I’ve always wanted to be special. From a young age I felt like I may have special powers that set me apart from feeble, fragile humanity. I can remember sitting and staring and squinting and groaning as I would try to move a kickball using the no doubt awesome power of my mind. It was after I had seen “The Empire Strikes Back” and I couldn’t see any valid reason why I couldn’t levitate my father’s conversion van the way Luke levitated his X-wing. Sadly no amount of brow-furrowing or focus enabled me do it because it seems I am not telekinetic.

But does that mean I don’t have any powers at all? Not necessarily. For every unstoppable killing machine with an immortal healing factor or time-bending Japanese office worker, there have to be several individuals born with less obvious powers. I think I may have one ore more of these abilities, which may not be as flashy as the kind you see in comic books, but make life much more convenient.

For example, I seem to have a prescient sense of timing for television shows. I have an innate sense of when commercials will air and when the show resumes. It goes beyond just good guessing, or a general sense of how long commercials take into the realm of preternatural ability. I can stop and start my DVR on a dime, down to the millisecond when a commercial ends and the show fades up from the break. I can also flip back and forth between channels, effortlessly returning to my primary channel just as the program is restarting. It’s not really something I asked for, like all those gifted with great powers I find it can often be more of a curse than a blessing. Sometimes I miss really clever commercials.