The page is empty.

Well, not completely empty. My name is at the top along with the question posed by one of the 1940s villainous types, with a twirling mustache and glinting monocle. The whole silver screen enchilada.


An ode to writing college applications. You are supposed to put down your story in 250 characters or less. These spaces, letters, parenthesis and hopefully no exclamation marks determine your fate. What are you supposed to do to limit your words? Cut out pages of your internal memoir? Play Mad Libs with your life?

My problem with college applications is that I keep getting distracted and so I am finding excuses to, well, excuse myself.


It is also because of the fact that most of my extracurricular activities involve saving various people from mayhem and evil.


The perks of being a teenage superhero.




It’s a story with quite a few bumps in the road and poorly made tires. When I was ten, living with my mother, older brother, and father, we had this… aunt. An evil aunt, though the word evil feels a bit extreme (think back to twirling mustache and glinting monocle, but this time on a forty something or other female with large teeth and crazy eyes). Somehow, she poisoned our food. In my mind it’s Thanksgiving, a large pie swirling with an evil skull-and-crossbones over it. A family happy. A cut, a scoop into the mouth. End scene.


Damn that scoop.


They do not cover these things in college prep.

“How to Discuss Your Family’s Poisoning 101” or “How to Cover How an Aunt Single Handedly Comatose-ed Your Brother and Put You in Hospitals Over the Course of Your Life”.

Health issues are difficult to deal with let alone talk about it in a college essay. Especially when you are the only one who knows the whole story (well, most of it, I’ve done a bit of sleuthing with my new fangled skills, but I will get to that later). But Sick Brother, also known as Marshall, is not in college, though he is brilliant. His kidneys gave out a while ago and now he is bedridden. My mother quit her job as an editor to stay with him and now works on comics and children’s picture books, something that she can do sitting in an old chair down the hall.


Dad, the geologist, still travels. He’s not the same man I remember from the beginning of my existence. He is less jovial and more harrowed, though I do not know why this older description of him is Santa-Clause-Esq. But he still travels as an advisor to corporations that need a geologist to do advising things. He’s not home a lot.


Lastly, there is me. The metals, so I’ve figured, have severely stunted my growth. I am four feet and eleven inches at eighteen years of age and have a lot of difficulty reaching anything in the kitchen. I constantly get rashes around my nose, giving the expression of having a permanent cold. I’m allergic to 37 different foods, which has already limited my career as a champion pastry maker.


And then there are the super human abilities, which you wouldn’t expect. Even if I was 5’8” and muscly. It’s just not a thing.


This all came to be after one day when I grabbed my brother’s peanut butter sandwich instead of my almond butter one. Convulsions, aching, nausea, followed by running to the bathroom and abandoning my backpack at the lunch table.


Suddenly: voices.

Everyone’s voice. I could hear them in my head, even though the lunchroom as about 50 feet away. They were loud, shouting, and incredibly personal. “Oh dear, he doesn’t see me! He doesn’t! I could just come out and say ‘Jeremy, I’m in love with you,’ and he wouldn’t even notice”. “CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP, how did I let this happen? How did this project get pushed into NOW? 25 minutes. 25 MINUTES. I’ve got to do this. SHUT UP, EVERYBODY.”


One incredibly clear voice broke through the muddled crowd. “She ran off again. I don’t believe her with all of these issues. Someone has to be a martyr.”

That day was a big lesson in the abilities department.

First thing, there are SUPERMASSIVE headaches that follow any of these episodes. I had to go home after being in the bathroom for roughly thirty minutes.

Secondly, they are somehow related to the foods that I am allergic to.

Thirdly, sometimes it produces results that aren’t particularly savory.


Thirty-seven different allergies, thirty-seven different powers. That’s how things lucked out.





END