http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=298hpO4JtLg
I came across this video the other day. It’s a feature on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon called #LateNightHashtags when he sends out a Tweet with a Hashtag and looks for crazy responses.
In this particular one Jimmy, or at least someone at the show, tweeted #MySuperPower. He reads through a few and makes a few comments for some good laughs. Some people have some strange ideas!
One #MySuperPower that he doesn’t touch on has been brought up on the Rick and Bubba radio show as well as The Dave Ramsey Show and that is Common Sense.
Common Sense, according to Wikipedia, is defined as ” a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things which are shared by (“common to”) nearly all people, and can be reasonably expected of nearly all people without any need for debate”.
I grew up on a farm where it appeared I acquired this superpower early on as I still have all my body parts and I’m here to write this article. It didn’t seem like rocket science that you don’t stand in front of things bigger than you, alive or mechanical, and you stayed away from the noisy moving stuff.
Maybe part of it had to do with how we were told things “back in the day” and our response to them. If you were told “Don’t do that” you didn’t do it. You didn’t ask why you just didn’t do it. Sometimes there might be some more description involved “If you stick your hand in there it will get ripped off”. OK. don’t stick a hand in there, Check. And I will use my new found Superpower to determine that I shouldn’t stick my hand into that other spinning, noisy thing either.
So my brain did some word association and added some other inputs for effect. Noisy / Spinning = Hand-Ripped Off. No need to test the concept to see if it was true.
Later on, I worked in an auto factory. This was the time of easily jumpered switches and places you just shouldn’t be but at the time I was surrounded by others with the same superpowers that I had. Everybody just did what had to be done to get things out the door. But things began to change and Others began to work there. And then Others started showing up all over. Was it possible I was raised in a community of people with the Common Sense superpower so it just seemed normal?
We are now in a time where someone like Dave Ramsey has made a very comfortable living by selling his Superpower and openly jokes about it on the radio. Does everyone hear it or maybe it’s only us with the same Superpower?
As I watch the kids grow and learn I hope to instill some of my Superpowers in them and maybe, just maybe they will use this ability to earn a comfortable living as well.
If you have any comments please post them below.
Play Safe
Ken
