The Upstory

It seems like every other movie made these days is about super heroes and their super powers. But I’m waiting for the movie about super heroes with reverse super powers.

That’s the movie I want to see. In fact, I could star in that movie. I could wear a cape and leotard emblazoned with a “U” for Unawareness Woman.

My reverse super power is Obliviousity. It’s a word. Check Urban Dictionary. Say it with me: O-bliv-E-osity. Urban Dictionary defines it as “the state of not knowing what’s going on around you but smiling and nodding anyway.”

For the record, I don’t smile or nod. What I do is open my mouth and insert both feet. I will say things like, “Oh, look! The Petersons painted their house.” And my arch-nemesis, Awareness Man, will say, “Yes, they did that last year.”

I live in a world where things happen that are not on my radar. Or maybe my radar picks them up and beams them to the outer edges of my brain. Like with the Peterson’s house. Maybe my eyes told my brain the house had just been painted and my brain was busy doing something else and took what the eyes told it and shoved it off to the side for the time being.

Later my brain was rummaging around putting things away and tidying up when it came across a box labeled “Peterson House Painted” and it signaled my vocal cords to say something about this and no one noticed that Awareness Man was sitting right there as the words came out.

Mind you Obliviousity is the opposite of Selective Situational Awareness. Somehow, I also have that. I’m usually the first person to notice if a dog is running around loose or if there’s a little kid and no adult anywhere in the vicinity. But Selective Situational Awareness just gets me through the day — it doesn’t get me points on the board.

Obliviousity, on the other hand, is a full-on reverse super power. It is its own kryptonite. It puts a hurt on my game and a crimp in my style. Obliviousity makes me look like I’m late to the party and out of touch. (What is happening? Did my brain just open the box marked “Cliches?”)

The other day I noticed that we were using a new coffee creamer and I told Awareness Man how tasty it was. Turns out we’ve been using that flavor for several months.

And I haven’t forgotten the time that Awareness Man installed an altimeter on the dash of my car and it was there for a while before I noticed. “Hey I like the new altimeter,” I said. And Awareness Man said, well never mind what he said.

Fate is cruel because, conversely, it was just yesterday that I noticed Awareness Man had grown tired of the altimeter and removed it.

“Hey, you know that thing on the dash? It’s not there anymore.”

Awareness Man: “Altimeter. Gone since January.”

(Fortunately, thanks to Selective Situational Awareness, I do notice the needle on the gas gauge but, like I said, I don’t get points on the board for that. Selective Situational Awareness just gets me through the day.)

Mind you, there are two gear speeds to my reverse super power: Too slow and too fast. We’ve talked about too slow. Too fast means I notice right away. My eyes say, “Hey! Look!” and my brain goes along with it and doesn’t run what I’m going to say through the Logic Meter.

So, Awareness Man and I are cruising to the lake and we pass by the staging area for our off-roading and I get excited because I see that the wretched, rutted, potholed dirt area has been paved. And it’s okay that I think that, but not okay that I say, “Look, they finally paved that crappy parking area!”

And Awareness Man, without missing a beat, says, “It’s always been paved.”

Wait for it. Wait for it.

“It’s the second parking area that isn’t paved.”

I’m not the only one with a reverse super power. My friend Kelvin Semper has his own cape and mask.

He is Captain Wait Awhile, and his reverse super power is getting stuck in checkout lines. Kelvin will never, ever go through a checkout line without a disturbance in the Time Continuum.

According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Larson, who is considered the foremost expert on queues, Americans spend 37 billion hours a year waiting in lines. Kelvin knows this true because he’s used up 14 billion of those hours.

Kelvin’s reverse super power is Line Delay and he’s had it for as long as he can remember. He’s gone through the seven stages (frustration, denial, anger, despair, etc.) and he doesn’t fight it anymore. He’s accepted his reverse super power for the time waster that it is and knows that no matter what the odds should be, they will never be in his favor.  

And mind you, Kelvin doesn’t get stuck like you or I where we are in self-checkout and the person in front of us is putzing around because they have no idea what they’re doing. No, no when Kelvin gets stuck it’s epic. In fact, he’s on his way to becoming a legend at Costco.

To add to the stuck-in-line scenarios you have to realize that Kelvin is a big man. His height and size make him a standout. When he’s stuck in a line everyone knows it.

Like the time his turn came at check-out and (dramatic pause) the cash register stopped working. It had been working just fine up to that point. The checker was ringing up customers and moving the line along. Then (cue the screeching violins from the Psycho shower scene) it was Kelvin’s turn. And the register stopped working. But wait, there’s more.

While the checker was trying to figure out what was wrong, smoke started coming out of the machine. Not only was it not working, it was never going to work again. Not while Captain Wait Awhile was standing there emitting Line Delay death rays.

And then there was the time the cash register was working but it ran out of paper for the customer receipt-of-purchase. At first the Captain got rung up so fast that he thought he actually caught a break. But, no. People who have reverse super powers don’t catch breaks because, well, The Universe Has Spoken.

There was no paper to print out a receipt so the checker went off to look for a new roll of paper and left Kelvin standing there, c’mon say it with me, “waiting awhile.”

Of course, there was no replacement roll to be found so finally the checker gave up the search and came back to tell Kelvin (you see this coming, right?) that he would have to gather all his items, move to another register, and start over.

Richard Larson, the queue expert, offers a variety of strategies for picking a checkout line. For example, he warns against picking the line that has three people who each have just a few items over picking the line with one person who has a full cart. (Larson explains why this is so, but I’ll spare you the gory details.)

Suffice it to say that line strategy is a thing, thus Kelvin zeroed in on a checkout line with only one guy and his one item. Kelvin was pressed for time so this magical moment seemed like a slam dunk that was going to help get him out the door sooner rather than later.

But not so fast. With a super-incredible woosh here comes Line Delay, Captain Wait Awhile’s reverse super power.

The guy had his Costco card and could check out his one item but it wasn’t also a Costco credit card so he couldn’t pay for it. No indeed. And he’d forgotten his wallet in his car, so he had to leave the register and walk through the store and out to the parking lot, and … well you know the rest of the story.

Or do you? Kelvin also needed gas and Costco has the cheapest petrol. Also, the longest lines. Kelvin scoped out the lines which, if you’ve ever done this, you know it’s an art and a science. Costco has at least 300 pumps (slight exaggeration) and the car lines look like they did in the ‘70s when there were gas shortages and lines stretched all the way to the horizon. It’s an undulating field of metal and polycarbonate and it’s hard to gauge which line is shortest. You have to pick quick or someone will figure it out first and dart into the prize spot.

Kelvin helms a big SUV so he had a good view and he has quick reflexes so he managed to slot himself into a line with only one car ahead of him. And then other drivers quickly formed up behind him. That meant he was trapped for what happened next.

Which was … nothing for a while. In fact, Kelvin’s line was moving faster than any of the others. But not for nothing is he Captain Wait Awhile. When he moved forward to where he was behind the car filling up, and it was going to be his turn next, one of the Costco gas station attendants came over with a sign that he placed right in front of Kelvin’s bumper. Can you guess what it said? If you guessed Out of Gas Go to Other Line you are correct.

But Kelvin was trapped and couldn’t go anywhere but forward. And mind you his super power doesn’t include Spiderman’s swinging get-away or Superman’s atmospheric flight capability (which is why Captain Wait Awhile’s cape does not billow out behind him but hangs, albeit majestically). And, yes, he had to start over.

Ironically Kelvin and I both know someone who has an actual super power. Not reverse. His name is Ricky Garcia.

Ricky’s super power is spotting sports figures who are unseen by the rest of the crowd. We’re not talking LeBron, Brady, or Serena who even I could point out, but people who are well-known nonetheless.  

Ricky doesn’t have a super hero name or a name for his super power — yet. His stuff is still in development. Most recently he’s seen an NFL player, a UFC fighter and a celebrated U.S. Navy SEAL.

Marquette King, Khamzat “Borz” Chimaev, and David Goggins. He stopped and talked to the football player and the three-time Swedish national wrestling champion. The SEAL was out for a run and out of reach but eminently recognizable and still a bit of a thrill (vicariously for me, too, after Ricky loaned me Goggins’ riveting autobiography “Can’t Hurt Me”).

Ricky doesn’t know how he sees what no one else does. But it does create an opportunity for a welcomed one-on-one exchange and a selfie. Stay tuned on this, no doubt there’s more to come.

But let’s close with one last story about Captain Wait Awhile who was in a Chick-fil-A drive-through waiting for his favorite – a big, frosty milkshake.

Of course, in line ahead of him, was a car that was going to have a problem. Reverse Super Power Line Delay would see to that. Would a tire go flat? A radiator boil over? What would it be? Or wait! Would the milkshake machine malfunction? Would they run out of ice cream and chocolate? 

The roulette wheel spun and landed on Out of Gas and sure enough the car ahead of Kelvin ran out at the drive-through window. Of course, Captain Waits Awhile would be behind the one person who wasn’t paying attention to his gas gauge or the fuel warning light.

Of course there would be a line of cars behind Kelvin blocking him so he couldn’t back out. There he sat while the driver worked the problem, finding someone with a gas can who could go to the nearest gas station, and yaddity-yaddity. Return with fuel. Fill tank. Move car.

Eventually Line Delay released Captain Wait Awhile who moved forward, got his shake, and continued on … until the next time.