Disclaimer: I most certainly do not own The Incredibles, nor Dashiell Robert Parr. The credit for those goes entirely to Brad Bird, Disney, Pixar, and everyone else involved in the production of the movie. I appreciate them putting up with me borrowing a character or two to explore the ideas behind their super powers for just a bit. ;-)
Normal? What does anyone in this family know about...
Slow motion.
I almost laughed hysterically the time that Violet showed me a movie in slow motion. Or slower motion, for me.
Learning to talk—at least to make the sounds—was easy, for me. Everyone around me was moving his or her tongue and lips so slowly that it was hard not to learn. Now, learning the words themselves was more difficult; it took me a long time to realize that the sounds went together to form words, since I couldn't understand why they would be so long and slurred if that were the case.
And walking: now that was an adventure. It was terrifying, watching all these large bodies around me, in free falls that took what seemed like hours to resolve. How they could move so slowly, I had no idea, but I 'knew' that I would not be moving that way. I crawled for a long time, learned to stand but wouldn't let myself fall like that. Then I did, and realized that it didn't last as long for me. Of course, my 'walking' involved racing across the room, soon enough, and let's not get started on running.
And then, the commands from Mom and Dad started. "Sssslllloooowwww ddddoooowwwwnnnn," they would order in the strange slurring speech that I had learned to mimic, for I could communicate in no other way. They wanted me to do what! I didn't know how they could stand to move so slowly, to let their bodies fall in graceful but panic-inducing arcs toward the ground, somehow assured that they would land and continue the leaden motion with another 'step.' In the same way as talking, though, I would have to learn to mimic these slow movements, because they could not follow me any other way. That was when I first began to have an inkling that there was something truly different about me: even my parents could not keep up with me. It wasn't that they wouldn't, as I imagined in the beginning. They simply couldn't.
"Lllloooookkk aaattt thhhiiissss, Dddaaaassshh!" Violet called me the day that she discovered how to set a DVD to run in slow motion. She pointed at the screen. The people on the screen were moving just as I expected them to, and I looked to her in confusion. Thankfully, she was too interested in staring at the screen to notice. "Hhhaaahhhaaa!" she laughed. "Llllooookkk aaattt hhhooowww fffuuunnnnyy thhheeeyyy lllloooookkk wwwhhheeennn thhheeeyyyy wwwaaallkkk, aaalllmmmooossstt llliiikkke thhheeeyyy'rrre ffflllloooaaatttiiinnngg ooorrr fffaaalllliiinnngg!"
Epiphany. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization. She was seeing my reality, and suddenly I understood hers. I almost laughed hysterically at the understanding, but I managed to temper the (slow) sound into something closer to what hers sounded like. "Thhhaaattt iiiissss ffffuuuunnnnnyyyy!" I told her, almost cringing as I did every time as I had to make the crude, sluggish sounds.
Mom doesn't realize. Dad doesn't understand. I can hardly imagine that Jack-Jack or Violet have ever thought to consider. Is it any wonder that I have to find some other way to amuse myself in class? I can only force myself to follow the lethargic pace of the class and the drowsy speed of lectures for so long before I need to do something, to prove that the world is moving at this accelerated rate, even if no one else can perceive it.
They know me as impatient. If only they knew the nearly infinite store of patience I have had to develop, to put up with the world crawling by, much less to attempt to join it.
Normal? What do I know about normal?
Author's Note: I was watching The Incredibles (again!) and started thinking about the fact that not only does Dash move very fast, but he seems to be able to respond to stimuli very quickly. The only way that would work is if he could perceive things more quickly; what would it be like to like to perceive the world in slow-motion? Sorry about the speech, but I wanted it to be readable and yet give a hint of what it would be like to hear sounds drawn out so slowly. Let me know what you think of the result!