Supernova

I have a theory that we all have superpowers, just not the kind that send us flying into flaming buildings where we bend metal to save screaming children. Our superpowers are something more mundane at which we are unusually adept. Like catching wine glasses before they spill or never having trouble sleeping on a plane. Mine has to do with running errands with the least possible distance between stops and the least amount of gas used. Nothing worth wearing a cape for, but it's my power, take it or leave it.

Yesterday, as I drove home to visit the parents for the weekend, I listened to the first third of Bill Bryson's a Short History of Nearly Everything. While doing so, I learned about Robert Evans, a reverend and amateur astrologer who has spotted over 40 supernovae to date. He has no training or elaborate equipment, just small telescopes, but his uncanny skill for memorizing sky fields and noticing exploding stars his given him more discoveries to his credit than any of the large, automated telescopes now used. Evans told Bryson, "There's something satisfying, I think, about the idea of light traveling for millions of years through space and just at the right moment as it reaches Earth someone looks at the right bit of sky and sees it. It just seems right that an event of that magnitude should be witnessed." Amen to that.

Evans had me thinking as I drove along, now this, THIS is a superpower. Some have called Evans a savant, an autistic savant even. Certainly he has some exceptionality of vision and memory, but don't all of the real superheroes have that? It's a safe bet that I'll never witness my own supernova, but Evans has me thinking that maybe, just maybe there's another superpower out there for me. One "why me?" superpower that will reveal itself at just the right time and place. Extraordinary and ordinary all at once. And I like that thought.