My sister and I were talking about benign superpowers and decided the X-Men probably have someone like a band director with a superpower like perfect pitch who watches after the school while everyone else is off adventuring.
I walk/exist quietly. I manage to sneak up on people all the time without intending it. Probably due to an abusive father who slept in and would crack the shits if I made too much noise in the mornings.
I have super sensitive hearing, so while I can hear the faintest of noises, it also means loud noises are overwhelming and painful.
I’m a stair master. I sprint them 3-4-5 at a time, smooth and quiet as a ninja. Up or down, doesn’t matter
I used to wonder why adults didn’t run up the stairs. I figured adults must just be no fun and didn’t want to look silly running upstairs.
So all throughout my childhood, teens, 20s, and 30s I would usually run up my stairs because it just felt natural. Then not too far into my 40s, my knee was just like “nope”.
Now I have to walk upstairs, which is lame as hell.
No way man, I’m gonna keep on rocking forever!
Forever!
Forever
Forever…Exactly! And in this case, “what’s it” is having knees that don’t hurt.
shush you, time for your medicine!
(I’m approaching my 40s, so you got me worried haha)
It was 42 for me specifically. Good luck!
I can bend my thumb further back than most people :3 this literally does nothing of use for me x3
Hypermobility can have side-effects. If your diet isn’t right or you live in a very warm or very cold area, it can affect your tissues. If I’m not mistaken it can sporadically be linked to auto-immune diseases.
And autoimmune diseases suck. We don’t really understand them, have no good treatments, and some are disfiguring and ultimately fatal.
It’s never a good time when your body is attacking it’s own tissues.
Bending your thumb to your wrist is one of the signs of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
I’ve got mild EDS and so far (thirties), it’s just helpful (as long as you stay active and maintain good core muscles). Extreme EDS can result in your skin sloughing off or all of your joints dislocating in your sleep, so it’s not something to ignore, but if the only symptom is your thumb touching your wrist, you might just be lucky.
I often dislocate a shoulder or hip in my sleep. I can dislocate a knee turning around or just taking steps. I wear a lot of compression and braces, but they only help so much lol
In a room full of power supplies i was the only one able to find which one was still powering something, because apparently out of the ~20 people that tried before me, i was the only one that could hear the transformer whine.
Also a general annoyance since i need to charge my phone in another room if i want to sleep without simulating tinnitus.
My solution to the charger wine was to get a better quality one. I find branded ones don’t have that issue anywhere near as much.
Found the youngest person.
That’s something you might lose over time, that’s why some places would install speakers witg certain sounds outside their door, kids wouldn’t hang around because it disturbed them, older people just didn’t hear it.
Masquito alarms should be illegal.
Unless you’re autistic. We don’t lose the top end of our hearing for some reason. Those “mosquito” devices can trigger my migraines, at 43 years old.
don’t think that autism has to do with it. The cause for the higher frequency hearing loss is a physical degradation of the small hairs in the cochlear. And in some people it just happens a lot less
No, really. It is very common for individuals on the autistic spectrum to have above average acuity of high frequency sound.
Could it be a result of not liking other loud sounds? Loud music, concerts, loud crowded places, headphones played too loud etc all can damage your upper range hearing, and iirc many on the spectrum do not enjoy loud stumuli.
At the volume I have my games and music, I rather doubt it. :-/
Fuck. I’m 35 and I was able to hear a falling ballast in a light fixture at a busy reptile expo.
I have a spectrum analyzer on my phone, which I had to use to prove to my wife that there was a loud high-pitch whine, and that it wasn’t tinnitus or a phantom sound.
This would be a weird way to find out I’m on the spectrum.
Your spectrum analyzer pulled double-duty!
Nice XD
If a “friend” detonates an IED firework in an abandoned field near your head you will lose that top end… But you will also get really bad tinnitus.
Another one!
It’s a common autistic trait, FYI 💛
SO that’s what I keep hearing in those dame phone chargers.
I don’t hear it all the time though, it sometimes starts happening and after that never stops. I believe it is that something breaks or is about to break that makes me suddenly able to hear it.
If someone more knowledge, knows what’s up with them please tell.
Usually it’s a bad capacitor
I can fall asleep, near instantly, at will.
I call it my time machine function.
I envy you so much. Yours is an actual superpower. My ability is the opposite, I can wake up from an alarm no matter the circumstance, slept only 3 hours while completely drunk? Still wake up instantly and start doing things, I’ve never missed an alarm in my life.
I can also fall asleep very easily, but I cannot just get up to save my life. I envy that ability.
We need to learn the fusion dance, we would be unstoppable! (To be clear, I can wake up and be ‘functional’ whenever, doesnt mean I get good rest nor wake up happy)
You an I… We are either going to form an unstoppable super team or… You ate going to end up as my nemesis.
You sleep a lot and I do everything? Doesnt sound very nice to me, tho in FF14 there is a quest chain where one guys is always awake and his ‘wife’ sleeps for him because of a magical item.
I can sleep at will and wake up at will. Like I am traveling early so I have to wake at 4:30am no problem!
But never suddenly, out of your control, right? As long as it’s not narcolepsy, I would appreciate it if you gave me that skill.
I can rumble my ears, do the vulcan greet, do Stan Laurel’s kneesy earsy nosey and the finger wriggle. I can also measurable lower my heart rate by conscious effort alone, and increase my body temperature by concentrating on it.
I can also measurable lower my heart rate by conscious effort alone
I read somewhere a while back that people can learn to do this with training and a visualization. If you have a heart rate monitor that shows different color shades depending on your rate, apparently people can learn focus on making the color turn green and lowering their heart rate.
I do it by focusing on my torso and in my head decelerate it, I guess it’s similar. Also, a guy I know can do it through breathing technique, and I suspect breathing is part of my deceleration too.
I can unhook a bra through a winter coat.
Not, that I wouldI once unhooked a bra with a hug. Sadly not a superpower I retained.
I can rumble my ears. It’s not at all useful and often highly annoying.
It’s useful when your ears are under high pressure. It can help relieve it. Sometimes.
Synesthesia. I can see music. It’s fun.
Also, being resistant to pain killers. Not so fun (takes ages to get drunk, and I woke up 3 times during a surgery)
Being resistant to pain killers and anesthesia is a bitch… Drinking is indeed no fun and very expensive, I also woke up multiple times during various surgeries. Also, dentistry is also a major bitch…
That’s kind of cool, what does music look like to you? I assume it depends on the genre. What’s your favourite?
This is the most accurate depiction of it I found so far. Although I don’t see it like stuff around me, but more like a memory with “the minds eye”, so to speak
Oh I got that to a lesser degree. At night, I interpret sudden bangs (door slamming) as flashes of intense white light.
I realised that the lights were not real (phantom lightning, or bright outdoor lighrs winking on and off) once I started sleeping with a blindfold
I don’t think so – the noises I hear are real, they’re just accompanied by flashes of light if my brain can’t place the source of the sound in realtime
I can’t really speak for you of course, but I can add that I thought it was the same for me. Until it turned out I was the only one who was hearing these noises.
Hah! Oh jesus, this will be a fun rabbithole for me to think about over the next few years.
Appreciate the warning, strangerHere’s a redditor that describes it quite well:
Me. I have this. Happens several times a night. Sounds like a door slamming or a gunshot. The weirdest part is you also get the feeling that there was an impact, like that feeling when someone stomps near you. So it’s not just auditory it’s almost physical. It’s a very strange thing and hard to describe because you’re always 3/4 of the way asleep when it happens. I’ve had it my whole life and always found it curious but have never questioned it out loud. I thought everyone had this until I saw “exploding head syndrome” on the internet. Asked my parents and siblings, no, none of them have this and what the fuck am I talking about? I’m in my goddamned 40s and thought this was normal.
Goddamit I said stop, I’ve already got a ton of other neuroses to worry about!
My husband used to work night shifts. When he came home in the wee hours of the morning he would get undressed in the dark, so as to not wake me up. If he happened to make a loud noise like dropping his phone, banging his belt buckle, etc, I would wake up seeing a specific pattern “behind my eyes”, so to speak, triggered by the noise. With time I realized the pattern changed depending on the nature of the noise!
I have this too, and it’s almost exactly the same. I get little from music though.
It can be really distracting when camping and an acorn falls on the tent or things like that.
I also smell in colour, if that makes any sense at all.
I have the annoying kind of synesthesia that’s more of a sidecar to OCD. People are hues. It’s even more frustrating that I can’t remember names, and I clearly can’t use that as a reference to another person without coming off as a whackadoodle.
Are there any music pieces that are your favorite because of synesthesia? Or pieces that you couldn’t enjoy because of it?
I’d also imagine that watching movies must be a very different experience for you too haha.I prefer music without vocals. Not sure if the Synesthesia is the cause. But my Synesthesia doesn’t trigger on voices, which is an interesting way of showing that speech and sounds are processed differently in the brain.
The only way that voices trigger my synesthesia is when I can’t speak the language and it’s all just “gibberish noise” for me
That’s interesting! Thanks for the reply!
I think those are the same ants in the southwest us that can find a box of cereal in a vault. Not sure if I could smell just one ant, but they are insanely smelly until you’re too hungover to pay attention and get a mouthful
It wasn’t the sugar, it was the ants!
Sorry, a mouthful?
They were in his cereal.
Okay, I was imagining waking up to ants in your mouth after a night of drinking.
Well, not really superpowers since they are common in humans. However, they are pretty interesting abilities nonetheless.
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Advanced speech recognition. I can filter out speech of one person while ignoring other background noise and even other speech.
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Advanced face recognition. I can see faces in clouds, floors, and other inanimate objects. Also helps when looking at real faces of people in a crowd. See also: pareidolia
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Auditory hallucinations during hypnagogia. Look it up. It’s weird and trippy.
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Desensitization and habituation to capsaicin. I can eat spicy foods.
I have the opposites of all of these.
I can’t differentiate noises, I’m awful at picking out speech in loud places, I’m bad with faces, and spicy foods upset my stomach (I can eat them, but it has consequences).
My evil twin from the mirror dimension. We meet at last! Or maybe I’m the evil one?
spicy foods upset my stomach (I can eat them, but it has consequences).
Same. It sucks. My brothers have continually given me shit for decades for being a bitch that doesn’t like spicy wings. I’m like “dudes, it’s not that I don’t enjoy the taste, it’s that my stomach will literally cramp up 4 hours from now and I’ll be shitting pain.”
They don’t care.
You are not alone.
lol well done. the clinical language makes these very mundane skills seem mystical. Hypnagogic AH!
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I have special ability to fall asleep quick if deciding to take a nap during office hours.
Unfortunately, it’s not effective going to sleep in the evening
Have you considered working night shifts?
I did, it was the final nail in the coffin for my sleep schedule 🤣
That’s a symptom of a lot of stuff, most commonly sleep deprivation
I can smell reposts and pictures I have already seen a mile away.
