The idea that one might be in possession of some kind of superpower is very popular with young children. Nevertheless, by the time we’re grown up most of us have abandoned any hope that we might be able to fly or melt steel with beams coming out of our eyes.
All the same, I am beginning to suspect that there are minor, less-sensational superpowers that are much more common and which we’re inclined to overlook for the simple reason that, for the person blessed with a superpower, nothing seems out of the ordinary.
My own particular superpower is associated with reading books – real, printed books, that is – not books read on screens. I am reading a book and, like most people, I get to a point where I think something like:
“Now what was that Danish astronomer called again?”.
I remember noting it earlier but it was several chapters back. There’s nothing else for it: I will have to scan back through all the pages until I find the answer.
But this where my superpower comes into play, for I can remember where on the page the information is to be found. So now, restricting my search to (say) the last few lines on the right-hand side, I can leaf through the pages much more quickly and it isn’t long before I find what I am looking for. Amazing eh?
I have even known it to work with books that I read some time ago.
“Oh that – ” you say “everyone can do that!”
Or can they?
I have increasingly found that I know what someone is about to say ( “so do I!” I hear you say)….but I tend not to use this superpower as people don’t seem deflated with the wind prematurely out of their sails….
I have a half-baked superpower: it’s knowing, with absolute certainty, that I have left a part-consumed biscuit, or piece of cake, somewhere. But that’s as far as it goes. The location is a mystery until I stumble upon the leftover in due course, and the memory is satisfied. I guess it’s what we might call a gut feeling.
And, yes, many of us are probably pretty good at recalling the shape of information on a printed page. Far better than digital search.
Sorry to disappoint so early in the conversation, but I seem to share this ‘superpower’ with you. Frequently I find myself retrieving picture and text information from books and journals that I have read. Remembering where on the page an image or text string appears greatly aids the scanning in the retrieval. This can reach back to things initially read some time ago.
Is this superpower not just part of the human brain’s amazing cognitive ability to retain information and make further connections based on what it remembers?
My superpower entirely fails me when I am faced with computerised digital information. Directories, folders, sub-folders and individual documents’ locations elude me, due to their visual anonymity in the graphic interface. The contents of a printed document register in a different and much more memorable way.
A submission from a reader (posted anonymously)
The ability to produce a fine, pinpoint jet of saliva at will from a gland under the tongue, otherwise know as gleeking. This is a trick similar to that deployed by Archer fish when striking their insect prey from under the water.
Earliest documented usage 1540. “I have found you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice.” William Shakespeare; Henry V, 1623.