The Day I Found My Superpower

Superpowers are real. Discovering my superpower when I was 18 changed everything. What's that? I don't look like I have a superpower? Well, see, that just goes to prove that it's real. All the best superpowers are secret.

I'll explain.

It was my first job out of high school. Payday was every Friday and I had a habit of stopping by the little florist stand on my way to the bus stop and buying my mom flowers. Nothing too big, mind you, just a small bunch that I could hold on the 30 minute bus ride home.

On this particular Friday I saw something different, a tiny amber bottle with an even tinier arrangement of strawflowers popping out of the top. I knew it was the perfect thing: the flowers would last forever and it would fit perfectly in the printing drawer she had hung on the wall. She was slowly finding small things to place in the teeny divided spaces and this little bottle would fit in one of the larger openings. I bought it and popped it into my jacket pocket.

The busses of 1978 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania weren't as sleek and efficient as they are today. They ground through the bumpy streets, loud engine sounds fighting with the rest of the traffic noises. I usually got on one of the last stops out of the city and had to hold on to the overhead pole and stand most of the way. This particular Friday was no different.

I stood on the swaying bus, one hand holding the overhead pole and the other through the loop of my purse, holding the strap taut and the purse against my body, elbows tucked in as far as they could go. I knew the route well after riding the bus five days a week for the last five months. Weekdays were for work, weekends were usually a trip to the mall with my boyfriend, chores around the house, and church on Sunday.

The bus was about a mile from our house and winding up the final hill, past my elementary school and the corner grocery. While it was stopped at the only traffic light in our town I walked up the aisle and stood by the last seat, just behind the bus driver, facing the right of the bus.

I always got off the bus at the stop on the other side of the small street that ran next to our corner lot. Sometimes my youngest brother and two young sisters would watch for me from the front porch. I liked to wave to them as the bus passed the house and came to a stop just two doors down. At 5'2" I didn't even have to duck my head to see out of the window; I had a perfect view of the front of the house, the wide porch that ran across the front of it, and even the big red porch swing that three kids would climb all over while they would wait for me and the bus.

Excuse me? Well, I needed to explain all of that to explain what I'm about to tell you now. I haven't talked about this in years. Actually, I'm a little nervous about talking about it now. But I will.

Although what I'm going to tell you took less than a minute it creeps by in slow motion when I close my eyes and play it back in my mind.

Holding on to the overhead pole, I looked to my left, out of the front window of the bus. There were a lot of people on the sidewalk in front of the houses on my block. That was odd for 4:00 in the afternoon on a Friday. As we passed our house I looked straight at it and felt my entire body tingle as I took in the smoke. The broken bedroom windows. The open front door. No brother or sisters. No people at all.

Screaming, I took the two steps down to the bus door and yelled to be let off the bus RIGHT NOW! Now! Ignoring whatever the bus driver was saying about not being at the stop yet, I tried to open the doors with my hands, ready to jump out as the bus was moving. I must have looked deranged. He stopped the bus mid-street and opened the doors. He was still talking as I jumped out and ran to our house along the side of the road.

Taking the few steps to the house I realized I could smell the smoke, bitter and wispy. I could see the asphalt shingles on the second floor at the front of the house, blistered and cracked. The windows all along the front were broken, jagged glass showing in the panes. I looked to the top of the house, to the third-floor attic where my bedroom was, and the windows there were also gone.

There were no people on the front porch, none at the gate from the sidewalk to the front steps. No one on the swing as I walked down the steps and onto the porch. Where was the family? My dad, my mother, my two brothers, my two sisters? It was quiet, eerily quiet.

I took a step onto the concrete floor of the porch, directly across from the front door. Before I could act on my decision to go inside and find my family, a firefighter walked out of the door as he called back over his shoulder "That's it. They're all gone now."

They're all gone now? All gone?

I walked over to the big red porch swing, still suspended from the untouched roof of the porch. I sat down on the swing and pushed back against the porch floor with one foot. I kept my head down as the tears started down my face. I kept my head down even when I heard someone in the house say that the ceiling on the first floor just collapsed. I kept my head down as I cried and struggled to breathe, because I was raised to not make a scene. I kept my head down as I tried to make sense out of what was happening. I tucked my numb hands in my jacket pocket and felt that small glass bottle with the strawflowers that I had bought less than an hour ago, and I closed my eyes.

There was resistance to the gentle movement of the swing and I felt someone sit next to me. I felt a hand on my knee, but I still kept my head down. I didn't move, just sat there with my shoulders hunched. I heard someone talking, heard words, but didn't want to know what else was falling down. Didn't want to hear anything that would make this more horrible than it already was.

Yeah, yeah I know, my superpower. I'm getting there. Hold on another minute, ok?

One of the words that I heard was my own name, and then I looked up. I looked up and saw my aunt. My aunt that didn't really live anywhere around our house. My aunt that was usually at work this time of day. My aunt that was at our house usually around holidays, not on an October evening around 4:00 in the afternoon on the day our house had been on fire. Why was my aunt here? Why wasn't she crying? Didn't she know they were all gone? Was I going to have to tell her? No. No, I didn't.

She said that my parents (my parents!) were at her house 30 minutes away with my brothers and sisters (my brothers and sisters!). They had called her to tell her the house was on fire. Had called her in the early afternoon. My aunt had been there when the neighbors broke the windows to try and quench the fire, and had watched the flames leap out of those windows when the oxygen fanned the flames instead. This had all happened hours earlier. When I was at work.

And then my aunt said the words that let me know I had a superpower. She told me they had forgotten to call me. Had forgotten for all of the hours the house was burning. While the fire department had broken through the walls of the old three-story house with summer kitchen in the basement and my room in the attic. Had forgotten when they gathered the littler kids from school and took them to my aunts house. Had forgotten when they left the house to the care of the fire department and drove away with four children.

Had forgotten for all of those hours. Had forgotten me. Had left me to come home to a burned out home. Had left me to sit in shock alone on the front porch. Had forgotten their oldest child. Had forgotten their oldest daughter. Had counted their other children neatly by twos (two boys? check. two girls? check.) and placed them in a car and drove away.

My aunt? Oh, no. No, she had not come back for me. My mother forgot her purse and my aunt came back for it. She was surprised to see me sitting on the swing.

Because of my superpower, you see? I am forgettable. Invisible. Unnoticeable. Of no consequence. Unimportant. Disposable.

In an instant I learned that lesson, and over the years since that moment I have never forgotten being that young girl, sitting on the porch swing, with the smell of smoke seeping into her pores, along with the realization that she didn't matter.

You do see what my superpower is, don't you? Hey mister! Mister! You see me, don't you?

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This story is real. It took me years to understand how deeply I had learned the lesson and the ways it changed my life. I struggle against that lesson still today.

If you know a child that learned the same lesson, here are 10 steps to helping them break free and find the truth: a better superpower called You Matter.