if i had a superpower

If I had a superpower, I would want it to be...

I have mulled this over and over as the prompt for day 3 of the 30 day health writers' challenge. I would pretty much like any of them, I think. Okay, maybe not shooting spider webs from my finger tips, but I wouldn't mind super speeds or super strength. I love being in an airplane, but I could do without airports and coughing passengers. Speed would be good. But if I can only choose one, it won't be speed. I don't travel enough to warrant the opportunity cost.

If I had a superpower, I think I might like it to be the ability to tell truth from BS. I'd like to know when I read a medical study if there's good science behind it or a lot of hot air. I'd like to know if the foods I'm told are healthy are actually slowly poisoning me. I'd like to always be sure that the "experts" have some real expertise. Over the years, I have subjected my body to all sorts of nonsense because I believed it to be the healthiest, most reasonable way to go. I cringe thinking of some of those choices, of eating virtually everything artificial while looking in disdain at real foods. I cringe at what I fed my children. I didn't make all that up. Experts recommended it. The current literature confirmed it. And it's not like I just took their word for it each time I read about the newest, greatest idea. I researched; I read what I could find. Every time. And you all know what that's like. We don't blindly follow like so many sheep. We check; we question. But we keep looking for answers, for something that will work. And we hope. Even when the next step calls for a screeching halt and a complete u-turn. So, yes, there are some definite upsides to the power of knowing truth from untruth or propaganda.

Clearly, there could be a few drawbacks to this power. I like it when my mom tells me I look like I'm losing weight. I like it when friends rave about my cooking. I like it when GK says he loves my writing. I like it when my daughter is complemented for any of the hundreds of things she does exceedingly well, and she says she gets it from her mother. I like thinking all those things are true whether or not that is the case. Still, I'd have to consider it.