Perhaps I haven't been eating enough exemplary vegetables?

    If I were a super hero and I could choose my default power, I think I'd choose invisibility.  If I'm only allowed one, I can think of no better all-around champion than the ability to stand next to someone and listen to them talk about their next big dastardly plan to blow up Wayne Tower or something.

    

    But sadly, with my luck, if I were to become radioactively charged or what have you and sprout some fantastic ability out of nowhere, I probably wouldn't be able to choose it, and it probably wouldn't come out as invisibility.  No, I'd probably have very little control over any aspect of my new identity.  My name would probably be something unbelievably lame like "Oracle" or "ThirdEye" and I'd look something like the nerdiest thing this side of MIT*.

     And my power would barely be a power at all.  Something like the ability to dream in color.  I mean, if we're coming from the Stephanie Meyer perspective, that would make the most sense: I would be bringing with me one power I possessed in my normalcy to my super-cy and amplifying it.  

    Because let me tell you: I have the weirdest dreams.

    You know, there are countless people who have told me they never remember their dreams, if they even have any, and the ones they do remember are very mundane, as though they're just reliving their day minute by minute in their heads.  So what my subconscious does at night must be some sort of genetic mutation.

    Last night, for instance, I had a dream that somehow, I was still in high school, still in band, and still in Outdoor Adventure II and everything was the same as it was last year when all those things were true in real life, as well. (Which is to say, in my sleep-weakened state, I thought everything was the same, when really, nothing looked like anything I'd ever seen, and had I been trying harder, I wouldn't have recognized anyone I came into contact with)  There were some oddities in my schedule: Wind Symphony was only a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday class at third period (a set up we endured in Junior High with some strange consequences) and the other two days, I was enrolled in Outdoor Adventure (an awesome P.E. class offered at my high school) with the main football coach for my teacher.  In fact, I was technically enrolled in that class all five days, but it was just accepted that I was to be absent Wednesdays through Fridays.  

    There were many facets to this dream, one being an activity done in the gym class involving the climbing rope doubling as a bungee cord and an unreliably springy gymnastics floor, which of course ended with me uncomfortably splayed on the floor, jaw throbbing, face reddening, and the whole class laughing at me.  (There is always some spark of truth to these things).  

    But the more interesting facet was the one involving Wednesday.  It was evidently protocol for me to check in with my gym teacher before skipping away to band, so I was doing just that, except said teacher was not letting me leave.  He insisted that, since I had arrived early (in order to arrive in the band room on time), I should help him set up the room for the activity they were planning on doing that day.  So, reluctantly, I did, and did not finish even after the bell rang to signal the start of class.  I asked Mr. D (his name was long and Italian) if I could leave, since I had another class to attend, and he said that I had to finish what I was doing first, that, if necessary, he would talk to my band director for me.  When I finally was allowed to leave, Mr. D didn't even give me a pass, so I was roaming the hall (lanyard-free, by the way, to those who care, if you happen to read this) unprotected.  

    I did finally get to the band room, which had morphed somehow into an actual classroom, complete with desks (circa third grade) and chalk boards and my band director sitting behind a computer while the rest of the students bent silently over their respective rhythm quizzes (only one who has gone through this particular band program can fully appreciate the ridiculosity of that image).  I made my way to my desk, which was nowhere near the desk of the one other person in my instrumental section, a fact that perplexed us both, judging by the shrug he gave me before returning to his quiz.  Mr. Banddirectorman called me out to his office, and I followed, with some difficulty, as everything was very cramped and no one felt it necessary to keep their belongings out of the walkways.

    When we got there, he sat down and pulled out his pad of hall passes, looking somewhat frightened for whatever reason, and asked me where I was coming from and I didn't have a pass with me.  I told him I had come from gym with Dr. Divertimento (o.O).  And without hesitation, or even waiting for me to finish my sentence, Mr. Banddirectorman forged the pass for me.  Why?  I don't know, because the only person who would need to see it was him.

    And then I woke up.

    So no superpower, just super-weird nights.

<3 spadeALLcross

* Both my father and one of my better friends has/is attended/attending MIT, so the term "nerd" is used here with due reverence and all the love in my heart.