Daily writing prompt

What super power do you wish you had and why?

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If I could have any superpower, I’d probably choose the ability to pause time.

Not flying. I’m pretty sure I’d end up in a tree.

Not invisibility. As a teacher, I already know what it feels like to say something important and have half the room act like I’m not there.

Not super strength, although that would be useful when I’m trying to carry every grocery bag into the house in one trip because two trips are apparently a personal failure.

No, I’d want the power to pause time.

There was an old Twilight Zone episode called “A Kind of Stopwatch,” where a man gets a stopwatch that freezes time for everyone but him. At first, that sounds perfect. Imagine being able to stop everything long enough to catch up — grade the papers, clean the house, finish the yearbook pages, write the blog post, prep tomorrow’s lesson, read the book, sit quietly, sip the bourbon, breathe.

But of course, it was The Twilight Zone, so it didn’t end well. He breaks the watch and winds up stuck in a frozen world, surrounded by all the time he could ever want but unable to restart life.

Then there’s “Time Enough at Last,” another Twilight Zone classic, where the poor bank teller finally gets all the time in the world to read after disaster strikes — only to break his glasses and be left with the books he loves but no way to enjoy them.

That’s the thing about time. We all want more of it. More time to work. More time to rest. More time to love people well. More time to enjoy the things right in front of us.

But I can’t freeze the world. I can’t hold the sun in the sky. I can’t rewind the clock, stretch the day, or make midnight arrive any later than it does.

So maybe the real superpower isn’t stopping time.

Maybe it’s learning how to use the time I’ve actually been given.

That doesn’t sound as exciting as a magic stopwatch. It probably wouldn’t make much of a comic book. But it might be the power I need most.

Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.