in which I found my superhuman power

I've just started watching TV again out of boredom and mostly because of the tennis tournaments leading to the Australian Open. I must say that I'm quite impressed by Channel Seven, in the space of time between the various breaks between tennis games it has almost managed to persuade me to tune in this year for various US shows like "Gray's Anatomy", "Prison Break" and the new-comer "Heroes".

I did say almost right? Right! Why almost you might ask. Well, it's because Seven has this bizarre policy that always, always blow a 45 minute episode to a massive one hour and fifteen minute affair. I suppose it's only fair because it's free to air TV but I like my shows uninterrupted thank you very much.

However, Seven did persuade me that I should have a look at "Heroes". Why not really? Superheroes with super powers, possible supervillains. That's the recipe for a good movie but will it work with TV? I did have my doubts about this show however. It sounds a lot like X-men, Spiderman and Radioactive man. So I had a look at it. I wasn't gonna wait around until Seven shows it some time in 07 though. What I found in the past is that the "coming soon" messages TV networks put on their ads are absolutely bullshit. They say "coming soon" in December the year before and you get to see it in March the following year. In what universe does that define "soon"?

Anyhow, I wanted to watch the show and that was where the internet came in. I love the internet. You can find absolutely every popular show there and since I've got a few gigs to spare on my download account I got the first episode of "Heroes" home for a sneak peek. It was alright. It's more like "X-men: the coming of power stories". The show, for at least the first episode, deals more with how people cope with their super powers when they suddenly appear. The show set forth the premise that super powers in human are the next evolutionary step of the species which is exactly what X-men is about. There're a teenager whose tissues regenerate at the speed of um... a bicycle going down a 25 degree slope (Wolverine anyone?), a 30 year old nurse who thinks he can fly without wings, an artist who can paint the future when he's high on dope, and a twenty-something Japanese guy who can bend space time continuum. So far, there's no freaky guy who can bend metal objects yet.

So, after I watched the first episode I thought, hey what if I have some kind of super power? I know that's really silly of me to think that but hey I've got nothing to do so I might just do anything to amuse myself. The next question to pop up was "what super power do I have?".

I could scratch the tissue regeneration right off the bat. I spent 1 week recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed. But I might have developed my super tissue regeneration ability since then. However, I wasn't gonna go jump down from a tower or running into burning building to see how fast my tissues gonna regenerate.

Ditto with flying, there was no way I can safely test if I could fly. I might have the ability to see the future but I wasn't gonna get high on dope to test out that possibility. So that left me with the space time continuum bending then.

In the show, the Jap guy just had to concentrate and he could stop time. That sounded relatively painless to me so I tried that. I got my alarm clock, which I had banished out of my sight after I finished the last exam, out, put a battery in and concentrated on slowing time.

The first 5 minutes, nothing happened but hey, nobody succeeds at the first attempt so I kept at it. The next 10 minutes, still nothing. By this time I was concentrating and cursing space time continuum at the same time. I was ready to banish the clock back to its dark place again. Then something happened. It stopped. And didn't start up again.

I didn't go straight to the conclusion that I possessed superpower then. Ever the skeptic, me. There might have been a few reasons for this: the battery might be dead, I didn't put the battery in properly. There was no freaking way I could stop time. When I was getting ready to check out the battery, my sister came in and saw me.

Sis: What are you doing with that clock?
Me: Looking at it. What do you think I'm doing?
Sis: Dunno. But you should know that that clock is broken.
Me: Broken? I just bought it last year. It was working fine 10 minutes ago.
Sis: Dunno. I dropped it last month and something sort of came flying out.

Yup, mysterious superpower solved. It's just another case of made-in-China stuffs can't stand up to the challenge of gravity.