A Simple Answer

 

When I was little, I wanted to be a telekinetic. Well, sorta. I didn’t actually know what a telekinetic was, I just knew I wanted to clean my room without actually having to do it. Very Mary Poppins, you know? I hated cleaning my room. But beyond that, I had absolutely no interest in being a mutant. I didn’t wanna fly, I didn’t wanna read minds and while the idea of being able to send my sister halfway across the world with a thought was more than mildly entertaining, I’d decided it wasn’t worth it. You’d see all those people on TV, the persecutors and the persecuted and everyone in between and Christ, I got enough crap in school for just being me.

Of course, who said I had any choice in the matter? I was a late bloomer, so to speak. Age 15. My first date with Jimmy Tucker. He was so cute in that all arms and legs way, with dark hair and glasses. (I still have a weakness for dark hair and glasses...my Clark Kent fetish.) We were sitting in a movie theater watching some brainless comedy when he put his hand on mine and I just knew . I knew that he had strep throat. And I sat there and I said to myself, are you crazy? He doesn’t have strep. You’re being paranoid. What a great time to become a hypochondriac, Sandy. Anyway, I freaked and whipped my hand out from under his. Knocked over the jumbo Coke he insisted on buying and ‘helping’ me drink. Heh. By the end of the week I was at the doctor’s getting a prescription for, guess what? You got it, strep.

After a few months of inevitably being right about people’s illnesses, I got used to the idea. It’s actually kind of a lame mutation, I guess. I mean, it’s not like I can heal people. And I can’t predict their deaths, thank God. But I figure, lame power or not, it ought to be used, right? And that, my dear Katy, is why I just blew my savings on med school applications.

So no, I don’t have five bucks for a pizza.

-fin-

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