Dear Professor X

Dear Professor X,

I would like to apply for a position at your school for gifted children. While I do not have the ability to grow claws out my knuckles, shoot optic beams or control the weather, I do believe I have a particular skill set that may be of use on your team.

I can turn any women I date into a series of poems, prose and songs by the band known as the Counting Crows, over a period of one to two years. These women will also lose weight when we eventually break up. I first discovered this mutant ability in high school, when I began seriously dating a girl for the first time at the age of 16. Before this, I had simply kissed girls and neither the weight loss nor Counting Crows songs manifested, so I believe that an entire relationship is needed before my powers reach their zenith and maximum potential. 

Slowly, while she was sleeping, I distilled her essence into a series of 4/5 line sonnets until I had captured all of who she was to me and the next phase of the process began – weight loss and resentment being the main characteristics of my strange, alien ability.

Over the years, I discovered that beyond Counting Crows, I could also turn girls into albums by Andrew Bird, Bob Dylan, Joy Division and once, even The Bangles, although that was a short lived manifestation.

While I understand that you might be wondering how this could be of any use in a combative or strategic situation, I believe that were I to go into battle, I could find a female enemy with a penchant for a guy of a generally contemplative nature and occasionally depressing but vaguely optimistic poetry.

In finding the aforementioned enemy, I would be able to remove them from combat for a period of between one to two years, before reducing them to thin husks of their former selves and the album, August And Everything After. This would be a surgical strike style of relationship with the power of a tactical nuke in terms of its impact on the battle. I would leave male and less emotional enemies to the likes of my other classmates at your school for the gifted – my power might not have much of an area of effect but man, when I take that girl out of the picture, she’s gone.

There is however one caveat, I have met a girl who I cannot reduce to a bunch of songs, who refuses to lose weight as she’s already in good shape, and resists my attempts to reduce her to poetry. I am happily dating this girl and will not be able to fight your enemies with my mutant abilities for the foreseeable future.

However, should you have a mutant who can travel back in time, and I believe you do, please find me in-between the ages of 16 and 31 and provide the past me with both this letter and your guidance in terms of how my powers might best be used to protect and serve mankind. 

If you feel that my previous skill set could be of use to your institution please commence time travel immediately. I regret that I cannot help you now but I am too happy and happiness, unfortunately, destroys my Counting Crows orientated abilities. 

But August And Everything after is still a good album.

Best regards,

Iain