What's your superpower

What's your superpower? How would you even know if you had one? Would it come on gradually like baldness or would it be there from birth like an arm? How would you even notice it was there?

My superpower is invisibility. And a wonderful power it is. I can be at work meetings and afterwards people will ask me if I was there. Even if I spoke! A friend recently complained that I wasn't at the pub, but I was standing next to him (and later beating him in a best hairy chest competition, as you do when you're the Bear King, but that's another story).

 

Sometimes it's a bit less convenient though I have to admit. I regularly find automatic doors failing to notice me. I have to wait for someone else to walk through, or wave my arms around until my visibility returns. And people are always bumping into me in the street. I mean, c'mon! It's not as though I'm a sylph of a figure.  Even the kind would describe me as 'well nourished'.

Unfortunately, and this is the real killer, I cannot control when this ability manifests.  Many's the time I would gladly have vanished only to have remained front and centre, even apparently volunteering. And when I most want to be noticed, too often it appears that there is only background. That I have softly and suddenly vanished away.

I recently had to make a public presentation and the host completely forgot I was in the room... or even on the run sheet! Her ditziness or my super-normal abilities? I was amazed.  But this had crossed a line.  Not only was I physically unobservable, but my written name, in her own handwriting, had vanished as well.  How could both have vanished? Which led me to question am I actually invisible, or is my power an ability to block perception? A kind of "these aren't the droids you're looking for" telepathic suggestion. Jedi (for low values of Jedi).

This seems plausible.  Like Douglas Adams' SEP field (the theory of which says more or less, that the technology of actual cloaking devices is so mind-bogglingly complicated that you're better off just painting your space ship hot pink, parking it in plain view, and letting everyone's fragile psychological state decide that it's easier to not notice; that it must be Someone Else's Problem). It also explains why all my clothing would become invisible at the same time as I did (though I must admit I've always found the idea of the invisible man nuding-up kind of erotic, though it must have gotten cold at times). Are all superpowers simply matters of mind over matter? It's a more Tinkerbell model of superpowers: Yes, I DO believe in fairies... therefore I am a fairy? Or a Neil Gaiman American Gods model of divinity. If YOU believe I am invisible perhaps I am. And if YOU believe I can fly perhaps I can too?

So now I guess I need to practice, though without a mentor or an instruction manual it's going to be hit and miss. Seems to work with baldness and arms. Once I do master it though, there will be the most difficult of all questions for emerging supers... Do I use my powers for good, or evil? Or will I just use them for nothing in particular? And what's the difference?

So next time you see me, if I look like I'm concentrating very, very hard, look again. And if I'm not there, feel free to let out a congratulatory cheer.  Or a quiet, "you did it!" and a grope of the air in front of you to land a pat on my back.