Not Uncommonly So

Superpowers astound me. Leave me wishing I had one. Which is to say, I dig them. They're like silent background music that rushes suddenly to the fore when the overriding dialogue hushes. Which is to say, you don't notice them until you're lookin' for 'em. I don't know why, or when, or even quite how...but, at some point, I started seeing superpowers.

Not the bit-by-a-lab-spider-and-now-have-suction-cups-for-fingers type, but the other kind. You know the ones. Like that peculiar mojo that some folk have to do what otherwise shouldn't make sense: those voices that sooth to the point of tingles or humors that tickle to the height of mania or insights that reveal to the just-right edge of light. They're the markers of the "he can fix anything" or the "she'll know just what to do". They're the ups of dark days and the downs of free falling, and they are uncommonly rare.

Or are they?

Because, if they are, they sure do turn up the strangest places.
   Why, on Christmas night, one reared up at my kitchen table!

It came in the form of my mother-in-law who is, arguably, a super-somethin' all in herself. Indeed, she boasts a few "supers" - one of which is the uncanny ability to go into a hobby shop and come out with the best game you've never heard of. Examples, you say? Well, there was this one.

 Not to be bested by the kids' favorite, of course.

Or her current find sittin' pretty in 1st place atop the pecking order.

Playing it produced these candids.

      

 

 (Yeah, that says what you think it says.)

Yes, Mom's superpower brought the game. But the evening had its own brand of peculiar mojo: one night, impossible to repeat ergo uncommon and (aha!) rare.

Except it wasn't.

Sure, the memories are one-in-a-brain's-billion, but the emotion wasn't. The sentiments weren't. The safety that fostered both certainly isn't.

Maybe family is its own kind of superpower; the "up" that coaxes the silly (crossed and boogers come to mind) from even the most serious. Or the "down" that cushions the ridiculous (um, there was that episode of required foot smelling) from ever feeling...well, ridiculous.

And, if that's truly the case, then we have all at least one power hailing from the super column - if not by kin then by kind. If not in family, then through friend.

Rare?
Maybe.
But I think perhaps not uncommonly so.