Low-grade superpowers?

[telophase]

theferrett has a post here about low-grde superpowers: those little things that you can do so much better than most, and asks about yours. This is a slightly edited version of my answer:

I am Direction Lady. My power isn't in giving directions, although I can usually do it, but in emitting some sort of low-grade telepathic field that tells lost people to ask me how to get to their destination. I can walk down the street of just about any city in the world and someone will stop and ask me for directions.

My mother scoffed at this. Until we were in London and a vanload of Lebanese men flagged me down and asked the way to Victoria Station, and a group of giggling Japanese girls asked me how to get to Trafalgar Square, and then in Paris that weekend two Frenchmen stopped me and asked me for directions.

I've considered the "ask for directions as a ruse to talk to the pretty lady" explanation but I'm usually surrounded by far prettier ladies at the time, and the conversation is never carried further than directions. I've postulated that I look unthreatening, or sympathetic, or that much like Granny Weatherwax I look like I always know exactly where I am, but I have no real idea why.

So, stealing theferrett's idea: what's your superpower?


(Attempting to get more work done today, as well, so responses will probably be slow)

Comments

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

Last year, it was the magical power to read exactly as far as would be required in my classes next day. This often meant that, say, if pages 750-787 had been assigned in Property, and I only read to page 766, we would literally get that far and no further. Or if I happened to not do the reading at all, we would finish up last class's material instead. Etc. My friends kept begging me to call them and tell them how far I had gotten, except I generally finished my reading about five minutes before class so it didn't do them any good. *g*

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

My superpower is (wait for it) ... batwrangling!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am the only person in the house who is capable of turning off lightswitches!

Umm. Perhaps this is not what you meant. Oh, I know! I can pick the correct size of Tupperware for any kind and amount of leftovers!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a useful talent - I'm always getting one too big or too small for what I've got left over. :D

[blades-of-ice.livejournal.com]

I don't know what mine is...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Go read through all the comments on Ferrett's post - you're bound to find something that you do. XD

Or maybe you just haven't found the circumstances necessary to bring out your hidden potential. You may be the world's champion at underwater basketweaving, but will never know if you've never been in circumstances that require you to try. XD

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

I am a Font of Useless Information.

I can't remember when my bills are due or information I need to do day-to-day tasks, but if something comes up in conversation I almost always think of some random factoid relating to it. Sometimes I share, but mostly I don't because, well, I'm dorky enough as it is.

[arinye.livejournal.com]

As am I. I have pretty much the same thing going on.

[chisotahn]

I am quite possibly your counterpart: Awesome-Direction-Sense Woman! I have a really really good sense of direction, which means I don't get lost easily and I tend to be able to navigate into and out of pretty much anything. Conviniently enough, this skill also works in RPG dungeons.

This superpower has a weakness, though - in the real world, if I can't orient off of some landmark, whether geographical or manmade (I live in a valley so here I use the hills)... then I lose my innate sense of which way is North, and I feel vaguely uneasy and bothered the whole time. This really really hit me hard when I was staying near Houston because it was so flat. And apparently orienting off of the sun doesn't count.



Secondary Power: Being able to find a Sluggy Freelance strip for every occasion.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

If we teamed up, we could conquer the world! Or at least give directions to it!

I lived in Denver for a couple of years, and got so used to relying on the mountains to the west for directions, even though I ahve a fairly good sense of direction without them, that one day when I went into a twisty-turny subdivision that was located in a small valley just deep enough to hide the mountains, it drove me bonkers.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

It happened more when I was younger but every once in a while I will just know things. Or know that some thing is going to happen/has happened to someone without having a way of knowing.

[dicemonkey.livejournal.com]

I get the direction thing frequently to, especially when I'm on vacation and have no idea where whatever they're asking about is. My guess is that your default facial expression is a smile, or something resembling it, and this is causing the engendering of trust from stangers. Now that we've figured it out, we need to find someway to exploit it to your advantage.

As for my low level superpower, I am able to wake up 2-5 minutes before the alarm clock is set to go off.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I'd believe the facial-expression thing except that people used to constantly ask me what was wrong or why I was mad when I wasn't, but just had no expression.

I haven't got that recently, admittedly, except the day after I take migraine drugs because one of the side effects of that is that it gives me a flat affect, no expression whatsoever unless I make an effort.

I am... CRAZY ATTRACTER

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

If there is a crazy person in my vicinity, he or she will make a beeline for me, knowing that I am the perfect sympathetic listener for their tale of how the FBI put electrodes in their head.

Men who date me also tend to have little quirks that they conceal from the world at large, but feel perfectly comfortable sharing with me.

Re: I am... CRAZY ATTRACTER

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I've really got to introduce you to my friend bpggle, who is also a Crazy Attractor. Putting you two in a room together would either be the funniest or the scariest thing evar.

I used to have an invisible tattoo saying ASK ME IF I'VE FOUND GOD on my forehead, but it appears to have faded in recent years.

[longshot14.livejournal.com]

My low-grade superpower is Rains=Pours. I never seem to get favorable attention from only one person at a time. If I'm getting favorable attention, it's almost invariably from more than one new person at a time :)

I heart my superpower :D

Schoolhouse Rock power

[marith.livejournal.com]

My low-grade superpower? *ponders* Remembering song lyrics. Useful information falls right out of my brain, but lyrics almost never. There are songs I heard once twenty years ago that won't go away.

Advantage: if it's vital to remember something, all I have to do is figure out how to filk it. Disadvantage: the rhyme-making process takes 100% of mental CPU and refuses to be interrupted till it's done.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

In college, I was an Official Campus Landmark, used in, in fact, giving directions by people I didn't even know ('then you turn left at the girl with the blue hair, or just ask her...'). I was pleased to see this power reemerging at Wiscon.

I was also in the Ohio state spelling bee for four years solid, fourth to eighth grade, highest placing eighth, and I never studied. I have a perfect memory for words that I have seen spelled. The reason I never won the bee was words I'd never seen, or which I'd seen spelled incorrectly. There is no actual use for this in later life, but it's a fun superpower (I am DICTIONARY WOMAN! REVERSE THAT DIPHTHONG AND BACK AWAY SLOWLY!)

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I am Pattern Identifcation Lass! But I wonder how much of that was the experimental learning program I was put in for grades four and five? It has proven to be very handy in many situations. ^_^

I have good intuition; which could be related to subconcious pattern reading?

the auto-mechanic effect

[inkblot14.livejournal.com]

My lowgrade power is the "auto-mechanic" effect, except with computers. Any reproducable commputer error has a 40% chance of not occuring when I'm within five feet. Randomly occuring errors almost never occur around me.

This seems a handy talent for a computer tech (now trainer), but actually it's a bit of a pain. I can't fix issues if I can't reproduce them even randomly. It's really developed my trouble-shooting gland, as I have to play "well, what COULD be the problem?" quite a lot.

-bink

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

Righteous Indignation.

[lihsa.livejournal.com]

I'd say my low-grade super power would be talking a lot. Something about the way I put together words just makes take up more space in the universe than normal people words. My brain automatically pads out anything I have to say, so that what should have been one-liners suddenly turn out to be three-pagers, and I can't for the life of me figure out which part it is that Im supposed to cut out. Normally I'd say that it was just a love of hearing my own voice, or something my language teachers just never taught me, but the ability to just go on and on can come in usefull sometimes and I've found that not everyone can do it. So, Im calling it a talent.

The rest of the time I think to myself honestly, did that word/sentence/paragraph really need to be there? and hope to god Im not seriously annoying anyone.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

If I ask the rain to give me a little break to get into the house / check the mail / take out the garbage, it generally does so within five minutes. I don't ask, maybe it rains, maybe it doesn't - but I can't remember the last time I asked the rain and it didn't do it.

[m00nface.livejournal.com]

On behalf of all long-term residents of the United Kingdom: we envy you.

[croaky.livejournal.com]

Hmm... It could be said Io have that "like Granny Weatherwax I look like I always know exactly where I am, but I have no real idea why" aura in common with you. But, with a variation. -I don't look like I know exactly where I am but rather I sound like I know exactly what i am doing/talking about. And people tend to mistake me for a perfectly capable leader-person.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think I'm the opposite of you with the leadership thing: offline, even at the times when I know what needs doing and how to do it and the best way to arrange matters and people in order to achieve it, nobody listens to me. Sort of Command Absence, rather than Command Presence.

[camwyn]

I have the ability to walk into any used bookstore in the United States of America and find, within fifteen minutes, books on Canadian history. In the rare event that nonfiction on this subject is not to be had, I invariably find fiction books on the Yukon or Klondike gold rushes.

Also, I have the power to be mistaken for a Canadian, even in my own country, even when I am not actually wearing anything Canadian-looking.

Maple-flavoured superpowers. Gotta love 'em.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Maybe you were bitten by a radioactive beaver, moose, or Quebecois when you were younger?

Well, probably not a Quebecois. You don't seem to be hell-bent to speak French in a way actively condemned by some citizens of France, and you don't try to declare independence from Canada every two years or so.

[flusterdance.livejournal.com]

My low-grade superpower is the angry glare. It's pretty much my default expression, and it makes everyone-- including gangbangers, homeless people, and insurance salesmen-- leave me alone. The Angry Glare has been known to stop speeding cars.

[solarbird]

Preach it sister. Angry glare powers activate!

[solarbird]

I've got a few!

1. I disrupt RF. In particular, I frequency-shift it. This makes tuning a radio an adventure!

2. If I get mad, I can pin a man to a wall with my glare. My friend Kathryn saw me do this once and she says it's like lazers come out of my eyes.

3. I can outrun a city bus (in a city setting) for about three Seattle blocks (.15 miles). I'm not sure that this is actually a superpower, but the people on the busses when I've done this have certainly reacted as though it were. That was fun. ^_^

[awamiba.livejournal.com]

I have a few:
-the superfast reading thing
-being able to figure out nearly all electronic equipment even without having seen it before or reading the manual
-crashing cash registers just about anywhere
-the people asking for directions thing (and yet I cannot give directions to save my life), but add to that people asking where things are located in stores (which I normally do know)
-dreaming innocuous things that end up really happening later (like the number of specific colored candies in a bag; a pink & white bookcover of a lady on a horse with an author's name like a car; what will fall out of a cupboard at a place I've never been before)

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

My superpower is explaining complicated things in simple language.

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I have a couple.

1) Through some cosmic strangeness I can cause other people to solve puzzles, grasp obscure facts previously beyond them or remember long forgotten bits of information and memories just from my mere physical presence. Sadly it seems I am immune to my own power though.

2)I also have the minor power of luck, which may be why I'm such a procrastinator. It always seems that when I really, really want something I actually get it. For example I need £5 for something important (like food or to buy electric) and I'll stumble across £5 I've squirreled away or lost some time and didn't realise I'd done so, or I've forgotten to write an important essay and it turns out the teacher isn't able to make it that day, etc. It doesn't seem to work when trying to win the lottery though, or at least it hasn't worked yet :)

3) My best super power has got to be the "Nice Girl Effect" though. I don't know what causes this, but no matter what I do or say I retain the image of being a pleasant, nice and thoroughly straight-laced individual of purist innocence. I find it both amusing and cool :D

[sparkylibrarian.livejournal.com]

I have Half-Price Books Fu. Obscure or hard-to-find books pop up at the store, and call me all the way across town to come buy them. I have been trying to resist as much as possible, as even half-price books add up when you buy piles and piles. :)

Er, and on the directions thing... I have a map of most of central Austin in my head, and I can figure out how to get almost anywhere, with alternate routes in case of... something. I can draw out maps with side roads and everything.

[arinye.livejournal.com]

A few:
Superfast reading.
Font Of Useless Trivia.
Occasional fits of 'I knew that was going to happen/I knew he/she was going to say that'-ishness.
Thrift-store-fu... as long as I'm actually LOOKING for something in particular, and not just browsing.
The nifty ability to make everyone, except my immediate family, like my clunky, creaky, black metal lunchbox-purse.

[arinye.livejournal.com]

Oops, forgot one: scarily good hearing. I have seriously got the best hearing of anyone in my family, which makes dorm life (and home life, with my brother addicted to WoW) a pain in the ass.