I have a theory that everyone has a super power. Most people just haven’t figured out what theirs is yet. For example, my brother’s super power is his ability to find things. By this, I mean that he seems to come across cool and useful things that other people have lost. I all the time comment on a new t-shirt or hat or something else he’s wearing and ask him where he got it.
“Found it.”
“What do you mean, ‘found it?'”
“I mean I found it.”
“Like on the ground?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait. You just randomly found a t-shirt laying on the ground? With no one else around to own it? That you saw and picked up some random piece of clothing on the ground, took it home, made it yours, washed it, and now you’re wearing it? Something you just found in the street?!”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“What the hell, man? Who does that?”
And by “who does that?” I mean, who just spots things like clothing laying around in public, because I don’t. I never ever see those things. But then, I’ve seen his power in action. We’ve been out together at a concert, at a ballgame, walking home from a bar at night and we’ll both be cruising together down the same sidewalk, and lo and behold, he’ll spot a hat or a shirt or a scarf or something like that lying in our path that I completely missed. Like it existed on a wavelength on the spectrum that only his eyes could perceive. It wasn’t there when I looked, but it was when he did. And before I know it, he’s made someone else’s loss his gain. And it’s always something cool and fitting for him.
My theory behind the source of his super power is that it’s a zero-sum game for him. He loses things a lot, so he also finds them. Perhaps someone else is out there finding the things he loses, and he’s just cashing in on how the universe balances things out. One of the confirming factors in this theory of mine is the fact that I never ever lose anything. I’m generally pretty organized — even when I think I’ve misplaced something, I find that what I’m looking for was carefully filed away in some system that I’ve since forgotten, but there’s always a method to my madness. But because I never lose anything of my own, I never stand to gain anything of anyone else’s. There’s nothing to balance out.
I have a friend whose super power is the ability to make even the most common, cheap article of clothing look expensive and designer. She shops at Old Navy and TJ Maxx. We can have the exact same outfit from one of those stores, and I’ll look like it’s my laundry day in it, while she looks red carpet-ready. It’s amazing. She classes up everything she touches without even having to try. She doesn’t do anything special to them. She’s not a girlie girl. She’s a natural beauty with simple elegance. She’s sophisticated Old World and cutting-edge modern at that same time.Things just hang better on her. She puts them together better than most. Again, I theorize that there’s a source to her power. For her, it’s humility that balances her. She could wear the designer stuff — she has the body and the money, but she just doesn’t see the point. She likes to make do with the simple, and in doing so, makes a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. She’s also such a dear person, that she can’t help but wear her inner beauty on the outside. It gives her a glamour that somehow bends and refracts the light around her to create the optical illusion that those clothes she bought on the clearance rack at Target make her look like a million. She has a super power called style. The best part is that she makes everything, including you, seem more fashionable in her presence. Instead of feeling frumpy by comparison, she manages to somehow elevate the whole room just by walking into it. She’s a special soul indeed.
So, what is my super power? Well, I’ve got a couple, but my main, signature power, my golden lasso/invisible airplane/bulletproof bracelets, is my ability to find and secure rock star parking everywhere I go. By this, I mean that I will get an open parking space on the street directly in front of every and anywhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s popular a new restaurant, a store on Black Friday (which I don’t participate in, in reality), opening night at the opera, or the freaking U.S. Capitol on Inauguration day, I will get to park my car front and center and walk right in. Anyone who has spent any amount of time driving anywhere with me can absolutely, positively vouch for this ability. The best part is that my power has transitive properties that apply to any car in which I am riding, as long as the driver is willing to follow my driving directions to the spot. It might seem like a silly super power, but trust me, it’s handy to have, and you’d appreciate it if you were out with me. I can make your life easier and let you feel like a V.I.Fucking.P. at a busy/popular venue.
There are three main components to the source of my power, which, truth be told, is really more smoke and mirrors than a gift from the universe:
1. Patience and strategy. I am not too proud to go around the block a couple of times. I do this with the belief that a.) a space will open up and b.) I deserve to park right in front of wherever I’m going. Sometimes, I settle for walking down the block, but I almost never, ever have to walk in from another block, unless circumstances are beyond my control or I decide to settle, which almost never happens. That’s just not in my nature. At. All. The parking thing is a point of pride for me now. I also have an uncanny ability to notice people in their cars or walking to their cars and read their body language at a glance to tell whether or not they’re leaving the vicinity and opening up a space for me. That empathic sixth sense of mine allows me to read and anticipate others’ actions to be able to use the situation to my advantage. I know how to cruise and observe quickly and efficiently. I can see where the opportunities are. Too bad I can’t do the same with investing.
2. Kick ass driving skills. I am not afraid to cut across 3-4 lanes of traffic to get to a space that is open or opening. I’m not afraid to whip a U-turn on a tight street. I can react and maneuver a car with incredible skill. My parents taught me well how to be an assertive, but defensive, driver who can move a vehicle deftly and safely. I’m pretty nimble behind the wheel, and driving a stick helps with speed and agility. (Now watch — I’ll be in an accident in the next week to make me karma’s bitch and take me down a deserved notch or twenty for bragging like this. Knock wood.) Moreover, my mother made sure I was an expert at parallel parking at the age of 15. Being able to parallel park was an important skill to have in a beach town…if you wanted to go to the peace. Her philosophy was that parallel parking was a skill you had to master to be worthy of a license (used to be a part of the licensure road test), and I still agree with her to this day. If you can’t park your car, you don’t deserve to drive it. And so, between the fact that I know what the hell I’m doing and the fact that I drive a Japanese compact, I can whip my car into the smallest of spaces at the curb in record time. I can put a car into spots other people either drive right past or spend 15 minutes listening to the direction of three friends trying to squeeze into only to give up, drive on, and park six blocks away. I thank my mother for making me capable of spotting an opportunity and for ensuring that I could take advantage of it.
3. Good, dumb luck. This is the gift from the universe part, and perhaps the real super power itself. I have preternaturally good fortune. I always have. My mother was even remarking on it again yesterday. She started to attribute it to the fact that I’m observant and outgoing — that I tend to keep my eyes open and be in the right place in the right time. I get up next to the right people, win them over with some eye contact, a silver tongue, and a bit of the blarney. So, ok. Maybe I’m a bit of a master manipulator without meaning to be, but it’s really not so much that, except for the fact that I do look people right in the eye, and that tends to draw folks in. Also, I never met a stranger, so it’s easy to make strategic allies. I’m painfully outgoing. I look for relationships. No sooner had Mom hypothesized all of this that she immediately backtracked and said, “No, that’s not it. You were just born under a good sign. You’re just lucky. Everything always works out for you.”
She’s right. I’m charmed. My sister-in-law said a while back that I get whatever I want. Granted, the things I want are simple and few — like a good parking space. Pretty easy to grant those wishes. But she laid it out. I want to get into a school, I do. I’ve never been rejected from any place I’ve applied to. I want a job, I get it. I’ve never had an interview and not been offered the position. I decide I want to move somewhere, of course that’s going to happen, too. And she’s right. It does. Now, maybe I’m just aiming low. Picking low-hanging fruit. But, I don’t think so. I also work my ass off to make things happen. I bring my A game. Luck is probably 90% competence, and I make sure I have that. I do my homework. You can’t get the good parking space if you can’t park the damn car. No one was ever going to do things for me, so I made sure I knew how to do them myself. Always have.
This is not to say that that bad things don’t happen to me. They do. And when they do, they’re not just bad, they’re motherfucking batten-down-the-hatches, Katie-bar-the-door, get-in-the-goddamn-bomb-shelter catastrophic. We’re talking life and death. Fire and brimstone rains down without let-up. It sucks. I’ve had to make some really hard choices and deal with some soul crushing losses. I’ve had to live with myself in the aftermath, too. Had to live with what I couldn’t control and what I could…and what I did with that control and who or what that makes me. I can’t dwell on that, though.
But when it comes to the small stuff, the day to day stuff, I’m crazy fortunate. In the balance, I think the way the skids are greased for me on the mundane probably strikes a balance with the ugly, so I can’t complain. It works itself out. So, I don’t dwell on the ugly too much, except to process it like I do here. The good outweighs it. It empowers me. I always land on my feet no matter the height of the fall. There have been times I’ve looked down and saw the ground rushing up to meet me from a hundred stories below and thought, “oh man, this is it,” but each time fate gives me that instinct, that power of self-preservation to gut it out and twist my middle head first at the very end, and all four paws safely meet pavement at the last minute. Someone…something…me…always comes between me and disaster, and I’m thankful for it. It kind of makes my life easy. I try not to be too confident in my luck saving my ass all the time, but I have to admit that part of me does rely on it — the part that sees worry as a waste of time. I know it will all work out. It always does.
Confession time, though: I probably take my luck more for granted than I should. I’m an admitted scofflaw. For the most part, I’m a good citizen. I’m no criminal or anything, but truth be told, I see rules as bendable. Sometimes they just don’t apply to me. I bullshit my way out of things all the time — tickets, penalties, extra costs for things. I don’t lie. I just…bring people around to see things my way. I don’t take “no” for an answer. I won’t go unnoticed, unless I want to. I suppose that makes me a spoiled brat, but it’s not like I expect it. I just don’t see the harm in trying…because I know I’m gonna get lucky. My poor brother has none of this. It’s like there was a finite account of luck for our generation in our family, and I didn’t just soak up the lion’s share as my birthright, I took it all. He has zero luck. None. If he steps out of line in the slightest, he gets caught. He gets punished. I get away with murder. He’s lived a life of penalties and slaps on the wrist for doing things that everyone else does without getting caught. He can’t get anything past the universe, because I’ve somehow put his account into deficit. It kind of sucks. Sorry about that, brother. You deserve better. You’re actually a better person than I am, but I got all my luck and yours, too. Again, it’s that pesky universal balance thing. Only so much to go around.
So, why do I bring this up? It came to mind last night when I almost finally got what’s been coming to me for a long time. I have a dog. He’s a Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog. He’s giant, white, and very, very furry. He’s kind of hard to miss. In fact, he’s an attention magnet. It’s kind of stultifying the hypnotic effect he has on people. They can’t see him and not fall at his feet. He has powers. I think he might have my charm and luck, actually. We’re a pair. But my point: He’s a breed that’s bred to wander long and far. They’re bred to be independent and stubborn and untrainable. To work on their own without human supervision or command. He’s kind of the perfect dog for me. We have so much in common. And yet, he’s an off-leash dog. He came to me at age 6 or 7 after spending nearly all his life on the streets. He was starving and didn’t now a single command. No sit. No stay. No nothing. He was baffled as to how to even walk through a door — he stood at the hinges. Windows and stairs confounded him. He’d been living outside and eating garbage. He didn’t know what a house was. Two years later, I’ve got him trained on voice command, but there’s more to it than that — we have an agreement of mutual respect.
I’m not his “owner.” We picked each other. He stays with me, travels through this world as my companion glued to my knee because he chooses to, not because I’ve attached him to a leash and made him stay close. He stays close to me because he’s my lieutenant. My second. My other half. My guardian. My 125 pounds of loaded gun I take everywhere with me. And trust me, I am what he protects. I’m his moving castle, and no one’s gonna storm it. It’s really quite impressive in action. I don’t take it lightly. That sweet, friendly, mellow, dopey-looking boy who loves to let strangers pet him and walks at a snail’s pace can turn into a wall of snarling, charging hate with teeth bared and a growl that makes the pavement vibrate if required. It’s happened more than once. Again, a word from me is all that it takes to stop him in his tracks or call him off. I speak, he freezes (this is not to say that he won’t take off and totally ignore me to chase a squirrel — all bets are off with wildlife). We trust each other. We’re a team. We both have agency. He’s wicked smart and can clearly take care of himself, same as me. Our relationship is one of conversation and negotiation. I’m the boss, but I rarely command. We can communicate with just a look. We’re in it together. That’s how I know he’d lay down his life for me. He is the quintessential man’s-best-friend kind dog everyone wishes they had. I recognize that he’s probably one of a kind, and I relish every day with him. He’s amazing. Yesterday, he came with me to the chiropractor (because, as I said, he goes everywhere with me). As the doc was leading us down the hall to a treatment room, he called my dog to follow him. My dog stayed glued at my side. I had to explain that he wasn’t going to go anywhere with him. He was waiting for me to take a step before he did. He was walking with me. My chiropractor has three huskies who are sweet and well-trained, but full of energy. He found that kind of stalwart loyalty impressive. To be honest, so did I. I constantly do. But then, like I’ve said, I’m lucky.
I don’t like putting my teammate, my friend, on a leash like he’s my slave. And so, I usually don’t. When I do, we both resent it, and we immediately turn into the two Stooges. We don’t know how to act or move or relate to each other with that rope between us. I always get it off of him as fast as I can an apologize for it. And so, I’m out there every day with nothing but our voices linking us, knowingly breaking the law. Leveraging that luck of mine. Just begging for that hefty ticket if we ever get caught wandering around the city without a leash. I’m long overdue. I keep waiting for it to happen. Last night, it almost did. See, we take a walk around 9pm every evening. Me, and the big white dog…and our two black cats. Don’t ask. It’s crazy, I know. I didn’t train anyone to do it. They just all started coming along. No leashes. Just voice command. We move through the neighborhood together like a wave of mammalia, talking to one another in our own little ways. I realize that I’d be burned at the stake as a witch in another century for this little spectacle. It gets comments. People take pictures. But so far, no police attention, despite the fact that I have three off-leash animals with me (and, come to think of it, two of them now have expired licenses, too). As we headed out last night, we got about a third of the way down the next block before I noticed a cop car on the corner checking me out. It was my incredible luck that I noticed him from that distance in the dark. He stopped. The cats immediately cheesed it — good little thugs that they are. The dog sensed the silent tension in my suddenly-alert body language and instinctively pulled up beside me and sat. I put my hand gently on his neck and scratched softly under his collar. And so it went on like that. A Mexican standoff — us standing in the yard like statues, and the cop waiting for us to tip our hand and make a move. Waiting for us to finch, for my dog to take off and separate from me, betraying me by making it obvious that he was sans leash. But he didn’t. He just sat there calmly at my hip. And I didn’t move either. Just stared down the cop, daring him to come over and check us out. Minutes passed. Suddenly, the car’s blue and red lights started to spin overhead, his siren wound into a pealing wail. I braced for his approach, but he pulled a left turn and tore out of the neighborhood to answer another call. Saved again by luck, my brood and I regrouped, turned south, and headed down the block. We concluded our walk uninterrupted, unmolested, and unticketed…yet again.
I know I’m pushing it, though. I know my number will come up eventually. Until then, I’m going to continue to try my limits and do things my way, because I’m a brat like that. I can do it, because I’m fortune’s daughter. She arms and protects me and mine. Of all the super powers to have, I have to say it’s a pretty good one.
bittersweet distractors 