Ever do anything seemingly Superhuman?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Most people have done something in their lives that may classify as superhuman. Websters defines Superhuman as :exceeding normal human power, size, or capability…

I have a couple recent anecdotal stories about things that have happened to me that may classify in the superhuman realm, they all have to do with reflexes…Sorry I don’t have a story about lifting a truck off a baby, or walking on water…Here goes:

A week or so ago I was showing a friend my wedding band. I was standing with two other collegues as well. I took the band off and dropped it into the hand of said friend. As I did this I turned my head to talk to the collegue on my right.
The ring bounced off my friends hand and fell to the floor. At that instant, with my head turned to the right, my left hand swooped down so fast no one really saw it, and snatched the ring from under my friends hand.
His eyes got huge, as did my collegues, and he said, “Damn! how’d you do that? I barely even saw your arm and hand do that?”
I, equally amazed, said I hadn’t a clue as to how that just happened.

Story two:

I was at the Pub with a few friends and my wife when a similar incident happened. Only this time potentially more damaging to my person. We were playing darts. My wife was up - she’s a very skilled thrower :slight_smile: - I had my back turned to the board, a Boddington’s in my right hand and nothing but gestures in my left. I was not looking at my wife who just threw her third dart.
SMACK! - A brick. it came flying back at ME - something darts have a tendency to do on occasion, especially the light aluminum ones. And without knowing why my left had shot out and snatched the dart out of mid air befor it hit me. Again my friend said, “Holy sh*t! how’d you do that?”
My wife said, “OH HONEY!! ARE YOU OK? DID THAT HIT YOU?”

Then when she realized what had just happened she said, “You caught it?..wow good catch honey!”

I do not know how any of the things I described happened. If I were looking, I would at least have a partial explination…but I wasn’t…so I leave it to the universe to make it’s decision…I just hope I get informed…

Anyone else?

2

Not sober, no.

3

I had a friend, once, who claimed he could do all sorts of crazy things. Once he told me the story of how he was nearly hit by a speeding car - but he was able to leap right over the car like it was a stepstool. (I.e., he probably wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing, almost got run over, and imagined what would’ve happened if he’d actually leaped.)

Extraordinary things I’ve done? Nothing spectacular. I’ve got severe asthma, and on some occasions - when I’m in a hurry - I will keep going even when it’s clear that I’m about to asphyxiate. This is very stupid of me, but I’ve been able to get pretty far without the ol’ albuterol. Does not using the restroom for nine hours at a stretch all throughout elementary and middle school count? I was a neurotic little kid … but darn, could I hold it.

4

When I was 16, I was cleaning gunk off a boat engine which Dad and I planned to put on our lawn mower.
The engine was (rather foolishly) resting on a two-wheeled cart, which shifted unexpectedly and became a steep incline, allowing the engine to quickly slide down. It went fast enough, and was heavy enough, that it would have easily broken both my legs.

Realizing I was in for some major, MAJOR pain, I grabbed the dropping engine, jerked it up to chest level, and slammed it back down on the cart (knocking the cart back to level). Then I stood there staring at it, thinking “How did I do THAT???”

The engine was heavy enough that it normally took Dad and I together to lift it, and we had to strain. So I somehow did a bicep curl with at least twice the weight that I could have deadlifted at the time.

5

Once, during a softball game, I was struck out.

Being pissed off, I took the bat high over my head and snapped it down like I was going to break it in two over my knee.

Evryone…including me…was more than just a little surprised when I broke it for real.

6

Once in high school I was with a group of pals during lunchtime and some people nearby were tossing bottlecaps around. After being hit by one too many I took one away and flipped it with my thumb like a quarter. It ended up soaring over twenty feet and into a trash can behind me.

7

I got an A in organic chemsitry I…does that count?

8

As one of the world’s klutziest klutzes, I’m the anti-superhuman most of the time. I’m woefully uncoordinated when it comes to large muscle groups. The expression “couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a beachball” was coined for me. So no one was more surprised than I was when a friend sitting at the other end of a six-foot banquet table tossed a mint meltaway at me and I caught it in my mouth.

9

I was at a party, several years ago, where there were several foreign exchange students. I was sitting in the kitchen with two Chinese and a French student. For some reason, there was a pair of chopsticks lying on the table, which prompted the French student to mention that he had never been able to eat with chopsticks.

I said: “it’s easy, look!” I then picked up a beer cap with the chopsticks to show him it wasn’t all that hard. Then, probably compelled by the amount of booze I had, I threw the beer cap high up and made a very approximate, sweeping gesture to catch it with the chopsticks as it fell back down. And I did. The two Chinese guys were flabergasted. Fortunately, I was quick enough to realize what was happening, so I tried to not lose my composure and calmly put everything back on the table. “See, it’s not that hard,” I said.

Since then, I tried maybe fifty times to redo that trick when no one is watching and I have not succeeded a single time.

10

A fly landed on the edge of a sign on the desk I was working at (think one of those stand alone jobs) I flicked it and was amazed when it dropped dead. I blinked looked at it wondering why it died when I barely brushed it. I looked at the body and it looked very strange. Slowly it dawned on me I had beheaded the fly on the edge of the sign.

Ok maybe not superhuman BUT all of my greatest acts are usually blunders of superhuman stupidity and clumsiness.

11

When I was nine years old my sister (who was twelve at the time) and I were horse back riding at a friend’s house. I was on a little shetland pony and she was on a full grown quarter horse. We went back to the house to get something to drink. As we dismounted we were about fifteen feet apart. My back was to her. I don’t remember being alerted to any danger and everything was a little blurry at this point. I don’t mean my memory of the event is blurry. My vision at the time was literaly fuzzy and unfocused.

Sis had tripped after her dismount and was lying flat on her back on the ground. The horse was standing over her and rearing up, the hooves aimed to land directly on her chest. I ran to her, somehow reaching her before the hooves touched her and pushed the horse aside so its hooves landed on the ground a few inches beside her. Sis was unharmed, thankfully, but a little shaken.

I still don’t know how I could have pushed that horse away from her.

12

Aged fourteen or fifteen or thereabouts, I was passing by a group of fellow kids who were pretty much being jackals–trying to “start a fight” ostensibly with one of the routine targets of that kind of thing. In other words, working themselves up to beating him up.

One actually leapt on his back, and I found myself simply reacting in a burst of anger; stepped forward, grabbed him, and threw him backwards. He flew easily six feet before sprawling onto the ground with a stunned expression. The incipient incident dissolved as they all decided it was time to just mutter and wander away.

I’ve never been a strong fellow; managed to hit some principle of leverage and weight that was just right, apparently.

13

I don’t know if this counts, but it’s mystified me to this day.

Caveat: This was back when I was an unmedicated bi-polar, and well within a nice manic day.
I decided to walk several miles to visit a friend at work. When I got there, she was complaining of an almost blinding migraine. I told her, “Here, this will help.” and I just put my hands on her head and sorta -willed- my pent-up energy into her. Afterwords, I felt quite drained, and she felt fine- her migraine gone.

14

I was quite thoroughly bullied all through my childhood. One day, in 8th grade, I was spit on by one of my regular bullies in the hallway. I found myself picking him up by the neck with one arm, his feet not touching the floor, and saying in a pent-up angry voice “don’t do that again.” I was average size, as was the bully. I guess I had just had enough.
I was not bullied after that.

15

Well, this isn’t superhuman, but:

At a beach fire pit, a friend made the mistake of walking backwards into the pit, which was about 1.5 feet high, ringing the fire. Her momentum made her fall backwards as her feet got stopped. She sat down on the pit wall, and continued to fall backwards.

Everything went very slowly for me. Looking back, I found it hard to believe that it must have all happened in about 2 seconds. I shot out my hand, still holding my hot dog skewer, grabbed a handful of coat around her chest, and pulled her back forward and off the pit wall. People were fairly impressed, but I didn’t get it for a bit, as I had thought that someone else who extended an arm had also helped, but in fact I had been the only one to grab her, and had totally reversed her travel from tipping over backwards seated to standing.

16

Cardinal, what you describe is very similar t my situation… It’s like you don’t get what happened until a few seconds later…

17

When I was four, my sister was 3 and we were in our bedroom playing. at the time we had a lark oak dresser, and my sister had pulled out the first two drawers in order to use them as stair to climb up. I saw her fall off, and due to the weaigh of the drawers sticking out, and herself, she’d caused to dresser to tip over. I rushe over, putting my hands on the top two drawers so they wouldn’t fall out on my sister who at the moment was under me and the dresser. I called for my mother, she came in and it she had to push the dresser up with both hands. I’m guessing that I was holding over my head somewhere over 100lbs, at age 4.

When I was 11-12, my sister had just seriously ticked me off, and I found myself chasing her down in one of those brooding, broad shoulderred stances. As i came up to a chair that was in my way, I pulled it from my left side, with my right hand, inot the air, across the room and into a wall where it broke. After I calmed down and had to clean up the damage, I realized the chair had to weigh somewhere around 70-80lbs, being made out of heavy solid wood. The distance from its resting position and the wall was around 10 feet. It hit the wall 2 feet off the ground, with enough force to break in 3 areas, ranging between 1.5 and 3 inches thick.

When I was 16 I was told a rumor that was being spread around the school about me by some random flunkie. The rumor was far beyond any insult I previously received, and I was in near tears at the fact that something like that was being said about me. Without when the guy started laughing I grabbed him by the collar without thinking about it, and pushed him trhu 4-5 other student into the wall. I held him there and asked him who started the rumor. When he told me I let him go, and was suprised to see him shrink an inch or two. I was holding him up off the ground. He probably weighed around 160lbs.

Finally, when I was 17 I was working at my father’s gas station. As I came out of the office to bring a woman her credit card receipt I noticed a red blur coming at me at considerable speed. It startled me enough to make me jump, and just as my feet left the ground a ferrari front bumper hit my shins. My legs swung out from under me as my but hit the hood, I roled up the windshield on my back, slamed into the top driver’s side corner of the windshield with my shoulder, and rolled off the roof onto my feet, behind and to the side of the car. The driver who sped into the station parking lot was planning on just looping around to the pay phone and stopping there, he didn’t see me coming out of the office. He got out of the car and with fear in his eyes and voice asked me if I was ok. After a quick assesment I realised nothing was broken, though I might have a bruise on my shoulder in a few mins, so I simply held out my hand until he emptied his wallet. When he left i noticed I dented in his hood and spiderwebbed his windshield. The woman I was bringing the receipt to asked me if I was ok, I said I was great, that was the easiest 200 bucks I’d ever made.

18

I had a roommate who had some kind of magnetic field surrounding his body. A powerful one. If he wore an analog wristwatch for more than a few days, it would stop working and never work again. He once borrowed my electric typewriter to work on a paper, and, as I was watching, proceded to fry the thing. Smoke and a few sparks. Figuring it was a fluke, I borrowed my sister’s typewriter (same model), and he tried using it in a different room (in case the outlet had been at fault). Same results. Oh yes, he also got hit by a car once, hard enough for his head to have gone through the windshield. Had a couple of cuts on his scalp but was otherwise unhurt. I think he was about 12 at the time.

My only “superhuman” story (aside from some of my miraculous responses in college bowl) was an incident I chalk up to “parental reflexes”. I was carrying my three-year-old daughter down a flight of steps, tripped, and took a nasty spill all the way down, landing on rough concrete. In complete defiance of the laws of physics, I managed to keep my daughter upright so that she never touched the ground. I was scratched up pretty badly but my little girl was completely unharmed.