Self-realization happens slowly. I have dim memories of being five-or-thereabouts and raising my arms in exultant joy that I was eating pancakes for dinner. I remember seeing myself in the dark reflection of the sliding glass door that led to the backyard of the Provo home that I had assumed we would live in until I died. Now that I see my second son's mannerisms, I believe that I tilted my head to one side the way he does, and I don't know if my memory is incorrect or not.
One of the things that I dreamed of becoming some day was Spider-Man. I read novels about him, bought comics on occasion, and watched the '90s cartoon show fanatically. My own brown (ish) hair, white skin, and almost-kind-of-like-his body type only propelled me further into the fandom. If I married a redhead, I'd like to think it wasn't some vestigial sublimation of a too-obsessive childhood desire and that I was attracted to my future wife for other, more significant reasons. (Because I did, in reality, fall in love with and marry a redhead, there is the possibility that it was in this way alone I ever followed in Peter Parker's webbed footsteps. But I still maintain that the superhero wasn't the primary reason I noticed and fell in love with her.)
As a child, I vaguely remember visiting Salt Lake City, which is a good forty miles or so from where I grew up in Orem, Utah, and looking up at the city skyline. It was then that a sudden understanding of how Spider-Man could traverse a city entered my mind. Up until that time, this was my conception of webslinging in Orem:
The recognition of my geographic limitation for what I wished I could someday do was a harder reality than the conception that, regardless of where I lived, I could never really be Spider-Man. "You can't really have those superpowers, Steve." "Yeah, but if I could..." And my imagination faltered. What would I do with Spider-Man's powers in Orem? The city isn't a tiny hamlet, but it sure isn't a bustling metropolis. Like many establishments in the west, space isn't as big of an issue as in the coasts. Northern Utah is essentially one uninterrupted city from North Salt Lake until the farms of Spanish Fork show up, a swath of urbanization fifty miles long, all built around the I-15 corridor. Fanning out like a spider web from the central post of the freeway, northern Utah sprawls like an MRA activist in a subway car. In other words, we don't have to build up because we can always build out.
This gradual comprehension of the way my world works stifled some of my hope, I think. There was no way that I could sneak out at night, swing through the city, beat up some bad guys, and then be home in time to catch a few hours' rest before starting a new day at the high school two blocks from my house. That is to say, being Spider-Man would have been a waste of superpowers.
Really, what good is the ability to climb walls if your disposition, like mine, doesn't run toward voyeurism? The webs--which, as a kid, were mechanical in the canon, not biological as they later became--were cool, but all it would do is empower laziness. Do I really have to get up to turn off the light? Nah, I'll shoot the web and turn it off that way! What about the agility? Would that be useful? Well, since I'm sports-averse*, being additionally limber doesn't really do a lot for me, though I suppose I may have become more interested in athleticism if I could comfortably move about with my knees above my head.
What about super-strength? This is a frequent power fantasy, one that comics comes down on a lot. "What if you were strong as ten men?" And then it ups itself more and more until you get to the ridiculous levels of, say, Superman.
Spider-Man has super-strength. I mean, we're talking a major heavy hitter**, if he ever bothers to be. The fellow can heft ten tons on the regular, and more if he's really amped about something. When he first debuted, he was the fourth strongest Marvel mainstay, after Thor, the Hulk, and the Thing (though it doesn't seem in that order, necessarily). See fig. 1.
But what good does super strength do a teenage boy from Population: Mormon Town? I guess I could have opened up my own moving business--with the ability to stick, I could palm a refrigerator and carry it one-handed--or maybe joined a construction company and...I dunno...bent stuff. I could have been a bender. Yeah, that sounds real cool.
What I'm saying is, there's nothing in the skill set from Spider-Man that I ever needed. Spider-sense doesn't matter since my life was pretty sedentary, and I didn't really have a need for his slightly elevated healing abilities, since I wasn't prone to danger. Orem isn't really a hotbed of criminal activity, so I would basically be doing a lot of running, jumping, and sweating in a toe-to-top onesie and not even really using my webshooters. In sum, being Spider-Man was never going to be a good option.
There are two conclusions I can draw, one pessimistic, the other less pessimistic: One, kids' dreams are dumb and I was a fool to dream; or two, I tried to mirror what I knew and appreciated from Spider-Man and his character and wished that I could more greatly live up to that reflection. The closer I looked, the more cracks in the glass I could see. The distortion of reality to fiction is important--it helps us remember what matters and why--but it can also be hard to deal with, particularly for living-in-their-heads types like me, those whose imagination and nostalgia often coincide with disappointment in harsh external realities.
Despite all of that, if someone came up to me and said, "You want to have Spider-Man's powers and gadgets and costume?" I'd say, "Yes and right now, please," without a second's hesitation. There will always be a part of me that dreams of being Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
----
* Save quidditch, but that should go without saying.
** Peter's found of saying he has "the proportional strength of a spider", which is clever, if absurd. An ant has a proportional strength that would be worthwhile, but a spider? Not particularly, even if we could parse out what that phrase would translate into.
One of the things that I dreamed of becoming some day was Spider-Man. I read novels about him, bought comics on occasion, and watched the '90s cartoon show fanatically. My own brown (ish) hair, white skin, and almost-kind-of-like-his body type only propelled me further into the fandom. If I married a redhead, I'd like to think it wasn't some vestigial sublimation of a too-obsessive childhood desire and that I was attracted to my future wife for other, more significant reasons. (Because I did, in reality, fall in love with and marry a redhead, there is the possibility that it was in this way alone I ever followed in Peter Parker's webbed footsteps. But I still maintain that the superhero wasn't the primary reason I noticed and fell in love with her.)
As a child, I vaguely remember visiting Salt Lake City, which is a good forty miles or so from where I grew up in Orem, Utah, and looking up at the city skyline. It was then that a sudden understanding of how Spider-Man could traverse a city entered my mind. Up until that time, this was my conception of webslinging in Orem:
The recognition of my geographic limitation for what I wished I could someday do was a harder reality than the conception that, regardless of where I lived, I could never really be Spider-Man. "You can't really have those superpowers, Steve." "Yeah, but if I could..." And my imagination faltered. What would I do with Spider-Man's powers in Orem? The city isn't a tiny hamlet, but it sure isn't a bustling metropolis. Like many establishments in the west, space isn't as big of an issue as in the coasts. Northern Utah is essentially one uninterrupted city from North Salt Lake until the farms of Spanish Fork show up, a swath of urbanization fifty miles long, all built around the I-15 corridor. Fanning out like a spider web from the central post of the freeway, northern Utah sprawls like an MRA activist in a subway car. In other words, we don't have to build up because we can always build out.
This gradual comprehension of the way my world works stifled some of my hope, I think. There was no way that I could sneak out at night, swing through the city, beat up some bad guys, and then be home in time to catch a few hours' rest before starting a new day at the high school two blocks from my house. That is to say, being Spider-Man would have been a waste of superpowers.
Really, what good is the ability to climb walls if your disposition, like mine, doesn't run toward voyeurism? The webs--which, as a kid, were mechanical in the canon, not biological as they later became--were cool, but all it would do is empower laziness. Do I really have to get up to turn off the light? Nah, I'll shoot the web and turn it off that way! What about the agility? Would that be useful? Well, since I'm sports-averse*, being additionally limber doesn't really do a lot for me, though I suppose I may have become more interested in athleticism if I could comfortably move about with my knees above my head.
 |
| Please ignore the hackneyed attempt at POC dialogue. In fact, don't read the dialogue balloons at all. |
 |
| So, how is it that anyone has ever defeated this guy again? |
Spider-Man has super-strength. I mean, we're talking a major heavy hitter**, if he ever bothers to be. The fellow can heft ten tons on the regular, and more if he's really amped about something. When he first debuted, he was the fourth strongest Marvel mainstay, after Thor, the Hulk, and the Thing (though it doesn't seem in that order, necessarily). See fig. 1.
 |
| fig. 1 |
But what good does super strength do a teenage boy from Population: Mormon Town? I guess I could have opened up my own moving business--with the ability to stick, I could palm a refrigerator and carry it one-handed--or maybe joined a construction company and...I dunno...bent stuff. I could have been a bender. Yeah, that sounds real cool.
 |
| *beep*....I was bleeping out the swear word. Hope you didn't read it. |
There are two conclusions I can draw, one pessimistic, the other less pessimistic: One, kids' dreams are dumb and I was a fool to dream; or two, I tried to mirror what I knew and appreciated from Spider-Man and his character and wished that I could more greatly live up to that reflection. The closer I looked, the more cracks in the glass I could see. The distortion of reality to fiction is important--it helps us remember what matters and why--but it can also be hard to deal with, particularly for living-in-their-heads types like me, those whose imagination and nostalgia often coincide with disappointment in harsh external realities.
Despite all of that, if someone came up to me and said, "You want to have Spider-Man's powers and gadgets and costume?" I'd say, "Yes and right now, please," without a second's hesitation. There will always be a part of me that dreams of being Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
----
* Save quidditch, but that should go without saying.
** Peter's found of saying he has "the proportional strength of a spider", which is clever, if absurd. An ant has a proportional strength that would be worthwhile, but a spider? Not particularly, even if we could parse out what that phrase would translate into.