Secret Origins I

Do you remember the first time you realized that you were different? That things were different for other people than they were for you? It wasn’t that rules didn’t apply to you; they just applied differently.

I was six when I first figured it out about myself, in the hayloft of my family’s farm—my feet perched on a crossbeam, heels and toes hanging over its edge. I watched the cattle twenty feet below me. I faced up and—arms outstretched—fell forward and arced out over the herd, swallows and sparrows took flight around me as I flew to the other side of the barn, barely aware of the rope harness my cousins had fashioned around my chest and shoulders.

The cattle spooked and shoved each other, beginning a slow stampede from the barn. My cousins pulled the rope and I flew upward. Grabbing another crossbeam, I pulled myself onto it.

I stood—arms akimbo—surveying the scene, well impressed with my feat.

It was my first realization that the laws of gravity were malleable. Though it had required my cousin’s technical expertise, a good deal of rope, and the hay pulley, those details seemed negligible and I wondered what other humanly limitations I would soon find ways to circumvent.