One SuperPower to Go - Please!

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking about what superpower I could appropriate that would help me most in my genealogical snooping. I won’t delve into what short circuit in my brain would lead me into daydreaming about this possibility. Let’s just say anybody who would think it socially proper to a put a picture of their foot online, well who really wants to delve too deeply into such a disturbed mind. Nuff said! Anywho, once the thought of acquiring a superpower had settled into my brain, it wasn't going away anytime soon.

The thing is, it took me all of two seconds to figure out what power I wanted. I mean X-Ray vision might be fun and all that but who wants to see everybody walking around like a big pile of skeletal bones? After a half an hour or so, it would get sooo old! And no way do I want to possess the power of telepathy. I mean who wants to know exactly what negative thoughts the person sitting next to you is having. I certainly don’t want to eavesdrop on someone thinking, “Wow, that Terry has packed on quite a few pounds.” How depressing would that be? 

The ability to fly would be cool. I could fly out to Utah to visit the Family History Library and if I wasn’t done researching by the end of the day, no sweat. I’d just fly back the next day. I wouldn’t have to pay airfare or hotel room costs. Sweet! I could also use the flying thing locally. Just think how much gas money I could save by flying over to the local grocery store when I ran out of Pepsi, chocolate or other important necessities. And you just gotta know that all that flying burns mega calories – talk about a win/win situation. Of course, there could be a down side to this flying thing. Like say, hunters mistaking you for, I don’t know, maybe a really big goose or something. And what if the prospect of a human being flying set the bird world into such a tizzy that they went all crazy like that movie, “The Birds.” I couldn’t live with myself if any of you got Tippie Hedrened because of something I had done.

Nope, all those powers, cool though they may be, are not the power I want. What I want is the power that Samantha Stephens had on the TV show, “Bewitched.” You know, that power where she could put everybody into a state of suspended animation by simply twitching her nose. Think about it, what’s the one great impediment keeping most of us from doing some first quality genealogical digging. Time – am I right? So many things tugging at us - jobs, family, social obligations, emergencies, housework, yard work, sleep, getting the gray dyed out of our hair, daydreaming about superpowers – there’s always somebody or something dipping into our personal time bank.

With the rest of the world in suspended animation, I could take my own sweet time to get all my chores done, pop on over to the local probate court, take a drive over to that nearby cemetery and not kill myself playing catch up with all the other things that needed to be done while I was indulging in a genealogical craving. And if the superpower gods were truly generous, they would make it a two-fer. I’d get not only the suspended animation power with a simple nose twitch, but also that teleportation thing Samantha used to do by merely snapping her fingers. That way I could swoop on over to the Jackson County recorder’s office and look until my eyes bugged out for what happened to David Thacker’s land. Somehow I missed it when I was at the recorder’s office on my recent visit to Southern Ohio. Only unlimited time and patience will make me believe that the answer isn’t sitting there, undisturbed and waiting for me to find it – if only I had the time.

So how about it, you wouldn’t mind being put into a state of suspended animation for a good cause, would ya? I’d better start practicing my nose twitching - just in case. 

Until Next Time – Happy Ancestral Digging!

© 2 June 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder