my secret super powers

The year: 2002. The scene: Brand-new graduate assistants (me + fourteen?) in a masters program. Eight hours a day, five days a week in a windowless room reading, talking, writing, drawing, theorizing (this was before the semester began). About eight days into it: brain overload. And a discussion about minor super powers.

Huh?

There is a danger to putting fifteen wanna-be academics into a room and letting them talk and think all day. That danger is that, eventually, their talking (and thinking) will get so far afield that it will be nonsensical, other-worldly (this danger is especially preeminent in the humanities, and we were all English majors--go figure). For us, brain overload = discussion on minor super powers.

Josh, a blond cutie with a happy-feel-good outlook on life whom all of his female students (and probably some of the males, too) promptly developed crushes on later in the semester, came up with the concept. He decided that each of us had special qualities that the rest of us just didn't possess. These special qualities were our minor super powers. During that break (probably our lunch, because the discussion lasted for quite a while), we determined what each of our minor super powers were. Mine? The minor super power of accessorizing. I was deemed a near-expert at it, from my necklaces and earrings to my hats, belts, and boots. I was an accessorizer.

My minor super power, I hate to admit, has since become latent. This is partly because that year I gained forty pounds (which I'm still trying to get rid of) and started to dislike drawing attention to myself (which, I must admit, I usually love). But lately I've been accessorizing again, and each time I pick up a bracelet, put on earrings or a necklace, or wear that houndstooth newsboy hat I bought two months ago, I think of Josh, my friends from my masters program, and minor super powers. Because our minor super powers weren't just a one-time conversation, forget about it the next day type of thing. No. References to our minor super powers lasted for the next two years, and are something that I love to look back on. So thanks to Josh, Erin, Jacquie, Erin (there were two of them!), and everyone else that made my masters program--and minor super powers--memorable.

Hmm. An entire blog about secret super powers and no mention of my bigger secret, Super Speed Woman. I guess some things are just meant to remain secrets...