I have a friend with a 3-year-old. She has a sign on her desk: I’m a mom. What’s your superpower? I was wondering about this very thing the other day, so I took an internet quiz to find out. It was run by the Department of Incredible Things, so I knew it had to be legitimate. I answered a bunch of important questions about who my sidekick would be and where I’d situate my headquarters. Then I clicked the Activate button, wondering if something loud was about to emanate from inside my iPad. But instead I got sent an email that contained the secret of my superhero powers. Ready?
Congratulations! The email read. Your special power makes you a prime candidate for the Dept. of Incredible Things. Your special power? Telepathy and Telekenesis.
I’m sorry, maybe some people would be stoked to find out they are telepathic and telekinetic, but I was hoping for something a little more super. Plus I had to look up what telekenesis means. It’s the psychic ability, I learned, to influence a physical system without physical interaction. Like Uri Geller. But I prefer my teaspoons straight, and anyway, I also read that telekenesis experiments have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls and repeatability. That’s my superpower? We don’t even know if it’s real!
Then I realized that the whole quiz was actually a clever ad for the Des Moines Area Community College department of computer science. This was an important lesson for me: never trust an Internet quiz to identify your superpower!
So I decided to identify it upon my own, all by myself, solo. Being a single mom, this did not take very long. At around 8am Saturday, my daughter came running into my bedroom. Mom! She said, looking completely stricken. I ran through the usual list in my head: Pregnant? Friend in the hospital having stomach pumped? Prom 2019’s been cancelled? But no, it was far more serious than any of those. Her HP Sprocket Photo Printer was out of paper! This, apparently, was a crisis I needed to get up early on my Saturday morning and solve.
The reason why the absence of HP Sprocket Photo Printer paper was a crisis? It was her boyfriend’s birthday and the Sprocket was somehow part of her elaborate birthday plan for him. Thus, it transpired, I needed to drive to Best Buy, a half hour away, to be there the moment it opened and purchase some photo printer paper. She would do it, but she was too busy wrapping his present.
I had many other fine things planned for my Saturday, such as completing my FAFSA (this is planned for every Saturday, but has not yet actually happened) and helping friends of mine prepare for their wedding later in the day. Not to mention the gym and maybe even a bike ride. But was my response a boundary-setting gee, sweetheart, I’d love to help you out but I’m really busy today, I think you need to go get the paper yourself? No. It was oh, okay.
I’m secretly happy to do these crazy nonurgent urgent things for my daughter. I love solving her noncrisis crises. It’s so much more fun than dealing with the actual crises that are a feature of our life together. Plus saving the day is part of my superhero genetic makeup and it makes me feel, well, powerful. Which is important, because most of the time being a single mom makes a person feel depleted and washed up on the shores of life.
I helped my friends for a bit and then I drove urgently to Best Buy. With all the roadworks that are somehow happening simultaneously in San Rafael these days, it took me well over half an hour and numerous expletives to get there. But when I did, I experienced one of those sweet shopping experiences that only come along once in a very long while. The sales assistant found me the little package of photo paper, which I never would have found by myself in the extraterrestrial experience that is Best Buy. It looked suspiciously like a package of printer ink, which I know from recent experience tends to be more expensive than you could possibly imagine it to be. How much? I asked warily. Twenty bucks, he said. Oh no, wait! It’s on sale. $5.99.
I bought the only two packages left. You can call me Sprocket Photo Paper Woman. Solving teen crises is just what I do. The birthday was complete, and I really like how I look in the cape. But I’m only going to wear it when I’m home alone. Moms of teens know better than to draw attention to their superpowers.
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