Does anyone else have a useless power?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I can find pubs and bars, even in completely unfamiliar places.

For example, I once arrived in a town in Spain at 2am, after a long and stressful journey. I was too pent-up to sleep, and I needed some refreshing, cold beer. I’d never been there before, and had no clue about the layout of the town or anything, so I asked the people we were staying with if there was a bar anywhere that might be open. “No,” they said, “nothing’s open at this hour”.

I didn’t believe them. Surely, in a town of this size and with plenty of tourism, somewhere there’s going to be a bar that opens late. I started walking, using instinct. I came to a restaurant that was closing down for the night, and asked the patron. “No, everything is shut now”. I didn’t believe him.

Walking through the dense grid network of the streets, left here, right there, straight across here, left there, I eventually came across a little bar that was lit up and serving, and quenched my thirst with a few large San Miguels before heading back to our lodgings the way I’d come, spotting minor landmarks I’d memorised on the way out to aid navigation. It was about a half-hour walk each way.

Over the next few days, as I got to know the layout of the town, I realised that I’d taken exactly the right route from the lodging to the bar - the same route I’d have taken had I known exactly where I was going. I also learned that it was the only bar in town that opened that late.

In British towns and cities, I’ve got an unerring knack of - not finding a pub, that’s pretty easy - but finding a good pub, serving decent beer, no jukebox, friendly clientele. These tend to be in a single, slightly run-down area slightly away from the city centre, and I’ve no idea how I know every time where that area might be, but I do.

Not exactly useless, but not useful enough to make me a fortune, alas.

22

I can raise the temperature of my fingers with my mind. In other words, if I am holding a thermometer between my thumb and pointer, I can make it go up two or three degrees without using friction.

Totally useless but a fun party trick.

23

I can witch animals, even wild ones, into trusting me or letting me close.

Cats that “hate” people, especially strangers, will come out of hiding and sit in my lap.

I was able to “freeze” a wild mouse in place and set a plastic cover over him to capture him.

Sailboat

24

I’m a synaesthete. Does that count?

Also, I have the power of tripping over myself every few steps, thanks to a weak ankle and bad instep. Behold, Super-Klutz!

25

I’m starting to see the formation of new group of super heroes:

Tripping Girl !
Directions Man !
Pubfinder !

26

I have the same power, except that I can get lost two blocks from own house. So yeah, the random people who always come up to me asking for directions usually end up leaving befuddled and probably heading the wrong way.

27

When I’m with a group of people, I have an uncanny ability to be standing exactly where somebody else will want to walk within the next minute. Wherever I stand, someone will be sure to want to go directly past me. It’s not useful at all, although I guess I could use that talent as a way to meet new people.

28

Maybe you smell like catfood?

29

:stuck_out_tongue: This happened to me once.

My mother made a cat bed for my cats for Christmas, and I packed it in my suitcase for the trip home. Little did I know it was filled with catnip…

A few days later (wearing a pair of jeans from that same suitcase) I stopped in to visit a friend with a notoriously unfriendly cat that proceeded to jump on my lap and rub itself on me for the entire visit. I instantly gained a reputation as the “cat whisperer”

30

Very often, I’ll think about a particular scene from an episode of a TV show, even if I haven’t watched any episode of that show in months; I’ll stumble across that very episode later that day.

31

I can carry all the groceries from the car to my door, including large, unwieldy things like milk jugs, soda bottles, and laundry detergent in one trip. I think my record is something like ten bags, a gallon of milk, detergent, and a twelve-pack of beer. I only had to put down the twelve pack to unlock my front door. :smiley:

32

Well, I don’t know about him(?), but I type at about 60 wpm last time I tested and I do a sort of hybrid between hunt and peck and touch typing. It would always piss off my instructors in typing class. “You can’t type like that!” well, obviously I can, it works quite well for me.

My useless power? When I worked at Tim Horton’s I’d put on a fresh pot in time for someone to walk in the door just as it stopped brewing. Even if I hadn’t made a fresh pot in a few hours (yeah, not company policy, but it was a night shift and quite dead).

My not-so-useless power is that I can walk quite silently and often surprise people by ‘sneaking up’ on them. I thought I was making plenty of noise…

33

I wasn’t able to do this until I started playing Medieval: Total War. When you doubleclick on a unit to not only select it but to zoom the camera to where the unit is, the camera not only transfers its location to the new unit but also its orientation. Which can be dizzying if you are not expecting that dual-motion snap.

So my mind got to expecting this so as to not be disoriented, even to the point where I can spin things around in my mind now.

34

I had the ability to turn off street lights as I drive under them. It used to be that I couldn’t go more than 10 minutes without a street light flipping off when I passed. I don’t think I have had it happen in a few years now, though.

35

This is actually pretty useful. People are taught to do things like this in migraine management and various anxiety reduction/stress reduction classes.

36

Useful for academia, too. Could get you full professorship in the liberal arts.

37

For the last few years, I have been the Can You Help Me? Lady–older women come up to me out of the blue at places like Kohl’s at the mall, and ask me for help. “Do you know where they keep the Misses clothing in this store?”

The most recent one was just last week at Target. I’m browsing in Home Storage Solutions, and as I come around the end of the aisle, looking at the modular wire storage gizmos, an older woman across the way in Bed and Bath flags me down. “How d’you get someone to help you in this store?” So I was happy to show her how the red phones work, but still it was weird, and it’s always weird every time it happens.

A Church Lady at another church I was visiting earlier this summer shook my hand cordially and burst out with, “You know, I just wanted to tell you, you just have the sweetest face!” So maybe that’s the answer–I look less intimidating than your average redshirted Targeteer.

And I am married to Mister I Deliver Your Mail. No kidding, no matter who the Better Half is introduced to, say, a visitor at church, once he hears their name, he says, “Hey! You live at [address], right?” And they go, “Um…yeah? Um…how do you know that?” And he goes, triumphantly, “I deliver your mail!” Since there are 86,000 people in Decatur, and I know for a fact he can’t possibly deliver all their mail, I have never been able to figure out how the trick is done.

38

I’ve done nearly the exact same thing…great minds and all that… :smiley:

I think there’s a correlation with wanting to bring in all the groceries in one trip and not wanting to take the same route on the return trip, whether driving, hiking, or whatever…

I got part of that knack from having a job delivering flowers in college; for hospital deliveries, funeral deliveries, etc., I’d have them all riding along my arms. The trick is, the floral arrangements form a sort of canopy and keep each other from falling down, a bit.

39

I can do that too!

My mother has this super power:

“Hey, you speak English. Are you from America? Wow, I’m from America too! What a coincidence! Do you know Steve?”

Invariably, the person knows Steve.

40

Oh yeah, whoops. I meant to put *96 WPM but I had my brain on Autopilot again.