At Best, A Murky Ability to Differentiate Fiction from Reality

I used to get kind of carsick. And by kind of, I mean the ten minute drive towards downtown was an ordeal. So for the long family trips that we used to take (to such far away exotic lands as Washington, D.C.) my parents bought me a gray anti-nausea band. The band was simple stretch gray cotton with a white plastic ball embedded into one side, that was to be placed on a pressure point located on one's left wrist. When the band was worn and the pressure point depressed car sickness was supposed to magically evaporate. Some might dub this supposed relief simple mind over matter or the placebo effect, but I was young, idealistic, and years away from learning those phrases. Naturally, it worked miraculously well.

However, I hated wearing the stupid carsickness band. No one else had to wear one, not even my twin! And that was just genetically unfair. So to make the band seem cooler, I told myself that by the nature of the white plastic ball that was depressing the pressure point, the white plastic ball also triggered magical powers that could be released. If not for my carsickness, I would never have been discovered my magical powers! Never mind that I hadn't worked out what special powers the band actually did release (that was very far advanced, even for a car sickness band.) Thankfully my parents knew what was up, and their buying me the band was just a subtle acknowledgement, a nod of the head if you will, to let me know that I was special. My twin didn't have to wear one because the genetic dna sequence for supernatural abilities just wasn't bestowed upon her. Genetics can be an unpredictable thing.

Every person wants to be special, to be unique. Call it wishful thinking, call it escapism. Call it a deep appreciation for and total saturation in science fiction novels and other books about kids with supernatural abilities that, if you read enough of them, eventually blur the line between fiction and reality. (Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher or the Girl with the Silver Eyes, anyone?)

When I was growing up a lot of the shows on television and novels marketed towards my age set played along the theme of young adults who met their destiny through one (or many) supernatural abilities. There was the ability to speak with ghosts (Bruce Coville's The Nina Tanleven series), the ability to change into an animal (K.A. Applegate's the Animorph series), inhuman abilities and the unavoidable trek towards the battle for saving humanity (Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, both), or simply the ability to transform into a surprisingly agile silver puddle after getting hit by an out-of-control truck carrying radioactive material (The Secret World of Alex Mack). Though I lacked most of these general requisites for serious adventure and possible humanity-saving, I still held firm to the belief that I had (have?) special powers.

When we would travel and stop along the highway at food courts and gas stations, I made sure t prominently display the carsick band like it was my own personal red badge of courage. I wanted people to ask about it, so that I could respond with an answer that I hoped would only picque their interest and cause them to think me a sophisticated and alluringly unusual girl."Oh this? It's nothing." Because there is nothing so intriguing as a carsickness band worn by a ten year old girl. In glasses. Reading her young adult sci-fi book.

The car sickness thing isn't an issue anymore, worked through by many a road trip in my past (Hilton head '09!) But sometimes I wonder what people thought when they saw that skinny girl waving her wrist conspicuously in front of the cashier at Subway. Did anyone notice? Why didn't my parents, my sisters, my friends even, say anything to me? Maybe because they knew that I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the band made me special. They understood that others could somehow sense that aura of the supernatural about me. The human mind can be tricked into great things.

While I don't (really) believe that a band can give me special powers anymore, with books like Twilight and shows like the Ghost Whisperer gaining popularity and permeating our collective social spheres it is still hard to resist the inexorable desire to want to be different and have others take notice.

Or maybe I just need to start reading some different books.