I had a problem earlier this week with my contact lenses - nothing too serious, but very irritating - so I decided to trek over to Health Services.
The nurse performed an eye exam on me, and to test for scratches on my eyeball, she needed to administer drops of iodine that would illuminate under a black light to check for any scratches. After another 10 minutes of eye poking and me tearing up like a townie who had just spilled a full beer, I started walking back towards College Ave. Being the classy townie that I am, I decided to relieve myself of some allergies and spit on my walk home. To my amazement, the spit was fluorescent yellow.
Had I spent so much time cleaning out my hellhole of a house that I somehow came into contact with some sort of radioactive ooze found only in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies? I spit again - it looked like a highlighter. I finally realized this super spit was merely an after affect from the iodine that went into my eyes, but I managed to get the most out of my imagination and pretended to be Super Mario shooting fireballs at King Koopa for the rest of my journey home.
It got me thinking, what would be the best superpower for a townie to have? The first power I thought of was the ability to stop time. How absolutely amazing that would be?
For a townie, this would pay dividends day in and day out. If I had that power, no bar would be safe. Happy Hour? Try Happy Month of July. Last call for alcohol? How about, "I'm not leaving until I finish the last bottle?"
Unfortunately, for every superpower, there are good and evil sides. With this power, I might be tempted to stop time to show up for class or work on time or finish a paper before the proper due date. Then, I wouldn't be a townie, I'd be an ordinary Joe - and that, my friends, is highly unacceptable.
The next superpower that came to my mind was the cool laser beam that shoots out of Cyclops' eyes in X-Men. That thing could seriously come in handy. I mean, my college house rarely has food and I figure there have to be rats here the size of greyhounds. One trusty zap from my auto-BBQ and we'd have dinner for weeks without taking the walk to Dewick for some other mystery meat. Take that, George Foreman.
Also, I'd have to cover the laser beam with some sort of shield. Cyclops has a special trendy visor that looks a little too expensive for my Townie taste. I was thinking more along the lines of those huge sunglasses that old people with glaucoma wear to block all forms of sunlight and form a protective box around one's line of sight. Some might call these "Glauco-glasses"; I call them "The Next Big Thing." Unfortunately, this idea is not a viable one, for I would even need to wear the sunglasses at night, and I don't want to be the guy who's compared to 80's rocker Cory Hart under any circumstances.
How sweet would it be to be able to control the weather? The answer to that is very, very sweet. Schilling's arm isn't feeling too good the night of a big Sox game? Rain out. Oh, the Yankees won the World Series; how about bowling-ball sized hail to go with that ticker tape? Ever mutter the phrase, "I know I'm going to fail this test today"? If not, you're a huge nerd and you're probably not my friend. But if so, go to someone with control over the weather. A snow day mixed in the middle of a late summer heat wave can save your grade, and sledding is a Townie pastime, so you've got that going for you too.
Unfortunately, the urge to make every day gorgeous would be too tempting and that would take away a vital aspect of a Townie's existence.
Complaining about the weather is like waking up for us, and without it, well we'd be just like most people from California. That'd be about as cool as
eating asparagus while being hit repeatedly in the testicles (No offense, though).
All in all, putting a super power in the hands of a townie would be a dangerous move and could lead to some serious repercussions.
In Spiderman, it is said that "with great power comes great responsibility." I don't like power enough to take on a responsibility; it's hard enough for me to remember to put on a pair of pants before leaving my house.
Besides, why would I need a super power, anyway? I'm a Townie. For me, that's super enough.
Pete McKeown is a junior majoring in English. He can be reached at peter.mckeown@tufts.edu.
