I just had a great idea for a TV show: People from all over the world begin to sense they have superpowers. One guy can fly. Another can walk through walls. A cheerleader is impervious to physical harm. A kid can move back and forth in time. You get the idea: normal people, sick and tired of living under constraint, are busting out, into a world without limits!

But here’s the twist: These people, who believe they have superpowers? They don’t. They never have and never will. There is no such thing as a superpower.

The guy who thinks he can fly? Jumps off his minivan and sprains his ankle. The one who can walk through walls? Tries to run through the living-room wall and breaks a photograph of his wife’s mother. His wife is really upset. The cheerleader impervious to physical harm throws herself down a flight of stairs, breaks her back, then lies there waiting for it to miraculously mend. But no. The cat steps over her. So much for cheerleading. The kid who thinks he can move back and forth through time decides to exit a math test early by time-transporting himself back to Mozart’s Vienna. He tries and tries, so hard that he finally farts really loudly in a wet double-burst. The other kids crack up. He tries to time-transport himself back to the instant before the fart, so he can withhold the fart, but no: he tries so hard, he farts again. The classroom just dissolves into uncontrollable laughter. Even the teacher drops her head to her desk, shoulders heaving.

A housewife who can cause objects to levitate destroys the family aquarium. An elderly woman whose superpower is that she can speak telepathically to animals gets bit by a squirrel. When, using her mind, she asks the squirrel why, it bites her again, then dashes up a tree. A stripper whose superpower is that she can read an entire book just by picking it up goes into a bookstore and keeps picking books up and putting them down, a quizzical look on her face, wearing a crop-top and spike heels. A nun in New Mexico whose superpower is the ability to make delicious bread using any ingredients on hand, even mud, even dead bugs, makes a loaf of bread that all the other nuns decline to eat.

“I actually just ate,” one says.

“Honestly, Sister, I have an upset stomach,” protests another.

A Virginia boy whose superpower is that he can throw a wad of paper into his trash can misses sixteen times in a row. Even when he goes right up to the can and drops the wad directly down, it hits the edge and drops into his gym shoe. Maybe that’s my superpower, he thinks: whenever I throw a wad of paper, it lands in my gym shoe. He throws a wad of paper out the door of his room, to see if it will boomerang back and land in one of his gym shoes. But no. His octogenarian grandfather is just then hobbling by and the wad of paper hits him in the side of the head. He is so old he doesn’t even notice, just keeps hobbling. His superpower is: he can make it to the bathroom on time whenever he likes.

On the outskirts of town, an aging balding bachelor’s superpower is: he can take a box of his mother’s precious stupid vintage glassware and hurl it down the basement stairs and not a single piece will break. Later in the day, as he waits for her to get home, his superpower is: when she comes in, he will make a Cloud of Forgetting form around her head. Or, failing that, a Cloud of Not Really Liking That Glassware Anyway, Sweetie. At this point, as her car pulls up, oh God, he would settle for the superpower of: can make his knees stop shaking under the table whenever he likes. Jesus, she’s going to absolutely smite him.

Her superpower is: can cause the front door to open using only her mind.

He hears her head slam into the closed door, as usual. Then, as usual, she swears under her breath, goes for her keys.

Down the block, more disappointment: Kenny Dennis stands outside the home of Amelia St. Laurent, trying to gaze through her bedroom wall. But no. All he can see is the wall. Then he gets stung by a wasp. He kills the wasp with his shoe. Then, ah, jeez, here comes Amelia herself, face all scrunched up, because she’s trying to burst into flame. But no. She’s only succeeding in giving herself a big migraine. And why the hell is Kenny Dennis standing there with his shoe in his hand? Just then an arrow enters Kenny’s hip, fired by Fred Lowry, whose superpower is: can fire an arrow in any direction whatsoever but still hit the bull’s-eye on a target set up over at the high school via directing the arrow’s course with his mind. Lowry’s hightailing it up the street, red-faced, bow under his arm, when he’s struck by an Omni driven by the blindfolded Leonard Metz, whose superpower is: has a tiny functioning eye in each fingertip.

Soon, in a plot twist, people begin losing even their normal abilities. A Japanese woman forgets how to speak Japanese. A Texas mother forgets how to chew, and that her kids are supposed to wear pants. Her husband also loses an essential ability he’s always had, which is: whenever he wants to have an affair, he just has it. It’s like he totally forgets he’s married. After these affairs, he manifests a secondary ability: forgets he’s had the affair, doesn’t feel the slightest bit guilty.

Today, he goes out, has an affair. But right in the middle he remembers he’s married. Lori’s a nice girl—why must he always do her wrong? Sexually, he performs not so great. His partner’s also sad. Her superpower is: whenever she has a sleazy affair, the guy’s always at least adequate in the sack.

When he gets home, Lori’s at the table, mouth full of chips. The kids are running around the yard in their underwear. What gives? No wonder he cheats on Lori.

Nothing, anywhere, is getting done. There’s great fear in the air. What fools we were, to take our basic abilities for granted! How wonderful life was, back when we still knew how to drive cars, button shirts, call for takeout, paint a series of watercolors depicting various views of our summer house, find our damn summer house in the first place.

The entire population of earth just stumbles around, slowly starving to death and/or perishing of thirst and/or dying of sunburn or of walking right up to and petting a tiger in the wild, and so forth: an absolute apocalypse of ineptitude.

In this way, my TV show is like life, where people’s abilities always fall short of their hopes and aspirations and the extent of their love. This will be great for ratings. It will make my show relatable.

The first season ends like this: We zoom down, into a lonely room. There sits a guy who has lost an ability he’s always had: can easily find a pithy way to end a comic piece of writing.

He’s been up all night revising the bastard, trying to find a decent ending, but nothing’s coming. His face is a contorted mask of desperation. We zoom in closer. His eyes are filled with utter insanity. It used to be so easy for him. How is he going to get out of this? How, how, how?

Wait. He’s got it! For sure! Holy cow, he’s done it! Not only has he come up with a killer ending; he’s broken the downward spiral of incompetence infecting all mankind! He’ll finish the piece, then rush out to tell the others, You can break free, as I have broken free with my miraculous ending! Yes, life is full of trouble, but we are walking miracles, able to rise above any—

Wait a second. That ending . . . actually, now that he thinks about it, it doesn’t exactly . . .

Yeah. Doesn’t make sense.

Unless he—

No. Still doesn’t work.

Crap.

He swears aloud, tears the page from his typewriter, is about to rip it into halves, then quarters, then eighths, and throw it into the air and laugh maniacally as it falls around him like snow. But then he realizes he’s forgotten how to tear paper, throw paper, or laugh maniacally.

He turns back to the typewriter.

“Woe is us,” he intends to type.

“Woas ass,” he types.

Then he bursts into tears, an ability that, apparently, is one of the last a human being ever loses. ♦