You could be swinging from a star

There are certain questions that come up in general getting-to-know-you and passing-the-time conversations often enough that I really ought to have an answer at the ready at all times. "What's your favorite movie?" for example. It's a simple enough question, and the answer is inconsequential, really, but still, I cannot answer it. Favorite movie? Just one? In what category? Using what criteria? I grew up with The Sound of Music; I remember seeing it when I was the same age as each of the Von Trapp children, and I recall seeing it in high school and finally "getting," for the first time, that whole Nazi subplot I was mostly oblivious to as a child. But is it my favorite movie? Maybe... Likewise, I saw Say Anything about 117 times between 1990 and 1996. I probably still have large portions of it memorized, and I still wonder about the possible significance or inside joke behind otherwise seemingly meaningless lines like "What are these?" "Bavarian Dutch style pretzels." But again, does that qualify it for "favorite" standing? I just can't commit.

On the other hand, there are questions I'd be more than happy to answer, but no one ever asks... things I've probably spent entirely too much time thinking about when I could have been doing something useful and productive, like reading to the blind or at least filing the stack of papers that's been growing beside my computer for the past four months.

For example, if asked, I could tell you immediately that, if forced to choose, I'd give up one of my legs before losing an arm. And if Tyler Durden* was planning to somehow try to save the world by blowing up every fast food chain empire except one, I'd fight to save Taco Bell above any and all others.

The question I've probably thought about most often, however, despite having never been asked it, is this: What superhero power would you find most useful, if you could pick any superhero power at all?

For me, this one is no contest. I don't really need to fly, and I'm lazy enough already without having Plastic Man's ability to reach for a snack in the kitchen without even leaving the couch. The ability to make myself invisible would probably just lead to crippling paranoia and distrust (I'd always be hiding out waiting to hear what people said about me behind my back). No, none of these are powers I really particularly need. For me, the power that would be truly most valuable would be the ability to stop time.

I can think numerous scenarios where stoppage of time would be entirely useful and beneficial. Given my clumsy nature, I could prevent all sorts of potential messes and breakage by simply stopping the clock if a jar of spaghetti sauce suddenly slips out of my hands. When I'm running late for work (again), I could just freeze time for a bit while I caught up with whatever task had delayed me (finding my shoes, packing my lunch, etc., etc., etc.).

Mostly, however, my desire to stop time has to do with only one thing: sleep. I have no idea what time I would need to retire at night in order to be well rested at 6:30 each morning, but clearly it's several hours earlier than my usual weeknight bed time. Every morning, the alarm goes off, and I hit the snooze for as many times as I can before I absolutely have to pry myself out from under my fluffy down comforter and get into the shower. If only, in lieu of the snooze button, I could simply touch my fingers together to stop the clock and get another three hours of uninterrupted sleep. I can only imagine the wonders that would do for my demeanor all day.

This isn't really a superhero power, of course. It's the power that a half-alien teenager named Evie had on the little-seen 1980s sitcom Out of this World.

I really thought I was one of only a very few people who ever saw and still remembers that sitcom, until a week or so ago, when I stumbled across this fun little game on Nabbalicious's site. It took several questions (including some amusing and obviously narrowing-down ones such as "Is your father a housekeeper?" and "Do your parents own the mercantile?"), but eventually the Guess the Dictator or Sitcom Character Wizard asked me if I could stop time by touching my fingers together, and I was immediately certain he was onto me. He asked two or three more questions, just for good measure, and then correctly identified me as Evie. What surprised me, though, was that I was actually the 231st person to choose Evie in an attempt to stump the game. By contrast, only 161 people before me chose Skippy from Family Ties, who really, I thought, would have been a much more popular choice. That one took a little while, too. The game first had to establish that I wasn't friends with Mike Seaver and I don't hang out with a vampire slayer, but when it asked if I was in love with Mallory, I knew it had it again.

Incidentally, another sitcom I thought I was the only one to remember is Small Wonder, but oddly, I've stumbled across that one out of nowhere twice in the past week as well (here and here). Clearly my memory isn't as obscure as I thought.

I did, however, stump the "Guess the Dictator..." game with Jerry O'Connell's My Secret Identity. Not that that's anything to be too terribly proud of.



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* This one, I mean, not this one. Just in case there was any confusion on that.