Hey you. Yeah, you look bored. Well, you’re talking to me aren’t you? Since the flight’s delayed, you might as well listen. I’ve got a story to tell.

I’ve once been asked, wouldn’t be fun to have a superpower? I never really know how to answer that. Because the truth is, I actually have one. And the answer to that question, I wanted to say at the time but didn’t, was it depends. You really need to specify what superpower…because if you have a superpower like mine, then maybe your answer is no. My superpower makes me feel more helpless than if I didn’t have it.

And, I’ll get to that.

I’d grown up reading comic books, and I loved DC comics. I’d get bullied in middle school, and I always wanted to be those heroes that I read about. They weren’t real, of course, but one could dream.

One day, after a particularly difficult round of bullying, I started to get woozy. The football player had stuffed me in a locker after a good clock to the head, and as I was contemplating how long it would take for someone to find me in that claustrophobic container, my eyes started tingling.

I say my eyes; I mean the space behind my eyes. I guess it’s a section of the prefrontal lobe or something. Before I could process how and what I was feeing, whoosh! The locker opened again. It was the bully again, back for round 2.

This time, it was strange. He looked…different, said my tingling eyes/brain. I think the best word that I can think of is, nearly blank. It was a feeling that I got when I looked at him, and it was different when I glanced over at some of his snickering buddies. I think the best word for to apply when I look at the cohorts is: full.

After their session was over (the usual, taunting, name-calling, occasional punching/physical abuse), my mind went elsewhere as I sauntered home. I contemplated this new and strange sensation.

The next morning, my mom shook me awake. She said she’d gotten a call, and it was Billy’s mom on the phone. (Billy was the bully.) She asked if I knew Billy? I replied, yeah he beat me up yesterday. She paused for a bit…thinking about how to respond and what to say next. And then, she spat it out, “Billy died last night, crossing the railroad near his house.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel. My tormentor was dead. I’d like to say it was pity. But then, I started to remember what I thought while looking at him for the last time; blankness. Like, there was not much left for him to do or be. You know when you look at the lines formed by the wrinkles of an old person, and you think to yourself, “Wow, that lady; she’s been through some stuff.” It was, in a weird way, the opposite of that with Billy.

It took a couple years and I have more stories like that, but I started to realize that I could see when someone would die just by looking at him or her. It wasn’t a number on top of someone’s head or anything hoky like that. It was more of a sensation. Still, I guess the best description would be a countdown, or a green light turning red.

The worst was when I went to hospitals. My mom was an ICU nurse in the trauma ward at Mass General Hospital. Sometimes I went to visit her, but I soon realized that I couldn’t handle it. Stepping out of the elevator, I’d close my eyes, because I just didn’t want to look at a kid lying there with his parents crying, knowing that in a few hours, he wouldn’t be holding their hand back.

I’d never come to accept my “power”. The problem was, I just couldn’t do anything about it. What was I going to say? How would I act on this? With Billy, I couldn’t know a train had changed schedules. I wouldn’t know which rail he got his foot caught in.

It was the powerlessness that I felt. If I stood next to Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America in the same room (they’d never be in the same room; Marvel vs DC), they’d feel sorry for me. Not just because I’m a bit flabby and would look less than handsome next to them, but truly because I’ve got the most useless superpower ever.

“Shame about the new guy, huh?” they’d say.

“Yeah, I gave him a ride in my invisible jet because he looked sssaa…xcited about being in the awesom club. Oh hey buddy, I didn’t see you there. Why don’t you pull up a chair.”

Anyway, why am I telling you this right now?

You see, I’m looking around, and I’m seeing angry and bored people right now at this terminal. But I’m also seeing that countdown on their foreheads, and despite me feeling helpless, I’m damn well going to try and do something with this “gift” or “curse”, depending on how you look at it. Not everyone’s going to believe me, but you might.

Why don’t I just make an announcement? I can’t; I realized in a city called Columbine, dealing with the masses is a bad idea. No one believed me, and they’d think I’m some transient who wanted attention. They’d either pitied me or laughed me off. Then a mass shooting happened, they got angry and resentful. They thought I instigated the children, poisoned their mind.

You look like a reasonable guy. I bet you know what I’m going to say, so I’ll say only say it once. Listen to me or don’t, because I need to move on to the next guy. Don’t get on this flight. I’m not.