The Not-So-Superpowers of Parenthood

Everybody knows a parent has the superhuman strength to lift a bulldozer if a kid gets stuck underneath one. I’m relying on anecdotal evidence on this one since Lola refuses to let me run over our daughter, even in the name of science. There’s a reason women are falling behind in fields like math and engineering, and it starts with their reluctance to drop construction equipment on babies. While freakish strength in life-threatening situations is the most well-known parenting superpower, new moms and dads also acquire a wealth of less impressive abilities a casual observer might mistake for character flaws or severe hygiene deficiencies. These not-so-super powers are offered as compensation to parents for their implicit agreement to never sleep through the night or have fun again. I’ve acquired a plethora of enhancements since Betsy’s arrival, not one of which is useful or interesting. But written descriptions of these skills do take up space, so I’ve decided to list them here in order of ascending pointlessness.

Super smell
This refers to my newfound ability to emit smells, not detect them. I carry with me a permanent musk of regurgitated breast milk and desperation. Betsy is now almost nine months old, so she can keep down most of her food for hours at a time – as long as I’m not holding her. She doesn’t so much spit up as she does emit projectile sniper strikes of partially digested foodstuffs. She can hit a moving target at sixty yards. That’s one ability I did test with scientific rigor, much to Lola’s chagrin. If I’m ever lost in the woods, it won’t exactly take a highly trained hunting dog to find me. A retarded poodle with a sinus infection would suffice.

Depending on the day, the eventual contents of this bottle could be food or ammunition.

Child Whispering
I am something of a infant tamer. Our child favors me because we feed her from bottles and she has yet to figure out her mother’s very direct role in the food generation process. My wife sings beautifully and in key, and the baby hates it. She prefers my flat, monotone drone as I recount the heroic struggle of the three little fish in the little bitty pool. If they really did swim over the dam, they most likely plummeted to their deaths. I’ll explain this to Betsy when she’s older. Gravity seldom makes for good children’s songs. Like getting hit in the head by a baseball bat, my singing puts people to sleep by causing moderate brain damage. This might sound unpleasant, but my voice could replace the Taser as a non-lethal means of law enforcement. Patents are pending.

Janitorial Might
Betsy got a jumping harness for Christmas. Her preferred place to void her bowels is still in her pants, but her favorite place to fill said pants is now her jumper. I guess I underestimated the simply joy of dropping a deuce while being partially weightless. The laws of physics dictate that when an eighteen-pound baby bounces up and down while sitting on a secret semi-solid cargo, said payload has to go somewhere. In this case, that destination was up her back about an inch shy of her neck in coating so thick it reminded me of the way I layer peanut butter on bread. I hope I just ruined sandwiches for you forever. Sometimes a bowel movement demands an immediate bath; other times it calls for a fire hose. Being a parent has given me the ability to clean up such environmental disasters, whether I want to or not.

There’s a fine line between fun toy and colorful toilet.

Time Travel
Sometimes I close my eyes to blink and I’m teleported minutes or even hours into the future. Entire evenings vanish in an instant. On other nights, time stands still, slowed to a stop by cries of rage from a little person infuriated at the world for reasons only she can comprehend. Instead of a DeLorean and a wacky professor, my travel companions are a screaming baby and sleep deprivation. Having a child has warped my sense of time. When the people at daycare ask what time I last fed her, sometimes all I can recall is that it was cold and dark and I was being chased by dinosaurs. They’ve only called Child Protective Services on me twice. Other people tell us their nine-month-olds sleep through the night, change their own diapers, and on occasion complete basic tax forms. For us, if Betsy stays unconscious for three hours at a time, we feel guilty that life is so easy.

Pain Immunity
I have yet to drop Betsy, even when drinking heavily, walking up stairs in the dark, or surfing in a tsunami. While much of this can be attributed to my incredible dexterity, at least part of this can be credited to Betsy’s iron monkey grip. Her hands have only two settings: open and death crush. While this has kept her alive on days when my hand-eye coordination is less than optimal, it has also resulted in its fair share of missing fingers on my part. Whether she’s tearing out chest hair with her falcon-like talons or snipping off digits with her two teeth and snapping turtle-like bite, Betsy has grown more dangerous with time. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even notice if she draws blood anymore. When we have our next child, I think I’ll invest in one of those padded suits they use to train attack dogs.

Dangle that finger a little closer and see what happens.

Animal Neglect
It’s no secret that ever since the baby was born our dogs are lucky to receive food and water on a semiannual basis. But having a baby has enabled me to offend animals I don’t even own. Several months ago, Betsy was crying, and a nearby cat mistook that terrible sound as a sign I was trying to steal one of her kittens. As I dutifully tried to change Betsy’s diaper, the previously unseen feline pounced and savagely attacked my side, leaving me clinging to life. Lola of course doubted my harrowing tale, but the cat did manage to draw a small amount of blood by piercing my skin through what I assumed to be a claw-proof garment. I guess there’s a reason lion tamers don’t wear t-shirts.

My inability to care about animals after the birth of Betsy isn’t even limited to my waking hours. I recently dreamt I was exempt from being drafted into the Korean War as a combat helicopter pilot because my skills as a ferret farmer were needed on the home front. I am well aware there were no combat helicopters in the Korean War – which would have made my role in that conflict awkward to say the least – but I’m also not sure what resource ferrets provided that was vital to the war effort. Perhaps they were melted down and distilled for their wiliness. All I know for sure is that the army didn’t need them intact. In my dream, I harvested my ferret crop with a combine.

Being a parent has given me all kinds of almost usefully skills I plan on never using again. Like being able to solve a Rubik’s Cube or read above the third grade level, no one will ever be awed by the things I can do as a parent. My powers might not be that impressive, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped waiting for someone to base a comic book on my life.