Once my friend Dan nominated me to run for President of the United States, and I was proud to have as my running mate
this inflatable Spider-Man. My campaign never went anywhere, as you know by now: In the end even Dan abandoned me and
it wound up one of those sad sitcom-like scenes where I'm alone in a big empty gym drowning my sorrows in champagne with a
bunch of balloons and some loose confetti strewn about. Through it all, though, this inflatable Spider-Man stood by me, and
I've learned to look at it as a personal growth experience, and it did make me think about Spider-Man and what it means
to be a real hero.
I'm glad that I don't have to worry about it, because I would make a really horrible Spider-Man.
First of all, I really don't like heights. I don't have an unnatural, paralyzing fear of heights, like many people
do, but I don't like them. Some folks don't like broccolli and some don't like watching Star Trek, but
that doesn't make them afraid of those things. I just wouldn't like being way high up in the air with nothing to physically
stop me from plummeting to my death, even if I could stick to stuff and the rational part of my brain told me that I was just
as safe up there as if I was walking on the sidewalk. I wouldn't feel as safe.
Maybe I would feel differently if I could actually fly like Superman, but I don't think Spider-Powers would help.
Then again, I suppose that Spider-Powers might come with a whole new set of instincts that are unlike anything humans have,
like the instinct that tells you not to put your hand on a white-hot burner or climb up the side of a building unaided. But
assuming I still had the instinct for self-preservation, I think this would be the first consideration to my successfully
becoming Spider-Man.
At least it's slightly better than Batman, who has no powers at all and yet routinely seems to jump out of 30-story windows.
Like he'll be talking to Commisioner Gordon and then Gordon will spin around to talk to him and the curtains will be fluttering
in the breeze, and leaving aside how fortunate Batman is that windows up that high in Gotham City even open at all, given
that the suicide rates in a city like that must be astronomical and the extreme likelihood that at some point in your life
a super-villian will at least once try to throw you out of one, all of this does seem to presuppose that the sides of buildings
aren't filthy and disgusting, and I don't understand why Batman (and Spider-Man for that matter) isn't just covered
with grease and soot and black shit all the time.
Spider sense would be cool, to warn me of danger, especially in a fight. Except that I don't really have any enemies
and I don't even know any villians, and most of the dangers that I face every day are really really obvious ones that I don't
need spider senses to warn me about, like crossing the street. But then again, say I'm going to the refrigerator to take a
big ol' gulp of milk right out of the carton, and I don't know that the milk is sour, or I'm about to leave work and forget
my passkey in my desk drawer. It wouldn't be as exciting as fighting super villians, but much more practical.
I think about superheroes too much.
