I wasn't a superhero fan, really, but I was immediately drawn into the Spidey story. I understood how Peter Parker felt when he was bullied for being a skinny, wimpy geek in glasses, which made cheering for his friendly, neighborhood alter-ego all the more exciting.
That was the summer after sixth grade, the first year of middle school, and the first year that I really experienced bullying because of my disabilities. My thick glasses, and pronounced gait didn't help the fact that being a pre-teen girl is already cruel and disorienting, and for the first time, I really began to grapple with what it meant to be different than my peers. I can still remember exactly where I was, when some older boy yelled at the bus stop, "Hey, there's the RETARD GIRL!" As I write this, the exact crow of his voice still reverberates in my mind twenty years later.
So, Peter Parker became a character I wanted to befriend, and emulate. He was just this normal guy, who was really smart and got to save New York City. Great power, great responsibility, and all that. Spider-Man became my favorite superhero.
Fast forward ten years later, and it's the summer of 2012. I'm now 22, have just graduated college, and have this final summer of my youth stretched out before me. There's a new cinema "Spider-Man", and I don't want to watch it, because I don't like remakes. (This time, they claim he's "Amazing", but he's some British actor I've never heard of, and he's not Tobey Maguire, so how amazing can he be, really?) But, my friends tell me that Emma Stone plays the love interest in this one, and she's recently become my favorite actress, so I'll go to see it for that fact alone.
I am not prepared for Andrew Garfield.
If Tobey Maguire's version of Peter Parker resembled the kind of person I wanted to be, Andrew Garfield's interpretation was the kind of guy I wanted to marry. This Peter Parker was intelligent, sensitive, and witty. He was, at times, brooding and often vulnerable. He was delightfully awkward and disarmingly attractive.
Plus, Andrew's chemistry with Emma Stone was "couples goals". I was hooked.
And here we are today, another decade gone by. I'm 32 years old. I've watched all of the most recent Marvel Spider-Man movies. My affection for Tom Holland's Peter Parker is somewhat maternal. He's a cute kid in a "golly gee shucks" kind of way, and I LOVE all of the supporting characters in his universe.
Tonight, I'm venturing to a movie theater for the first time in almost 5 years, to see "Spider-Man: No Way Home". I've stayed away from the theaters these last years because of my disabilities. Between my vision loss and Cerebral Palsy, the big-sound from the big-screen causes intense sensory discomfort, and I'm wound and jumpy and uncontrollably tense. But THIS movie, I think, deserves me to push beyond my anxieties, to try and move beyond the discomfort of my body.
To quote Andrew Garfield:
"I needed Spidey in my life, when I was a kid, and he gave me hope. In every comic I read, he was living out my -- and every skinny boy's -- fantasy of being stronger. Of being free of the body I was born into."
That's what Spider-Man does for me, I think. For whenever I watch those films, for at least two hours, I'm free from the body I was born into. Free from my pain and my Cerebral Palsy. Free from the limitations of my vision, thanks to the unique angles of the camera. Free to swing across skyscrapers, and save the day.
So, I'm nervous about tonight, about what my body might do. But I figure that's how Peter Parker felt after being bitten by a radioactive spider, and look how he turned out.
