Ask Lemmy

My knee makes horrible, disturbing crackling and popping sounds when I move it, even just a little bit. It doesn't hurt at all, and grosses out anyone who is unfortunate enough to hear it. I especially enjoy telling family members to "listen to this" and then slowly extending my leg out.

I shattered the upper portion of my tibia while bouldering to get this ability. I asked my surgeon about it (my tibia/knee required a total of 3 surgeries to repair) and they told me it was likely scar tissue, and would persist.

I am very hangover resistant. I'm into my 30s now, I've only ever had one hangover, and I attribute that to a bit of blood loss (mishap trying to open a bottle of champagne with a sabre, I have now mastered that art)

I don't drink particularly often, I'll often go a few weeks without a drink, but I do occasionally find myself in a position where I get absolutely hammered and I wake up the next day feeling absolutely fine.

Years ago I was camping out at a music festival and got totally incoherently drunk, stumbled halfway into my tent and crashed there for the night. The next morning my friends who hadn't gone nearly as hard woke up all feeling pretty rough, and we're created by me already awake and making breakfast feeling fresh as a daisy.

I do tend to mix in plenty of water and food with my nights of debauchery, so I can't say that it's genetic or if I just happen to be doing the right thing. It's not a purposeful anti-hangover measure, I just want food and water while I'm drinking.

I'm not totally immune to the negative effects of alcohol though. I absolutely get red wine headaches, and a good night of drinking may sometimes give me a Charley horse the next day.

Remember those "exercise while you sleep" infomercials? I have parasomnia, so sometimes I wake up sore from moving around all night. Turns out, it really is like exercise while you sleep.

If there's some important time by when I need to wake up (flight/train to catch, or waking up to travel by car or go for an appointment) I wake up around 5-10 minutes before my alarm. Like, always. I wish I was joking.

I am a very heavy sleeper. But I have no idea what happens to my internal clock at moments like those.

I honestly can't think of a damned thing I'm weirdly good at. Maybe that's my super power. Extreme averageness.

I can plug in a USB drive/cable on the first time, successfully, without flipflopping the connector (and then USB C had to come along and invalidate my only worthwhile achievement)

I can cut butter to the exact weight each time.

This must have been terrifying for the ant.

I have super sensitive hearing, so while I can hear the faintest of noises, it also means loud noises are overwhelming and painful.

My super power is that I always know the difference between a fart and a shit before it exits.

I'm really bad with names and faces, but I can distinguish twins. I mean not the twins like "and my twin has a penis" but monozygotic twins.

I don't claim it to be any kind of a super power, but with my inability to recognize people even after they've been at the hairdresser it's really astonishing.

Does ADHD count? As it has a few superpowers you just can’t turn them on when you want sometimes. It also comes with some kryptonite.

I can play a spontaneous and convincing harmony on my violin to any song I hear. Sometimes I can even do this as I'm hearing a new song for the first time and trying to join in. I also suck at reading sheet music, so this could be a survival adaptation?

I can bend the top segment of my second toe backwards, 90 degrees on both feet. It feels comfy. It freaks my husband out when I do it.

I get to be the favorite of pretty much all the family pets. Always been.

Some family and friends joke that I probably could go to an African safari and the lions wouldn't harm me. Not really rushing to find out if it's true tho.

I can crack my elbows like knuckles by just extending my arms. My brother can do it too, but I've never met anyone else who can do it.

I can stop hiccups at will. Whenever I get a hiccup, I just stop.

Probably odorous house ants (sometimes also called sugar ants). I'm fairly sensitive to their scent, myself and recall being in tears as a small child ~6 because one of them walked across my finger and no amount of washing would get the smell off. I'm not a fan.

Knowing a timer is almost ready to go off.

I have this stupid sense to know that any timers I set (for cooking mostly, but other tasks around the house too) are very close to going off. Without watching the time when I set them with Alexa, if I ask how much time is left, it generally is always < 10 sec left. If it happened somewhat often, that'd be over thing, but this happens like 80% of the time.

I've even had 12h timers (slow cooking, etc) where I've checked once the entire time and it was within 10 to 30 sec remaining.

Nothing to do with my time management skills though, because I'm still late to all events. Whoops.

I can also smell ants but only after I squish them.

My superpower is I can accurately pour one or one half cup of rice by sight and feel without going by the line on the measuring cup.

i can touch my thumb to my wrist. Not terribly useful.

I guess we are only talking about the oddly specific ones so.

I like acidic foods so much, that I drank a cup of vinegar once, and survived.

My teeth are also weirdly resistant to decay.

Back in university, I studied basically all day long, which was tiresome after long sessions of study, even if with friends. My great superpower is that it used to just take me ~10 seconds of resting with my eyes closed to feel a huuuuge boost of energy that lasted for 1-2 hours. After that boost expired, I just did it again.

Incredibly useful.

I can blur my vision on command, kinda useless but a bit of fun to play with.

I also have a lazy eye, so I can scare unsuspecting people, sometimes two at a time if they're positioned right.

Books. I own probably a thousand physically, have hundreds of thousands of PDFs and epubs between my laptop and NAS.

The superpower is that I have a book “sense.” I know about where each book I own is - my shelves are not organized in any meaningful way, because I’m ADHD and will just pull one out to look at something and reshelve it. I’m not at home right now, but I can imagine my shelves and stacks in my head - can tell you where Palestine and the Palestinians or The Forty Days of Musa Dagh or the beautiful English translation of the 左传 or House Made of Dawn or the book on Scottish coins i thrifted a few days ago all are.

I can look at almost any given strangers bookshelf and recognize/have read at least one of their books. I navigate libraries by feel and don’t need to look up books.

I also read inhumanly fast I think, and have somewhat of an eidectic memory for text. It’s been almost twenty years since I read The Great Gatsby but a student brought it up and I was able to do a 45 minute lecture on it, with quotes from memory.

I’m also prodigious at sex. I’ll read more books in a week than most do over their life, and I’ll also fuck more people in that week than most do over their life.