With great power comes an expensive power bill.

     My kids have superpowers. That’s the only way I can explain the feats of which they are capable. My daughter, who has been the focus of past writings, produces enough energy in a day to power the Death Star for several years. I vividly remember the moment she was imbued with her abilities; she was not quite a year old and we had gone outside to witness a partial solar eclipse. She stared skyward for a few moments with a wide-eyed curiosity, a stare that only a child whose mind is ready to be filled with all of the information they can possibly absorb, can have. Then, something happened; her eyes and face transformed from wide and innocent to pensive and discerning, as if she had just experienced an epiphanous manifestation of some great store of power and knowledge. I’m fairly certain that a craft from an alien civilization, one endowed with understanding and technology far superior to our own, was using the eclipse as cover while searching for a human in which to deposit powerful abilities. Their purpose, no doubt, was to test our mettle as a species and determine if our fragile form could handle such advanced physical and mental capabilities. They, in their great wisdom, did not, however, have the forethought to grant the parents of their great experiment the abilities to cope with those powers.

     My son, who is now a year old, unleashed his powers at a moment of pain and fury. He is teething and is currently working on a molar, which, judging from the time, effort, and discomfort he is experiencing to produce this particular tooth, must be burrowing into his head from another dimension. As I was getting him dressed one morning, he was visibly uncomfortable. His little fists were clenched in a way that looked like he was ready to waylay something with tiny, Kung-Fu fury. His eyes widened, his little mouth opened, and then he unleashed a sound that I had never before heard from man nor beast. Imagine if a velociraptor and a banshee performed a duet and broadcast it through that giant speaker in the beginning of Back to the Future that blew Marty McFly backward across the room and caused everything on the walls to fall. It was like that except louder and much higher pitched.  My head hurt for days after. It is now his favorite thing to do. His scream is so loud that it causes localized temporal distortions, and time actually folds in on itself in the immediate area of the shriek. For example, he awoke the other morning at 5am and thought it would be great fun to shriek until the paint peeled from the walls. After what appeared to be several hours of this grueling trauma, I checked the clock on the wall and only fifteen minutes had elapsed.

I hope they use their powers for the good of humankind. I would hate to be the dad responsible for the downfall of Earth.