By Ruby Dienstag

Bowlberlin is back! Ever wonder what it would be like if Tom Reid could choose any superpower he wanted? I did. So I asked him, and this is what he said.

RD: If you had to choose a superpower, what would it be?

TR: I’ve actually had this experience, because I was a charter member of the semi-automatic players, it is an improv troupe on campus. Semi-improv is where the arc of a scene is scripted, but the dialogue is not, so the scene is that you and I will be sitting here having this interview, and eventually we get into a food fight, but the rest is up to us as actors to make that happen. One of the first plays that we did was called underpowered, and it was about this weird post apocalyptic world where everybody in this high school had a power, and most of them were kinda weird. One person’s power was that he could grow leaves and grass out of his arm or something which is kinda useless. I was a teacher, and my power was that I could make you believe anything for thirty seconds by wagging my finger at you, and saying it to you, so that was kinda cool.

In my actual fantasy world the super power I would have is…so I’m basically a snoop at heart, and I like to think that everybody is, so that I’m not weird for it. I go into cities and I see these big buildings, these big apartment, or condo buildings and stuff. Even office buildings, I just wanna walk through them and explore, and see how people live, and how people work. Not anybody in particular, I just, you know, wow that’s a big high rise I wanna walk through every room and see what it’s like in there. I just took my daughter back to college in Chicago, and there’s a lot of big buildings there, and I just want to explore them all, and usually they don’t let me in, or if I get into the building people won’t let me into their apartments, so the power I would have in my fantasy world would be to be invisible so I could slip through doors and stuff, and just see what these buildings are all about. I should probably wish for something that I could put to use for a higher purpose…the ability to heal cancer…that would be better.