Minor superpowers

[sonia]

What's your minor superpower? Something you do well, that you're proud of, that maybe you can't quite explain how you do, but it fits just so with how your mind/body/spirit work.

My minor superpower is figuring out what folk dance someone is requesting from very slight clues. For example, "the Donald Duck dance"* or "left foot crosses over, then jump apart and together, not done by many people"**, or "slow dance we can sing with, starts with M."*** (Answers below, for anyone playing along.) It requires pattern-matching, memory, and intuition. It's particularly fun with people who haven't danced for a long time, because they get so happy doing dances they remember from long ago.


* Raca, Serbia, speeds up radically. In Portland, some people recite nursery rhymes during this dance while maintaining the footwork. Impresses the heck out of me, since I can barely listen to them without messing up.
** Makazice/Bela Rada, also Serbia, and it's the right foot that crosses over
*** Moj Dragane, Croatia. There are several possible answers to this, but I got the one my friend meant on the first try. Minor superpower, like I said.

Comments

[batdina]

my minor superpower used to be that I could name that Shakespeare quote by play name, act, and scene. nowadays I can probably name the play and I wouldn't claim anything more than that outside of the four plays that were part of my dissertation.

this superpower has shifted and changed: now I can do it with Chumash (Torah in Hebrew): name the book it comes from, and the portion of the week it's in. I don't think I can do the verse number unless it's a piece I've studied in depth.

odd quirk of my brain that if I've read something more than once I can bring it to mind with very little hints.

[sonia]

Cool! Associative memory for the win. (And, nice to hear from you.)

[wired]

Visually recall the last place I've seen any household item. I may be wrong, because people move stuff, but I can find things about 80% of the time, frequently when I am not even there.

[sonia]

That sounds very practical!

I wonder if people are naming memory-linked minor superpowers because I did, or if that's the form they usually take.

[suncat]

I used to think I had a couple of different ones, but I've recently come to think it's all part of the same thing. That is, an extraordinary ability to be in the right place at the right time, for little everyday things. Like, a space opens up on the busy freeway just as I need to merge in. Or a *very* convenient parking place is open -- this works even if I'm just riding and not the driver. Or getting the last item on the shelf at the store -- this has been happening too often to count in recent months.

[sonia]

That sounds like a very fine superpower to have!