By Ally Cottrell

With the explosion of superheros in media, I have been thinking about superheros quite a lot. Namely, how I really wouldn’t want to be one. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have a superpower. That’s a different question entirely. But, I would be an awful superhero.

My number one reason for not wanting to be a superhero is that they never sleep. Many have normal jobs during the day, where they never seem to do any actual work but everyone loves them anyway without question. Maybe it’s because they’re all uncomfortably attractive so nobody has the guts to fire them, maybe not. I’m not sure. Then, they run around at night inexplicably finding the exact right person they need to in order to crack the entire corruption network nobody has ever touched before.

The only time they sleep is when they’re unconscious. I need my sleep. If I don’t go to bed on time, I hate the world. The last thing I want to do when I’m tired and cranky is save it. Maybe superheros take a lot of naps, I don’t know, but I need more sleep than whatever superheros get.

On top of that, I have absolutely no sense of direction. If somebody sent me out at night to find this one specific person, I’d just sit down and hope he came to me. I can’t find my way to places on roads with Google Maps guiding me the entire way. How am I supposed to find people who don’t want to be found while running around on rooftops I’ve never been to? Rooftops don’t have street signs. They also don’t have bathrooms or snacks, two things which are essential to my survival.

Also, superheros never seem to get cold or warm or hurt. Or have really awkward faces while fighting. I can’t even run a race without looking like I’m dying, I can’t imagine taking two people out with one complex twirly kick maneuver with a perfectly generic, even bored, facial expression. I can’t get my leg up to 90 degrees without a vigorous warm up. Masks help with the facial expressions, but those seem a stuffy and quite visibility-limiting. My eyesight is bad enough without possibility of being covered by a bad-smelling mask. Side note, when do superheroes do laundry?

This isn’t to say I wouldn’t enjoy a superpower, I just wouldn’t be very good at using it. Or, maybe this is all an elaborate cover-up. Who knows?