22 | November | 2013 | Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss

You get to choose one superpower. Pick one of these, and explain your choice:

the ability to speak and understand any language
the ability to travel through time
the ability to make any two people agree with each other

Photographers, artists, poets: show us POWER.

Fluffy in the living room

“Meow Fluffy”

No answer, let’s try again.

“Meow, MEOW Fluffy”

Still no answer. See WordPress Daily Prompt, it does not work, the ability to speak and understand any language. I tried Meow and my felines ignored me, but they would probably ignore me even if they understood: a matter of feline principles.

OK I am spoilt for languages. I live in a country where language differences form part of the daily survival. Where I live we speak German Swiss German in Solothurn dialect. Half an hour on the Motorway going south and they still speak Swiss German, but this time Bern dialect. Let us go West and we arrive in the town of 40% French speaking and the rest, you have it, Swiss German. Another ten minutes’ drive further and we are all speaking French. Let us go South for a few hours, and we all speak Italian: Swiss Tessin Italian dialect. Within five minutes of any journey in Switzerland you encounter a different dialect, we invented dialect. Coupled with the fact that after learning all this double dutch (no insult intended, I love the dutch) I took it upon myself to learn Russian for ten years, with a year Arabic thrown in for good measure. Who needs an ability to speak and understand a language. I am happy to manage to do my shopping in this country without speech complications.

I am not so sure about travelling through time. With my luck I might land in the trenches in the middle of a World Ware One battle and be gassed or killed. Perhaps I would arrive during the French revolution where the chopping block is waiting, being decapitated whilst the female revolutionaries would be busy knitting and looking on. I would be there when the Russian Revolution broke out, only to be shot by a misguided bullet from a revolutionary or Russian soldier. So let us put that on one side. Who wants to travel in time when you do not know where and when you will arrive.

I could make two people agree. Valdimir Putin and Barack Obama agree to have a Big Mac together: Putin because they are a delicacy in Moscow and Obama because he is fed up with super menus at the White House. They would agree to disagree and we would be no further in solving the world problems.

At the moment I would be happy to have a super power to solve my own problems. My diabetes would disappear overnight. Mr. Swiss back problems would no longer exist and my 98 year old father would again be able to walk down the road and do his shopping on his own. Who needs special powers, when the basics no longer function as they should.

Daily Prompt: A Bird, a Plane, You!

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