There are many benefits to being a minor celebrity cartoonist, but collectively they form what I describe as a mild superpower. Real super powers might include the ability to bend steel, or shoot fire from your eyes. Any power that makes it extra easy to kill people, or keep you from getting killed, is a full-strength superpower.
I have to think that those are the best kind. If you tell me you haven’t concentrated on someone’s head just to see if you can make it burst into flames, you’re lying. Unfortunately, I only have a MILD superpower.
A mild super power would be, for example, the ability to regenerate extra toilet paper on a roll that is almost out, or the ability to know exactly how long to microwave leftovers, or the ability to scratch the middle of your own back. Those are just examples.
My mild superpower is the ability to make people temporarily nicer. When people don’t know what I do for a living, they treat me the same way that they treat everyone else. But often, a guy will recognize my name or my face, and he suddenly becomes a little bit nicer. He smiles more. He offers to help in some way. He might offer a compliment.
Later that day, he will be telling a friend that he met “the Dilbert comic guy.” And the friend will say, “Is that the political comic or the one with the cat?” But from the time I meet someone, until the time he finds out his friends couldn’t give a rat’s ass, he thinks he has a good story to tell. And that always makes people happy. And happy people are nice people.
I have other mild superpowers too, but not because of the minor celebrity thing. For example, I can guess how much things will cost without having any knowledge in the field. If you came to me and said you were going to build a 50-foot tall animatronic beaver in your back yard, somehow I would know how much that would cost. It’s freaky.
I’m also slightly ambidextrous. I can draw and write with my left hand, albeit slowly. It doesn’t feel like a mild superpower until I watch other people try to write with the “other” hand. It makes me want to organize a telethon.
I also have a mild super power for remembering jokes. I can’t remember my own phone number most of the time, but if I hear a joke once, I own it. For some reason, my brain is optimized for humor storage. I could have a best friend for ten years, but if he goes away for two weeks and comes back without a name tag, it’s going to be awkward.
Do you have any mild super powers?