Forget Flying: Americans Want to Read Minds and Travel Through Time

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Professor Allan Snyder displays a "thinking cap"

Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images

If you already knew that, then maybe you’re already a mind reader.

Was that a rather ambiguous start to a NewsFeed post? Quite possibly. But when it comes to the awesome poll posed by Marist, clearly anything goes. They asked Americans for the superpower they’d most like to have. The joint winners — scoring 28% each — were the the ability to read minds and the capacity for time travel.

(More on TIME.com: See the top 10 time-travel movies.)

Putting aside the mind-blowing potential of either coming true, isn’t the main takeaway that your traditionally stuffy political poll would be instantly transformed if these were the kind of questions that were being asked of the population? Imagine: “What do you think of the job President Obama is doing and, by the way, how would you like to be invisible?”

(More on TIME.com: See pictures of Barack Obama on Flickr.)

Coming next was the ability to fly (16%) with 11% hoping to teleport. Ten percent went with invisibility while 8% are unsure (presumably the choice is just too much for them rather than uncertainty itself being a superpower?)

Marist has set the bar incredibly high with this question and it’s highly unlikely it will ever be matched. But if the time travel gig does ever pay off for any of you, all we ask is that you use this power to go back, land a job at Marist and ask this question way before 2011. (via Poughkeepsie Journal)