Which gift would I want?

We just finished watching the first season of Heroes on DVD. In retrospect, given the writers' strike and the impending nothingness of midwinter TV, perhaps we should have waited a while to start it because once begun, it became addictive. We blitzed through 22 episodes like there was nothing else to watch. (And admit it, there's a bit of truth in that.)

Safely, I have been taping the second season, hedging my bet that I'd like the series enough to continue it. I didn't start taping until episode 5, but absent the answer to one little question which I haven't ferreted out online yet (Just how did Peter and Nathan survive?), we would seem to be good to go and have more evening time-fillers ahead.

But I admit to feeling a bit inconsequential. All those people. All those "gifts." How inadequate am I? There are times I'd liked to have kicked-butt or listened to people's minds or walked through walls. Talking to machines and time travel, those could be tempting to abuse. Healing oneself--healing others--now there are gifts worth having. Painting the future is a bit odd, and flying is my least favorite along with starting fire and being nuclear, but finding lost people could definitely come in handy.

But if I got to choose, I'd come up with another. (And if it were taken in the first 4 episodes of the 2nd season, I haven't seen it yet.) I'd want the gift of language, of being able to listen to a few words of a conversation and undertand the syntax and vocabulary. I'd be able to communicate with anyone. Sounds like an old "Star Trek", doesn't it?

Well, haven't you always wanted to go where no (wo)man has gone before?