Flight!

Last night, over pizza, Emily’s mom posed the flight-vs.-invisibility superpower choice, and Emily, without hesitation, chose flight. When pressed for reasons, she said that if she could fly, she could charge her friends for rides. (I have known Emily most of her 8.5-year life, and for about half of it, she’s been trying to use her powers to attract money.)

But what impressed me most was how the plan unfolded. The first two rides, Emily said, would be free. Then people would be addicted. And then she would charge $1/flight, and after about a dozen of those, the price would go up to $2.

These flights would occur during recess.

She noted that she wanted to give her two best friends free flights, but for the sake of appearances, they would have to hand her $1, which she would later, in secret, hand back to them.

She talked about maybe eventually giving her best friends power of flight too, especially when things got busy (supply and demand). But when we began to talk about the resulting risk of competition, she thought maybe she’d give the power to Sally, her dog, instead.

Emily has always been really, really smart. She’s already got a lot of power, but clearly, it could go super any minute now.