Day 21 - A superpower I'd want

April challenge
Day 21 - If you could have one superpower, what would it be and what would you do with it first?

Wow, I haven't really ever thought of having a superpower before, so this is some new territory. I looked at the topic earlier, thought about it for a couple hours, and now I'm back to write up my thoughts. Sure it would be cool to be invisible or be able to fly or that kind of thing, but I don't think either of those things would really make my life all that better in the long run. But there are two things I came up with. Here they are:

1. The ability to read books really fast. That was my initial idea because I have an ever-growing list of books I want to read. I'm not sure I'll get through with all those books (and the others I'm bound to add over in future weeks, months, and years) in my lifetime, even if I had as much time as I liked to read. But then I got to thinking about how my book-reading experience has changed over the years. From when I learned to read up until I was in my first few years of college, I would whip through books really fast. Some Sundays when I had more free time I could even get through a book or two in a day. But then I discovered the joy, and really the skill, of reading more slowly. Of really digging deep into the text and enjoying every word, phrase, and well-crafted sentence. Of fully understanding what the author meant by each paragraph. I still read books rather quickly, but not nearly so quickly as I used to. I sometimes stop, even in the middle of paragraphs or sentences, to re-read something that is really beautifully written or to think about something that really grabbed my attention and made me think. And it's a lovely experience. So now that I've thought about that all, I don't really need or want a superpower to read books really fast. I already do read as fast as I'd like to. All I need is to reorganize some of my time to leave more space open to sit down and really get into a good book more often.
2. The second thing I thought of is the one I really would love to have. The ability to learn languages really fast. Yes, I would ADORE this superpower!! I have taken nine years of French classes (although the ones I'm counting from high school and college were really just semesters) and my French abilities are quite awful. Of course none of those nine years focused on speaking skills, just writing and listening skills. But I'm not even that great at those. It doesn't help that I've never spent any significant time in a French-speaking area, despite living in a bilingual country. So my French skills are desperately lacking. Let's continue the sad story. The bit of Spanish I picked up while I worked at an orphanage in Guatemala hasn't stuck with me either. I had a pretty good repertoire of greetings, colours, numbers, food and animal names, types of weather, and other assorted good-to-know words. Yep, pretty much all gone. Then there's German, the language of my heritage which both my maternal grandparents spoke at home and in elementary school while growing up on the Canadian prairies. I only know a couple words and a song or two in German. Last year in Tanzania I learned quite a few words in Swahili, despite working in a mostly-English environment (about the same amount as what I learned in Guatemala). And while certain Swahili words will never stop being part of my vocabulary (I have urges to say wewe (you) to Jonathan at times, whenever I see a pair of underwear I think chupis, and if I see a bug my mind automatically says dodo), I struggle to come up with any phrases anymore. I don't even remember how to say good morning or other easy phrases like that anymore. And don't even get me started on my Korean. I know about four words in Korean so far (kamsamnida- thank you; an-nyeong ha-se-o - hello; debak - awesome or great job; and fighting - a Konglish term that means 'go for it!') plus the numbers from 1-10 if I think about it really hard. That's pathetic. I learned way more words in my three and a half months in Guatemala than I have in six months here. So that's the story of my language skills as of right now. Ridiculous. There are so many I want to learn and I can't even keep up the ones I did learn a little bit of. Anyway so the superpower I would chose would be to learn languages really quickly, retain them, and speak them perfectly. And of course what I would do with that skill first would be to travel to the countries of the languages I learn and be able to speak to the locals without any stumbling and mumbling and checking of phrasebooks and feeling foolish. Haha, I know it's just a pipedream for here on earth, but hopefully in heaven I'll finally get to learn a few languages well. If we still have various languages there. I kind of think we might and I think it will be really fun to learn them from the native speakers.