My surprisingly numerous super powers

Here is a list of my superpowers. I may have more superpowers than these, of course, but I am not yet aware of them.

I’ve vomited just twice in my life:

Once on the Music Express at Rocky Point Amusement Park in 1982, and once in 2007 when a stomach bug – the only one I’ve ever had in my life – destroyed me for a day.

But other than those two moments of weakness, possibly associated with a kryptonite-like substance, I don’t throw up.

This is more unlikely than you might think. I drank an enormous amount of alcohol from the ages of 19-22, yet I’ve never had a hangover. In fact, after drinking enormous amounts of alcohol, I would awaken the next morning feeling fantastic.

I was fairly intolerable.

Despite this, I rarely drink nowadays. Wedding toasts and other celebratory moments are the only moments when I might drink a glass of champagne. I have friends who say I’m wasting my talent – superpower – by not drinking more often. But alcohol has lost its luster for me.

It’s also a far healthier choice to avoid it altogether.

Even better, not drinking simplifies my life. No longer do I need to linger over wine lists, keep a variety of alcohol in my home, or listen as some server describes their signature drink.

Best of all, I don’t have to talk about alcohol, which is a boring and repetitive topic of conversation but also one that drinkers engage in constantly.

These days, I drink Diet Coke, water, orange, apple juice, lemonade, and more recently, a lot of carbonated water. I’ve shifted quite a bit of my Diet Coke consumption to carbonated water. But fear not. I would never give up Diet Coke completely lest I rid myself of all vices and silence the soulless nags who feel the need to comment on the nutritional choices of others.

Oftentimes from a persistently sedentary position.

But I digress. Back to my superpowers.

I have also never bruised. Not once. Despite having been injured more than anyone I know, including a car accident that sent me through a windshield headfirst and left me dead for a few moments, I escaped without a single bruise.

The nurses thought I was a freak of nature.

I was punched in the face and many other body parts many times as a teenager, and I did my share of punching as well, yet the result of these fights was never a bruise on my body.

Elysha and I have been married for 16 years and have been together for almost 19 years, and she has never seen a single bruise on my body. By contrast, Elysha can bump into a throw pillow and find herself with an enormous bruise the next day.

I have yet to find a use for this superpower, but it’s super!

I can also hold my breath for an exceedingly long time. So long, in fact, that I have frightened Elysha and others on many occasions by diving into a lake and failing to emerge for what seems to me an unfathomable amount of time.

Twice in my life, lifeguards have leaped off their chairs and into the water of public pools, fearful that I had somehow lost consciousness underwater.

Both times they were exceptionally angry at me, accusing me of trying to frighten them.

Not true, but I admit to finding the whole thing amusing.

Holding my breath for long periods of time might not seem useful, but when I am aboard a cruise ship that overturns after being attacked by a sea monster, requiring someone to swim through an upside-down galley that has flooded with ocean water to press a button on the other side, I’ll be your man. And unlike the current crop of young people, I also have never owned a pair of goggles in my life and can open my eyes in pool, lake, and ocean water, so navigating that galley will be a piece of cake.

I am also a supertaster, verified via an actual test. My friend doubted my claim that I taste better than most (and therefore like fewer foods than most), so she purchased a supertaster test kit to prove me wrong. At a gathering of friends, our friends placed strips of paper on their tongues and were asked to identify the favor on the paper

None of my friends tasted a thing. I identified all the flavors correctly.

I taste food better than most, which is something children can also do. The older you get, the fewer taste buds you have. Therefore, the older you are, the less you taste. Your palate hasn’t gotten more sophisticated over time, as some arrogant dumbasses like to think.  You’ve simply lost the ability to taste things as your tastebuds slowly die.

You like that food that you despised when you were young because you can’t taste it like you once did.

Unless you are a supertaster or a child, of course. This is why we possess limited palates. While you plebian tasters are missing out on a multitude of flavors, we are tasting them all, and a lot of them suck.

Supertaster is obviously a superpower, but perhaps a Hulk-like superpower. Not exactly preferred.

I can also smell exceptionally well. At a tailgate a couple of years ago, my friend, Tony, opened a Ziplock bag containing marinating ribs. From a dozen feet away, in the open air, I said, “That barbecue sauce contains mustard.”

I’m allergic to mustard.

No one else, including Tony, could smell a thing, and Tony was sure that the barbecue sauce he and his wife used did not contain mustard. But just to be safe, he called his wife, who informed him that she had just purchased a brand new barbecue sauce for the first time. After checking the label, she confirmed that it contained mustard.

Everyone was dumbstruck. How the hell could I smell mustard when no one else could?

Simple:

I’m a superhero.

I’m a vomit-resistant, hangover-resistant, bruiseless, breath-holding supertaster and super smeller.

Maybe even a future Avenger.

Are you impressed?