22 (Mostly Weird) Superpowers I Wish I Had When I Was A Kid

When I was a kid one of my hobbies was coming up with weird superpowers that I thought it would be cool to have if I was a superhero. Here’s a list of just a few that I have saved on my computer.

1. The ability to change other people’s eye or hair color.

2. The ability to run as fast as any car that you are near.

3. The ability to know everyone’s name, birthday and one fun fact about them immediately when I meet them.

4. The ability to perfectly fit into any clothes I put on.

5. The ability to turn friction on and off.

6. Superhuman invulnerability to being tricked.

7. The ability to memorize every book that I read.

8. The power to know where anyone is at any moment.

9. The power to make people allergic to any food/cure any allergy.

10. Ability to throw any object up to 1 mile.

11. The power to make my own footprints in any shape

12. The ability to make hand shadow puppets in any shape.

13. A magical inability to get lost

14. One of my fingers works as a pen/pencil.

15. Magical ability to never get dirty.

16. The power to jump over anything that is in front of me.

17. A Green Lantern ring that makes snack food.

18. The ability to cry tears of my favorite drink- juice, whisky, whatever.

19. The power to make people tired, but not make them fall asleep.

20. The ability to move clouds from one place to another and make them into different shapes.

21. All the powers that ghosts traditionally have- I could make lights flicker, doors slowly open and close, and knock over light things.

22. The ability to fit anything into my pocket.

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Mey

Mey Rude is a fat, trans, Latina lesbian living in LA. She's a writer, journalist, and a trans consultant and sensitivity reader. You can follow her on twitter, or go to her website if you want to hire her.

Mey has written 572 articles for us.

33 Comments

  1. these are all great ideas! the cloud one is really similar to something I used to do with flocks of birds, where I would pretend my hand was a bird magnet and that they were following it around like little metal filaments.

    I also played this game when i was younger. some of my favorite ideas:
    1. perfect pitch
    2. ability to tell someone’s past lives when i met them (i had a reincarnation phase)
    3. ability to increase or decrease gravity at will
    4. ability to talk to trees (though, i will be honest, many had little to say)

  2. ’18. The ability to cry tears of my favorite drink- juice, whisky, whatever.’

    This is genius. You’d be sad and then all of a sudden OMG JUICE SO HAPPY

  3. As a kid I always wanted the ability to move things with my mind. Now that I’m older and more politically minded I really want the ability to control peoples minds, which is something I couldn’t have cared less about as a kid. Don’t worry I would be very minimalist and ethical with such a power.

  4. I’ve always wanted to fly/levitate. haha cliche, sure, but just imagine it! I’d never walk anywhere again! o v o

  5. I was a pretty altruistic little kid and wished I could telepathically communicate the answers to exams to my classmates. I tried it many times but I don’t think it ever worked. I also tried to move things with my mind on a regular basis. I blame Matilda.

    • I always tried to move things with my mind as well, damn Matilda giving us unrealistic expectaions.
      Though I also used to dress like Harriet the spy and try to spy on people… I was kind of embarrassing as a kid.

      • I did both these things too! My neighbours were really boring so my friends and I would just follow cats around the neighbourhood and spy on them as they did various cat business. With notebooks, obviously

  6. MEY oh my god this list is so cute and hilarious. i’ve been doing a lot of babysitting recently and i’m always so impressed with the way kids’ minds work — they just haven’t bought into lots of the gross realities of the world yet and they’re like “WELL WHAT IF I COULD DO THIS THING” and you as an adult have no choice to just be like “well yeah that would be so cool why didn’t i think of that.” anyway i love your little kid brain as much as i love your adult brain, is what i mean.

    3, 4, 14, and 15 are my favorite. 15 is just so damn practical!

  7. The one power I wish for now is perfect gaydar – and not just being able to tell which way someone swings, but whether or not they’d swing *my* way. It is the one thing that would make my life 100x easier.
    Also maybe the ability to learn through diffusion. I’ve tried sleeping on my textbooks, but somehow that’s never quite worked…

  8. I wanted to be able to communicate with animals. Especially birds. I wanted them all to be my friends, you know?
    Also I often really wanted the ability to go into the stories I was reading and hang out with my favorite characters.
    What can I say, I was a pretty lonely kid…

      • Immortals series! I read those.

        Also: Enid Blyton’s books. They almost all feature at least one character that’s able to connect with animals in a below super power, but still very extraordinary way.

        • ENID BLYTON OH MY GOD.

          i was just trying to tell someone how incredible the book with a tree that they could climb and enter different worlds was…do you know what i’m talking about?

    • I also always wished I could go inside books! Partly because of being a lonely kid, but also because the real world always seemed kinda boring by comparison. Like, why can’t I do magic and have superpowers and go on adventures? NO FAIR.

      Have you ever read any of the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde? She goes into books and solves mysteries and fights crime in the book world (and she is an extremely badass tough lady heroine btw). Its like literary sci-fi. Love love love that series.

  9. Am I the only one who thinks 19 is absolutely diabolical?!? Imagine working with someone who was secretly using their super powers to make your coffee not work!

    • Interesting… when I saw # 5, my mind immediately went to lube.

      But that would conflict with # 15 “Magical ability to never get dirty.”.

  10. I still wish I could do 7. Every time I transfer new books to my Kindle I secretly wish I could transfer them into my head instead.

  11. I’m fascinated with clouds so I would totally love to be able to shape them.

    Also, I would totally love to have a daemon like in His Dark Materials, then I could have full on conversations with my cat (okay, I already do, but now she could respond).

  12. This is so amazing! I was going to say my favorite ones, like 4 and 14 but they are all my favorite I can’t choose.

  13. I used to wish for the fitting-into-any-clothes one too! More recently I’ve wished for the power of knowing a person’s sexual orientation without asking. Mostly to hit on femmes.

  14. Most imaginative kid ever!

    When I was in elementary school, my teachers would ask the parents to write them a short letter with basic info about their kid. The one my mom wrote in fourth grade specifically says I have trouble understanding kids my own age because of my absolute inability to imagine ANYTHING.

    So, I probably wouldn’t have understood you as a kid, basically. BUT NOW I GET IT AND I THINK YOU ARE (WERE) THE COOLEST KID EVER.

  15. The ability to read people’s facial expressions! I’m mildly autistic, which makes interpreting how people are feeling nearly impossible.

    It might be normal to most people, but it would feel like a super power to me!

    And then I could stop asking people “are you sad/mad” every 15 minutes.

  16. I’ve wanted wings forever! Proper, enormous, black, functional wings.
    If anyone has read the ‘Maximum Ride’ books – just like them. There is a fantastic scene in one book where Fang (I thing) pretends to be an angel of darkness to scare off a squatter. (Its way more epic in the books than how I just described it)

  17. Ahahaha I love this so much, especially the ones that are not asking for anything *too* crazy. “The ability to know everyone’s name, birthday and one fun fact about them immediately when I meet them” — I feel like when you’re a kid every single new group you’re in is asked by some adult to go around and share these things!

  18. hi there i have tornado sniffing nose lets me detect tornados out 77 miles out soo i sneezzee you there are tornados dedected

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