I strongly believe that everyone has a superpower

I define superpower as something that’s inherently part of you. It’s not a skill that was learned. And it’s different from talent. Many times talent is paired with hard work, but hard work can’t be paired with a superpower. Well, I guess you could, but it would be pretty strange. You’ll see what I mean.

One thing I like to do is try and figure out what the superpowers people around me have. So far the only strategy I have is to just wait and pay attention. That might not be the most efficient way, but I can’t think of a better one.

Here are all the superpowers I’ve figured out so far.

My dad’s superpower is being able to never raise his voice. In my entire life, the only times I’ve heard him project his voice even a little bit is when I’m upstairs and he’s calling me from downstairs. Otherwise, I’ve never heard him yell out of frustration, excitement, or any other emotion. I’ve never even heard him talk loudly.

As for what my mom’s superpower is, first I’m going to give you some background on how my parents communicate.

When it comes to passing along information like news, they have two completely different approaches. My dad’s the type that likes to bullet point it into a 1, 2, 3 list. My mom’s the type that takes the scenic route and makes you confused about what the information even is.

My dad’s approach towards telling news is similar to how he tells other types of information, like stories. It’s completely linear with only the important details. If he had been in the Hogwarts Grand Hall during the name-drawing for the Triwizard Tournament, all he would have told you afterwards was that the names had been drawn. I don’t even know if he would’ve even remembered which names had been drawn. He probably would’ve been like, well, I knew it wasn’t going to be me, so I wasn’t paying attention. This is why he’s a terrible source for gossip. He only gives you what he thinks is the useful information and leaves out everything that’s interesting.

My mom is the opposite. Her superpower is being able to retell family stories. If I only heard our family’s stories from my dad’s point of view, I wouldn’t hear 95% of them. There are extremely significant moments that he literally doesn’t remember because he says they “weren’t a big deal.”

But my mom remembers them in detail. She has this way of telling stories where she doesn’t pay attention to what my reaction is. If she thinks the story is funny and cracks herself up while telling it, she’ll laugh so hard even if I’m spaced out on another planet and not smiling at all. Her laugh is the secret ingredient. Even if the story itself isn’t that funny, her laughing makes it seem a thousand times more so.

My friend Isaac has the most superpowers out of anybody I know.
One: He is so good at the Game Pigeon game Wordhunt. It’s the one where you have to connect letters to make words, and when he plays, his thumb doesn’t stop moving the entire time. It’s crazy. He regularly gets double the score of whoever he’s playing.
Two: He is so good at Subway Surfers. The other day he sent a screenshot of his high score, and it was 13,561,405. It was the highest score in the US that week. Okay, I’m going to repeat myself: it was the HIGHEST SCORE IN THE US THAT WEEK.
Three: He can fall asleep almost anywhere and almost instantly.
Four: He’s really good at guessing words for Taboo.
There’s literally more, but I’m going to stop there.

Jonathan’s superpower is being able to retain a humongous number of songs in his head. The amount of new music he absorbs on a regular basis is absurd. This is how long his monthly Spotify playlists are.
July 2020 – 7 hours 51 minutes
June 2020 – 11 hours 48 minutes
May 2020 – 12 hours 34 minutes
Oh my, his February 2020 playlist is almost 18 hours long.

If at the end of this year the playlists add up to 120 hours (which is a low estimate), that’s around 1800 songs. That might be more songs than I’ve listened to in my entire life.

I tested it, and maybe half of the time, he can name who the song is by and what it’s called after listening to it. Which might not seem so impressive because most songs have their title in the lyrics, but a good amount of the songs he listens to don’t because they’re not in English. And he estimated that he’s added songs from over one hundred different artists since the beginning of this year. Dude, I don’t know if I can even name fifty artists, let alone guess their songs.

Jonathan doesn’t think this ability is that special, but I think it’s insane.

Finally, my friend Jocelyn’s superpower is being funny, full stop. She’s the only person I know in real life who I would describe as funny. All of my friends say and do funny things, but she just is funny. She has these random thoughts and observations that make sense but that I would never think of in a million years. It’s something about how her brain works.

Okay. That’s it for now. I’ll have to do a part two once I figure out more.

What’s a theory you strongly believe in?
Can you name a superpower someone you know has?
Do you know what your own superpower is?
How many artists do you have added on Spotify?