House of Eratosthenes

About a year ago I daydreamed on the pages of this blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, about what superpowers I would want to have if I were a superhero. The superhero I invented was the dream of middle-aged men everywhere: SHUSHMAN. In my superhero daydream, I run around town in a leotard with a towel wrapped around my neck and a big “S” on my chest, and a mask over my face. If some convertible drives by me with the bass cranked way up with that “BOOM…BOOM…BOOM CHICKA BOOM” buzzing away, I just wave my hand at it and — glorious, glorious silence.

Ahhhhh…….

Shush I’m the first one who’s ever had that fantasy? Hah. First one to write it down, maybe. But you want to be Sushman too, you know you do. A cone of silence, thrown down in a fraction of a second, around…anything. Car commercials on the boob tube cranked up four times as loud as the program you were watching. Bratty kids in the grocery store. The guy at the company picnic who had way too much to drink. A randomly selected moron with lots of syllables coming out of his gullet but with nothing to say. Shushman waves his hand and restores order.

Just doin’ my job, citizen.

I said at the time I’d give up immortality, flying, all that good stuff if I could just wave at a television set (admit it, the remote control is always a good fifteen feet away when the situation arises), and instantly be enveloped by that golden silence.

My son protests that this would be useless for, say, foiling a bank robbery.

My reply is that at least they’d be forced to rob the damn bank quietly. That’s just kind of where I am right now. You want to build a nuclear bomb and threaten the entire planet — go ahead. Just don’t make any noise.

But I must say, The Squeeze and I went to Lake Tahoe this weekend to meet Kidzmom and pick up my son for the school year. And after being around these things called “people” for the first time in a few months, I have a confession to make about Shushman. My confession is…he’s going to have just a few more super powers. Not many. Just a few.

Shushman, for example, can do interesting things with car alarms. He’s got a mental-telepathy ability to figure out where the owner of the car is, with the alarm that’s going off. He can teleport himself to wherever that owner is, be he asleep or be he awake, Then he can grab the keys that go to that vehicle and ram them where the sun don’t shine, as they say.

And then of course he can silence that car alarm.

Shushman can point at a young man’s trousers, and telepathically yank them up above his butt cheeks. From up to sixty feet away. Point…yank. Yes, this superpower is still needed in 2008. Because droopy pants are still out there after all these years. I’m likin’ that superpower. Call it a long-distance wedgie.

Shushman can point at a skateboard, and make its wheels square. Yeah, we need that one too.

When Shushman is walking along and he sees a wad of sticky gum lying on the sidewalk, waiting to adhere itself onto an innocent pedestrian’s shoe…he can cast a magic spell on the gum. The gum will then pry itself off the sidewalk, fly through the air, hunt down the original chewer who was responsible for so carelessly discarding it, and re-insert itself back into his mouth.

Shushman can point at two people having a conversation across a great distance, like say for example across a parking lot from each other, and use telekinesis to force the two conversationalists to come within ten feet of each other so they don’t have to keep asking each other to repeat themselves.

Shushman can point at a little tiny annoying li’l yip-dog being carried around in a purse, and make it instantly weigh a hundred times more. Not expand in size. Just weigh more. Arf! **klunk**

The other thing Shushman can do? I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now. In a grocery store, Shushman has the ability to seize telekinetic control of a grocery cart sitting in the middle of an aisle…and shove it to one side. With clumsy brute force, not surgical precision. Shove it so it makes a good dent in about three rows of cardboard Corn Flakes boxes.

Shushman can lift cars about twenty feet off the ground. Only when they’re moving, though. In the passing lane. Five miles below the speed limit. Hey, maybe he’ll put ’em back down again right-side-up, maybe he won’t.

1.

You want to build a nuclear bomb and threaten the entire planet — go ahead. Just don’t make any noise.

Kinda brings us back to the response to the nuclear missile falling off the truck dunint it?

2. New law.
All cars must have identical horns mounted on the inside as well.
(plagiarized, can’t remember where)
- CaptDMO | 08/12/2008 @ 17:39
Yes, I confess. I’ve definately had the Shushman fantasy.

As for Car alarms, my additionally wanted superpower was to imagine bricks appearing in front of me and then have the bricks sudddenly accellerate to just under the speed of sound to smash into the front windshield of the offending vehicle.

Oh, and after impact, the car alarm would shut off.

Is it too much to ask for?
- pdwalker | 08/15/2008 @ 14:14
[…] Shushman was born inside my head when I went out to have lunch in a sushi bar with some co-workers, and the subject came up about what one single superpower you’d like to have more than any other. (Since then, Sushman has grown more superpowers, as more things in everyday life have cheesed me off.) […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/02/2009 @ 07:19

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The Continuing Adventures of ShushmanMonday, August 11th, 2008

The Continuing Adventures of Shushman
Monday, August 11th, 2008