Is it always about a hundred pages?
I wake up before the alarm, but I know it’s not something that’s just in my brain because I will wake up a few minutes before the alarm and be able to get up and go flip the switch. I can also set an internal alarm clock in my brain most of the time, by focusing on the thought “I have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow. 6:30! 6:30!” and visualizing how dark it will be at that hour, the clock reading “6:30”, and the process of getting up. I usually do this when I have something important to do, like catch a flight, and I’m in a place where I don’t really trust the alarm. It’ll work unless I’m seriously sleep-deprived.
I knew someone who had mastery over elevators. He showed them who was boss and they opened for him every time. It was pretty cool. His theory, if I recall correctly, was that they respected him because he never abused the power by using the elevator when he only had a couple of floors to go.
I attract the lost apparently.
Even if I’m in a city for the first time ever wandering souls seeking directions stop to ask me how to get where they want to be; out of a crowd of other people they will home in on me. This is particularly sad as I have lousy navigation abilities and can’t even direct someone to a place I know well. This minor superpower extends to stores as well where people are always asking me where stuff is. I have no idea most of the time.
It can’t be because I look like I know what I’m doing. No one at work ever believes me even when I have the answer they’re looking for. Which is frequently as work is the one place where I really do know what I’m doing.
I have several. In no particular order, I have the ability to:
[ul]
[li]In a fifty-fifty situation, find the last mine in Minesweeper (by stepping on it). This works best when it’s down to the last two squares.[/li][li]Babies and very small children find me fascinating to look at. I can usually get babies to stop crying by looking at them, but only if their eyes are open.[/li][li]Make an individual stock go up in price by selling shares of it.[/li][li]Make restaurants go out of business. This only works if I like the restaurant. Sometimes this power bleeds over to cool small boutiques.[/li][li]Find the slowest moving supermarket checkout line. If it’s the shortest line then there will be something wrong with the person in front of me’s purchase or their credit card.[/li][li]Get crazy old people in slow moving vehicles to pull out in front of me in traffic without looking.[/li][/ul]
What can I say? It’s a gift.
I possess an amazing sense of smell, which means I’m always the one to get a mayonnaise jar/carton of milk/tupperware with food from the dawna time shoved under my nose, accompanied by the question “does this smell bad to you?”
<sigh> I seem to be the jak-jak parr of superpowers…
I can make a superstore lose knowledge of a product by buying it.
I have a forcefield… of discomfort. When people enter it I feel uncomfortable.
I seem to magnetically attract total strangers. If I choose a path their path changes ever so slightly to get in my way.
Oh and this one is creepy: I seem to have an aura of effect on computers and technology. By walking into a room I can make a working computer break, and a broken computer work. It happens so often it’s uncanny.
Hmm.
Delayed reaction times – sometimes I’ll be walking and wind up walking into a corner even though I SEE the durn thing coming from several feet away.
Does it count if I’m good at Simon Says types of puzzles because of excellent peripheral vision? (Only works if I don’t think about the sequence, strangely enough)
Oh, and I apparently have some pretty good body language skills. So I can tell someone exactly what I think without resorting to talking (either out loud or in sign, or giving 'em the bird 
).
- I can’t sleep through anything. My mum told me I am the lightest sleeper she’s ever seen. However, I can fall asleep almost at will, and anywhere. I can sleep through loud noise if it was already there when I decided to fall asleep. I sleep every day on the train, but I never overshoot my station, which brings me to my next point…
- I always know when to wake up. I wake up at 8am every day except Sundays, when I have to wake up at 4:45am. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, and about ten years ago I realised I was wasting my time setting the alarm, so I haven’t done it since. I have never overslept as a result.
- I can “tell” whether traffic lights are going to be red or green before they come into view around the corner. I have thought this might be because I’m subconsciously noting the opposing traffic flow, but I’ve tested it very early in the morning when there is no traffic anyway, and it still works. Always.
- I have the uncanny knack (if I’m in a hurry) of pulling up at a red light behind a Ferrari in the fast lane, and a Model T Ford in the slow, and choosing to get behind the Ferrari, the driver will stall the engine, and the Model T will be a turbo-charged unit on its way to a motor show. Well, it seems like it anyway. It’s always the faster looking car that goes slower.
- I usually get no grief from aggressive dogs. Not always mind - the truly psycho ones are a different thing, but those big barkey ones that run out onto the footpath and scare people usually approach me like that, get halfway, and then just walk up and say ‘hi’. So they’re not scared of me either, they just think I’m goofy enough to have a bit of a doggy conversation with (which, I suspect, is all they want from anyone).
They could have used you yesterday.
As for useless superpowers, I’m starting to think I have a power to get queens against me on the flop.
At first I took this as a bee remark, and I was really puzzled until I thought of poker.
No, it was always different. Wasn’t like one copy of a pile of papers an inch thick. It could be 15 copies of 128 pages or 48 copies of 380 pages. I could stack reams of paper in the tray and it would be dead on. No way of calculating before hand and I didn’t try.
It happened a lot and still does sometimes. I’m just not around copy machines and printers as much as I used to be.
[QUOTE=ShibbOleth]
[li]Make an individual stock go up in price by selling shares of it.[/li][/quote]
You know, I might be interested in some of those stocks you’re selling.
[quote]
[li]Make restaurants go out of business. This only works if I like the restaurant. Sometimes this power bleeds over to cool small boutiques.[/li][/QUOTE]
My friend had the same sort of power but instead, it was a grocery store would stop selling an item that he liked.
I can hear really, really high noises that most people can’t. There is a high whine that quite a lot of older-model television sets have that I can hear, and it gives me a headache. Every school I went to seemed to own just these models, and I would spend every hour we watched an educational show with my hands over my ears.
My hearing is also very sensitive. I can’t go to a concert or a bar without using earplugs. I don’t know how anyone can stand it being so loud!
Thought of more:
I am very consistent when it comes to predicting the future. More specifically, I’m always wrong. If I’m looking forward to getting a job, I won’t get it. If I’m hoping Mom will pick me up Friday instead of Thursday, she comes Thursday. If I make a backup plan in case soemthing goes wrong, things go right, and vice-versa. I have been able to somewhat compensate for this by listening to my thoughts and then telling myself the opposite will surely happen, but I have this nasty habit of not listening to myself.
Along the lines of restaurants going out of business, if I really like a show when it first comes on, it will be cancelled within two seasons. Ditto, sort of, on certain food items. My favorite flavour is always the first to be discontinued, or it’s really hard to find in the first place.
I can cause snow. On several occasions I have remarked that we’re due for a big snowfall, and one will generally come within two days. My crowning achievement in this came on an April day that was 20 deg C. Granted, this is Calgary and this kind of thing happens all the time, but not predictably.
I have an uncanny knack to arrange songs on a mix CD so that they flow perfectly.
I can cease hiccups at will.
I have a similar ability, but it only applies to presidental elections . In 1996(I was young and bad at math), I thought Dole would win. In 2000, I thought Gore would win. In 2004, I thought Kerry would win.
I could make some money off this if I remember in 4 years.
I can do crossword puzzles in my head. I also read faster than anyone I’ve ever met. I’m still waiting for an evil genius to plant a bomb in the city which will explode in 90 minutes, the location of which can only be discovered by reading his cryptic and novel-length manifesto, and which once found can only be disarmed by solving a sequential series of verbal puzzles. Sadly, until that day I’m reduced to bugging the hell out of people by solving their puzzles out loud over their shoulders.
My sister has a related power, in that she can always solve other people’s crosswords, but never her own.
Wow, I have many of the same gifts as Shibb. I also have the ability to turn invisible to store clerks. In addition to that I also appear to be a store clerk to other customers.
I also seem to emit a powerful zone of Murphy’s Law anywhere in my vicinity.
I got the gift of song lyric precognition. I can sing along to songs, predicting the words as I go, even if I’ve never heard the song.
I have the uncanny ability to accidentaly put my foot into a box. Like I did about 2 seconds ago. My foot gets stuck, and I end up walking around for a while with a box taking up most of my lower leg.