My Childhood Obsession: Superpowers

My Childhood Obsession: Superpowers

Halie Poirier

To be quite frank with you all, I was the girl in elementary school that would wrangle up some misfits during recess to act out my favorite movies or shows at the time. I’m not lying when I say that this happened at multiple times in my life, with multiple shows. And always with a fresh group of children (because every kid would eventually resent me for wasting their precious recess, of course.) So now that I have you all against me, I’ll explain.

My fiercest wish in this life is to either be born with superpowers, or happen upon them later on. I’d like to train with a master, and eventually take over the world, or even just have some insane defense skills. Here are some of my childhood heroes:

Stella from The Winx Club (Beautiful tall fairy with a cool staff that she would use to… explode things? She might be able to harness the power of the sun?)

Lavagirl (A literal alien child that can blast lava from her hands and also has PINK HAIR.)

Violet from The Incredibles (Angsty teenager who can basically only become invisible and throw out some amazing forcefields!)

I’d like to make it known that I have never and will never idolize a BOY. I will only fall in love with them--most recently was Bucky from Captain America. And this happened in 2016 during Civil War. I might’ve went to see the movie 5 times to drool for two and a half hours. I was 20 years old. Far too old to be doing that. Wow… Anyway.

As a child, and honestly way later than that, the coolest thing ever was to have powers that involved manipulating things with my hands. All three of those characters mentioned above had that, and I’m definitely not realizing this as I type. One character worth mentioning is Carmen from Spy Kids, even though she didn’t have a “superpower,” she was still a tactical genius who could FIGHT. I truly latched to the cool, powerful girls I saw on TV. I had such great material! I’ll break down what I used to obsess over with the previous three shows/movies.

Winx Club

This show was on Nickelodeon starting in 2004: PRIME time for me as an 8 year old weird girl. It’s essentially about this normal girl named Bloom who learns that she has fairy powers and then goes off to fairy school to learn how to use them. She becomes friends with this gang of awesome fairies there, and they have equally awesome enemies and monsters in their ways. I was super attracted to Stella and her powers, and she conveniently was Bloom’s first fairy friend. 

I would gather a small group of kids during our break times during school to LEARN and REHEARSE this show’s theme song. I was up there being a child conductor to unwilling children. They just wanted to play with their coloring books and I made them learn a song they didn’t care about! I’d like to say this is something totally out of the blue for my personality but it honestly could happen tomorrow. I haven’t changed at all. I might even have a bachelor’s in music, who can say?

But I guess I somehow got all these kids actually into this show because at one point, every single kid in my class was involved. There was a Winx website with comics and games, and it would be on every computer. Everyone was obsessed, and I made it happen. Imagine watching 20 8-year olds for 7 hours a day talk about a bunch of fairies? That reminds me of a certain sandbox game (which is apparently a thing?) in which a tiny block person runs around with an axe collecting dirt. You know what I’m talking about, right? The LEVEL of obsession? That’s what it was in my classroom. And it was incredible and I had POWER.

And then, a substitute teacher had the Winx Club banned from the class because she thought the girls were dressed too provocatively. I wish I could’ve taken that fraud to children’s court. I was so distraught… And that was basically the end of that. We weren’t even allowed to sing the theme song anymore. And they had JUST PERFECTED IT.

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl

So, I don’t really have an excuse for this one. I know, and I am ashamed. I can’t emphasize how much I was truly alone with this one. This god-forsaken movie came out in 2005, again, some of the best years of my life. It was one of the first movies I ever saw in 3-D. And the cherry on top is that me and my mom were the only two people in the theatre. 

I don’t even want to get into the plot of the movie that much, but it’s basically about a lonely kid who has really vibrant dreams. He meets these two heroes, and I was completely obsessed with Lavagirl. I had never seen a heroine like this before--a girl who looked like me with an awesome pink head of hair and a super cool lava rock glowing suit, again, very pink. And she could shoot lava from her hands. That’s all I needed to strive to be her. 

I would have dreams that I was Lavagirl. Like, often. I’d CRY when I woke up. I needed to be her, and I had to figure out how to get fire to explode from these little fingies. I made deals with the devil. I needed it. 

This probably happened for a few years and then I slowly learned that this was a terrible movie. But at the time, it certainly blew my mind. This girl was a goddamn hero! And George Lopez is scary. Important lessons.

The Incredibles

This is where things really got crazy. I saw The Incredibles with my whole family when it came out in theatres in… 2004. I’m noticing now how much life I lived in these two years. Anyway, Violet became my new idol. I would do the hand thing she did when she threw up a purple glowing forcefield. I would comb ALL of my hair in front of my face and snarl. I did the whole thing. I imagine it was very embarrassing for my family. But it was awesome to me! (How many times have I said “awesome” in this article?)

This is where another ragtag team of nasty little children gathered for me to order them around, but this time, I assigned roles to specific people. I had the entire gang here. Every single outdoor recess, we’d meet up and… act it out? Pretend to fight? Defeat enemies? I honestly could not tell you what actually happened, but I can promise it was nonsense. If one of my actors was lackluster with their performance, I’d get a quick replacement. It was high stakes for absolutely no reason! I love myself.

Mostly, I just wanted to practice my moves with people who were also looking quite ridiculous. It was the best time. I’d call myself Violet. I needed to learn how to make real forcefields! I guess this was my intro to Star Wars and I didn’t even know it. Imagine if I saw that movie as a child. It would have been all over, because I would obviously idolize Darth Vader. I’m a natural leader who’s very blindly confident.

So, there’s just some evidence that I was a weird kid. Imagine being my parents. “Honey, our child is a dictator who thinks she has superpowers. What should we do?” Let me dictate, father. I’ve learned how to shoot hot lava out of my hands. C’mon now.