I don't always suffer from insomnia because I'm a wounded little bird with a fractured psyche. Sometimes, but not always. A lot of the time I'll just lay there, for hours, thinking of nothing, but not able to fall asleep. At this point I think it's a matter of just being used to less sleep. But sometimes there's a very special kind of sleepless night, like last night...
I was just turning off the TV to go to bed, and the last thing I saw was someone whistle. Not the kind of whistle where you just purse your lips and blow, it was the super cool kind where you put your fingers in the corner of your mouth, and blow the eardrums out of anyone within 100 yards. The kind that makes you feel like less of a man if you can't do it ๐. I lay there for a long time, trying to figure out why I couldn't perform such a seemingly easy action. Even trying again, in vain, to perform the whistle. And that got me thinking of how I snap my fingers. I can only do it with my left hand. My right thumb just doesn't bend the right way, and I end up just awkwardly rubbing my fingers together. As a kid, I had my right thumb closed in a car door on three separate occasions, and had the window in my room fall on both hands, once. I always thought the finger snapping may have been due to an old injury, possibly an undiagnosed broken thumb, that never healed properly. But as I lay in bed, in the complete blackness, trying to snap the fingers of one hand, while the others were jammed in my mouth as I tried to whistle, I started to wonder if there was a genetic component to it. Maybe some people just can't do it.
That's where I made my biggest mistake, as it led me to a question I've pondered, off-and-on, for over a decade: What if mutants really exist, and we just don't know? I don't necessarily mean like comic book stuff, but also, kinda like comic book stuff. I'm not talking grand super powers, like levitating buildings with your mind or controlling metallic objects... I'll give a couple examples (I've thought of many through the years), one big and one small:
A big one- suppose someone has been born that can control sea water. They can control it's movement, shape, etc., but specifically sea water. Now say this person is born in a desert, and never leaves their hometown, even on a vacation. How would they, or anyone else, ever discover they possess such an incredible power? If they never see salt water, they'd never know they can control it.
A small (and maybe more realistic) one- what if someone is born immune to the common cold? Not all diseases, just colds. Or some other common, non-life-threatening disease. Would anyone ever notice, including the person themselves? And if they did know, would anyone believe them? I'm sure we've all encountered people who claim to have never been sick with this or that, and usually just write them off as exaggerating. Well, what if they're right? How would we know?
Anyway, the last time I looked at the clock, it was just after 3 A.M. I had to be up at 6, for work, and I think I managed to get a little over 2 hours of sleep by the time I cleared my mind and drifted off. Luckily our job cancelled today, so I can try and catch a nap right after I post this ๐ค๐
