By Alyce Wilson

When I think about Spider-Man, I think about my brother at age five. Back then, he had brown hair in a little boy’s cut, many years before he grew it long. This was many years before the tie-dyes and Grateful Dead shirts, many years before he would marry a beautiful, long-haired redhead who shared his dream of building an environmentally friendly house in Vermont. Back then, he was just a little boy in a red- and blue-striped shirt.

Spider-Man was his hero, though he never told me why. Maybe it was because he saw him on The Electric Company, and the quiet, thoughtful Spider-Man was a refreshing counterpart to the flashy dance numbers and high-energy skits.

I thought at the time it had to do with his fascination with insects. He was proud of his insect cage, in which he used to occasionally keep crickets or spiders or whatever allowed itself to be caught, being careful to release it whenever he realized he had no idea what it ate. He and his friend once collected a jar full of locust shells — the exoskeletons they shed to become a new, pink and gold flying thing. My mom opened my brother’s closet door one day, found this jar of alien shells, and screamed so loud we heard her from the swingset.

Whatever caused my brother’s fascination with Spider-Man, his favorite toy was a flexible Spider-Man figure, made of some sort of rubber and filled with a jelly-like substance, something like the old Stretch Armstrong toys. You could bend him and make him crawl up walls. It was brilliant, really, and my brother loved it.

That’s why I couldn’t understand what happened next.

We were in the Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian, standing on the second floor balcony. Here, you could look down to the first floor, where a giant mastodon stood. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small hand reach over the railing, clasping something red and blue. Then, the hand let go, and Spidey plummeted 20 feet to hit the marble floor with a splat.

My parents and I were shocked, but not nearly as shocked as brother, when he discovered Spidey hadn’t survived the fall. He’d ruptured, and his gooey insides spilled out. Though my brother protested, Spidey went into the trash.

At the time, I thought my brother dropped Spidey because he thought he would bounce. But it wasn’t that at all.

I asked him recently if he remembered the incident, and he did. He said he remembered exactly what he was thinking when he sent Spidey to his doom. He was thinking, “Spider-Man wouldn’t be afraid. Spider-Man would leap and swing down on webs.” My brother, a five-year-old who was a little spooked by the height, sent Spidey winging down as a way of dealing with his own fear.

So maybe that’s the real reason he admired Spider-Man. It didn’t have anything to do with insects. It was because Spidey was fearless, and when my five-year-old brother got scared, he could think about how Spidey would react, and be a little braver.

Come to think of it, I don’t remember my brother crying when Mom dumped Spidey in the trash. I bet if I asked him why, I know what he’d say.

Spider-Man wouldn’t cry.

Copyright 2002 by Alyce Wilson

Share your thoughts and comments
at Alyce's message board: