 How does the narrator feel about his special ability?
Mine was no satisfaction, never earned me a penny—and now it had me fighting for my life in ... [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960. So I returned my attention to the inside of the plane, to the overstuffed gray-haired woman asleep beside me, to the backs of heads in seats before me, across the aisle to other heads, and down to the blonde. A crossword-puzzle worker, a togetherness-type-magazine reader. Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles for, and not wanting to. It started when I was a kid, this business of being able to explore the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers and—well, human beings. I always knew what was in Christmas presents before I unwrapped them, and therefore Christmas was always spoiled for me as a kid. An apple senses about the same as a potato, except for the core and the stem. Just the feel of shapes, the hardnesses and softnesses. Still, I wonder how many other people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine. I can't even be sure what some of the things I sense in probing really are. This being earlier than I usually get up, it seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escapement and balance wheel to see where the notch for the alarm was. So I sighed and moved to the balance wheel and its delicate ribbon of spiraling steel. When I first learned to do this, I thought I had it made. So I'm stuck with a talent I've found little real use for. I went through slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a ukulele. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me was that something was taped to it. One went to a battery and the other to hard round cylinders taped together. Quickly I went up past the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go. I thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was there. We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles soon, if we hadn't left it already.
 He doesn't find it that useful most of the time but he does consistently use it in specific situations
 He doesn't find it that useful most of the time but he does consistently use it in specific situations  He finds it to be his greatest source of amusement, and enjoys keeping secrets of what others carry  He is glad he has this ability instead of a different more dangerous one  He is disappointed he cannot tell anyone about it because he wants to show it off