteries, scissors, and tape are “hidden.”
   7. I understand the philosophy and workings of clumping kitty litter.
   8. I can find the Christmas tree topper in under thirty seconds.
   9. I keep a goodly supply of spices and herbs, and I know how to use them.  I even grow them, thanks to my son’s Christmas present.
      

      Thank you for this awesome Christmas gift, son!

       

   10. The trash truck comes around every Wednesday morning, so on Tuesday night, I gather up all the trash in the house, bag it, put it in the bin, and wheel the bin out to the curb.  This is not rocket science, but apparently I am the only rocket scientist who lives here.
   11. I have mastered the art of “spring forward” and “fall back.”  My only slightly OCD need for a clock on every wall makes this something that takes a little time (TIME. Get it?  I am so witty.) but twice a year, I get it done.  Other people who live here are just confused about whether or not they’re going to be late because the clock in their vehicle is only correct half the year.  I am too Monk to have a clock that isn’t exactly right, but I am also more than a little bit adamant that other people’s things are their concern, not mine.  This is why I always knocked before entering my children’s bedrooms.  Little kids have rights, too.
   12. Due to the necessity of earning a living and feeding/clothing my children, I have become the master of getting up and going to work even with migraines so blinding I have to crawl around the house on my hands and knees, feeling for the walls because, literally, the migraine has blinded me.  I can pack lunches, feed and dress small children, get them and myself to school, teach all day, work a ball game or dance after school, get everybody home again, bathed, and to bed before crashing and weeping on the floor of the shower stall.  My students always knew when I had a migraine because a vein on the side of my face throbbed.  Apparently it was pretty funny to watch.  When I think about this, my first thought is always “Thank goodness there were no camera phones back then.”  Some autotune and a soundtrack would have been hilarious only if it wasn’t me.

These super powers are not glamorous or spotlight-worthy, but they got, and get, me and other people through many a difficult day, which, when you think about it, is what super powers are supposed to do.