Beware the loss of superpowers

much ado about nothing

emily zdyrko

Maybe you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but once upon a time, I used to be magical.

It all began during New Student Orientation. After only a few short hours of Iowan life, my regular body began to metamorphose into some sort of fantastic and superhuman compound of iron, rubber and muscle. Suddenly, squeezing into the tiny cupboard which I inhabited was effortless, despite the fact that it was also occupied by three other people and piles of furniture and books. Though most burrowing animals would have found it very difficult to crawl into my lower bed without sustaining head injuries from the not-so-very-upper bunk on top of it, I had no problem whatsoever. Conveniently, however, I almost never needed to do this, because despite the lack of caffeine in my daily diet, I had ceased to require more than several hours of sleep per week. I was sustained by magic and the sour peach gummies from express that my roommates and I consumed in mass quantities.

However, my magical powers didn’t only change me physically, they also changed my entire outlook on life. Everything suddenly became unbelievably thrilling to me. I buried myself in the library and hungrily did my reading. The prospect of a snowstorm sent me into an absolute reverie, even though I suddenly needed multiple sweaters and pairs of socks to get me across campus to class in the morning. I even did costume work for the Theatre department production of Cabaret and happily stayed up until 2 a.m. laundering costumes, all the while gaily humming Kander and Ebb tunes to myself in some sort of bizarre adrenaline rush. I was thoroughly confused as to why the sleepy seniors on my hall seemed to find it necessary to angrily rouse themselves out of bed during the night just because my friends and I were camping out in the hallway and attacking each other with squirt guns.

Now, the reason I tell you this story is not because I want to impress you with the greatness of my former powers or even to ask for your sympathy at their sad disappearance. No, the reason that I am telling you this is because I have reason to believe that I was not the only Grinnellian out there to experience such surreal transformations. There may even be some youthful cases out there that are undergoing such occurrences at this very minute. To them, I say beware of what lies ahead.

The end of my magic came at a predictable time; on the Thursday night of finals weeks during my first-year spring semester. I had spent all week dreading and preparing myself for what I knew Friday would bring; the Latin 222 final exam and the culmination of ten credits worth of epic struggle with the Romans. Unlike Hannibal, I did not even have elephants to help me in my battle. All I had left was one night, a pile of notes, papers, textbooks, two cups of Bob’s extra dark coffee and a slightly fried brain. I suppose these last two items should have tipped me off to the fact that my magic was waning, but somehow I was still oblivious.

I started with the coffee and soon found myself pacing between Haines and Read halls while declining nouns with almost maniacal fury. Some of my lucky friends who had already finished their exams sat inside and watched me with some concern. “Emily, don’t you think you need some sleep?” they shouted at fairly regular intervals throughout the night. Unfortunately, the idea of communicating in a living language had completely left me at this point and it was all I could do to shriek back something incomprehensible about Quintus and his catapult. Whatever I was saying, I doubt that any English or Latin speaker could have possibly understood it.

I thought that Latin chanting would help me survive; I certainly didn’t think it could do anything to hurt me. However, suddenly and unexpectedly, a change came over me. Repeatedly declining the noun puella (girl) I found myself suddenly experiencing a change back into something more normal. My iron and rubber changed back into flesh and blood. I was experiencing nine months of exhaustion. And I was emphatically not excited about noun declensions. Latin had made me human again.

The next twelve hours are a bit hazy in my memory; I have images of myself sitting in my room at 3 o’clock in the morning, wearing yellow pajamas and having dazed conversations with other first-years. I remember the caffeinated struggle through the exam the next morning and finally sleeping that afternoon, noun declensions still running through my dreams. Only one thing is for sure; when I returned to campus the following August, I was decidedly less superhuman and decidedly more healthy, than I had been just a few months before.