Secret Superpower

[Martin Hash]

Secret Superpower.jpg

I have a secret superpower I've never told anyone about; this will be the first time… I CAN TELL IF SOMEONE'S MY FRIEND. I know what you're thinking, that it seems miraculous and perhaps I'm delusional, but I assure you I can tell if someone IS my friend. I don't want to give too much away but I will say that it has nothing to do with what they say. It's more difficult to tell if someone's not my friend because I'm guilty of naive optimism but even I catch on eventually.

When I was a kid, I didn’t know I had this superpower but that may be because I didn’t need it: kids don’t have ulterior motives in their friendships. Not until girls, gas & grades do the machinations of social life start sullying the innocence of youth. As I entered the workforce, friends were still possible but guarded because by that time we’d all been disappointed, betrayed & gotten careful. It was when I became Middle-aged that I had to start relying on my superpower.

I never answer my phone because nobody calls unless they want something. It didn’t used to be like that when I was a young man but maybe I was simply too foolish to recognize it. I can remember that I was saddled with a lot more one-way obligations back then. I used to have the theory that as long as a relationship offered equal good with the bad, I would maintain it, but I got suspicious so I tried an experiment: I quit contacting people and waited for them to contact me. I figured my true friends would thereby expose themselves, and they did… Wow! That was a hard knock. Even after 10 years, not more than a handful of people out of the thousands I’ve known reached out, and several of them wanted something. I only mention this as demonstrative of my hard-earned title of “Wysest Myn in the Wyrld.”

[Haumana]

Secret Superpower.jpg


I have a secret superpower I've never told anyone about; this will be the first time… I CAN TELL IF SOMEONE'S MY FRIEND. I know what you're thinking, that it seems miraculous and perhaps I'm delusional, but I assure you I can tell if someone IS my friend. I don't want to give too much away but I will say that it has nothing to do with what they say. It's more difficult to tell if someone's not my friend because I'm guilty of naive optimism but even I catch on eventually.

When I was a kid, I didn’t know I had this superpower but that may be because I didn’t need it: kids don’t have ulterior motives in their friendships. Not until girls, gas & grades do the machinations of social life start sullying the innocence of youth. As I entered the workforce, friends were still possible but guarded because by that time we’d all been disappointed, betrayed & gotten careful. It was when I became Middle-aged that I had to start relying on my superpower.

I never answer my phone because nobody calls unless they want something. It didn’t used to be like that when I was a young man but maybe I was simply too foolish to recognize it. I can remember that I was saddled with a lot more one-way obligations back then. I used to have the theory that as long as a relationship offered equal good with the bad, I would maintain it, but I got suspicious so I tried an experiment: I quit contacting people and waited for them to contact me. I figured my true friends would thereby expose themselves, and they did… Wow! That was a hard knock. Even after 10 years, not more than a handful of people out of the thousands I’ve known reached out, and several of them wanted something. I only mention this as demonstrative of my hard-earned title of “Wysest Myn in the Wyrld.”

Welcome to the club.