What
person hasn’t dreamed of having super powers, I wonder?
My
guess is probably not many.
As
a father for many years I suppose that I must have appeared to possess
superpowers of a sort to my 2 daughters when they were small. But in truth the
only special power that I ever seemed to possess around my house was the
ability to polish off the last of the cereal.
Many
is the time that I reached into the cupboard and picked up box after box to
find little more than dust and crumbs rattling around in the bottom. If no-one
else has the ability to do something, it must be a superpower, right?
I
still to this day combine several cereals in the bowl making a nostalgic mix that
has very little to recommend it except that it brings me back to a time when
the kids were small.
 |
| From dust to dust Alas,
as time went by, in the eyes of my now grown offspring, dad’s infallibility has
been exposed for the myth that it was and I have come to terms with my utter
ordinariness in that regard. Until
recently that is. I
have no recollection of having been bitten by a radioactive spider or even a
glow in the dark mosquito, so my new abilities are almost certainly
attributable to a much more prosaic source; a brush with disease being the
catalyst to changes within my aging body. About
a year ago I developed lung cancer out of the blue and some strange abilities
have appeared since. Probably as a result of the disease or the treatment or
perhaps from all of the radioactive diagnostic tests that were performed on me,
who knows? Obviously I didn’t suddenly become all wise or even a little bit
clever so I’m guessing here. Shortly
after being discharged from hospital after surgery to have one lobe of my left
lung removed, I had a heart attack. Once again I was in the hospital, this time
for an angiogram which revealed a 70% blockage in my “widow maker” artery
supplying blood to my heart. This blockage required 2 stents to be inserted in
the artery and it was while I was recovering from that procedure that I
received my super hero name. Nurse
Kelly who was always quick with a quip coined my name in the first few seconds
of our short acquaintance. Since my situation of also having had recent cancer
surgery was a bit unusual, at least in my mind, I always made a point of filling
my nurses in on my history, just in case. When
I informed Kelly that I recently had surgery to remove a cancerous lobe from my
lung, she responded with, “Oh, you’re….. Lobe Guy!” “Lobe
guy”, I thought, that sounds like a good name for a super hero! Then
came the giant swelling in my right forearm where they had inserted the
catheter and that night as she was trying to treat it, she remarked that
“you’ve got a real Popeye thing going on there.” Yes
indeed, all of the bulging arm and none of the strength of our spinach swilling
cartoon friend. Not an auspicious start to my super career! Come
to think of it though, I did develop some weird new talents. Although
most of the changes in my body brought on by the cancer are much less fun than
special new abilities, unless of course you count becoming a walking phlegm
factory as a hoot and a half! My
poor wife Rose has a very highly developed gag reflex that kicks into overdrive
if there is even the hint of shall we say – throat clearing, so I’ve learned to
be careful, lest we have an unfortunate series of events develop. Chatting
about this new and less than endearing feature of my life, we laughingly
decided that instead of being of Scandinavian extraction, perhaps my actual
heritage was Phlegmish, or Flemish as is the more common spelling. But
no, my family were not from Flanders in the North of Belgium so I’m still Norwegian/Swedish
etc. etc. Phlegm
aside, (where it belongs) the other new special power that I have developed
since my surgery is a highly developed olfactory sense rivalling that of a
truffle hunting pig. This
new ability would perhaps be useful in the forests of Provence, where truffles
can be found in abundance, but here in Alberta my nose picks up mostly fumes of
one sort or another. I
got a bit of a start the other day when I suddenly smelled burnt toast; I
feared I must be having a stroke or something until I heard Rose in the kitchen
and knew it for what it was, actual burnt toast. I
should be used to that particular smell emanating from our kitchen by now, but
once you’ve had one serious health scare, you tend to pay a bit more attention
to warning signs of further problems. That being said, sometimes the smell of
burnt toast is just bread that has spent too long in the toaster! Speaking
of toast, many years ago when my sister Chris got married, my older brother
Terry who also answered to the nickname my dad gave him of “Terrible” was
called upon to give a toast at the wedding. Never
one to waste an opportunity, he produced a paper bag and reaching inside,
pulled out a slice of charred bread and waved it before us, claiming it was his
“Toast to the bride”.  A toast to the bride He
also claimed it was an example of the cooking skills that her new husband could
expect to see in the future, what a guy! Getting
back to the present, I wish I could think of a highly paid job where the
ability to discern lawnmower exhaust from Honda Civic exhaust at a distance of 100
meters was useful, but I’m afraid that my new abilities are just more of an
annoyance than a sought after talent. Nevertheless,
I will keep waiting and hoping that whatever brought on these changes to my
sense of smell is still working away on a new superpower that is truly useful. I
think a very useful super power would be the ability to back out of a
disastrous conversation with one’s significant other, preferably leaving no
memory of the conversation with either party. We’ve
probably all longed for that little flashy thing that the Men in Black used when
they needed to wipe the recent memories of ordinary humans (the neuralyzer) and
every once in a while I really, really need something like it.  If you remember this, you are lying This
new power could be known as the “removal of ones foot from ones mouth power”.
Many are the times over the years when it would have come in handy and I’m absolutely
sure that very, very soon I will need it once again. I’m
guessing it will be when Rose reads my blog! |
