I quietly entered his room in the darkness. A gentle shake, a whisper of his name and his eyes opened.
He blinked deliberately in the darkness, shaking off the sleep.
“Go wash your face and get dressed,” I told him. “And make sure you run a brush through that mop of hair.”
“Do I wake the others?” he asked.
“No. It’s just you and me.”
Fifteen minutes later the skinny 13-year-old stood in the living room still curious about what was going on. He seemed so small. As he stood there, tired and puzzled, I thought of how quickly those years had sped by.
I told him we were going to see “Spider-Man 3″ and handed him a shirt with the hero emblazoned on it.
He smiled and an excited giggle escaped the back of his throat.
Spidey and I go back almost thirty years now. I had watched the last two movies with my four children and spent more than one Saturday watching the cartoons and movies on DVD with them, but watching the midnight sneak-peak with my oldest son was so much more personal.
It was sharing my best friend with my namesake. It was the kind of special you remember in years to come. One of those precious few moments that will make you smile and tear up in years to come. And where you know this, even as the memory is being written. It made it all the more special since I could savor every moment.
We got our sodas and popcorn, found our seats and then spent the next 40 min. talking.
We started with “Animal” Farm” by George Orwell and the political overtones of the book. Our conversation wandered through the Mongol Empire and the strengths of Genghis Khan’s leadership, the rise and fall of the dinosaur and our shared belief that they regulated their body temperatures internally, like mammals and birds rather than reptiles.
Eventually he brought me back to the beginning of the conversation.
“Why do you think ‘Animal Farm’ ends the way it does?” he asked.
The answer started with the rise of the communist government in Russia and wound it’s way to Spidey’s mantra of, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and the need of those overthrowing oppressors to remember this, lest they oppress.
(I’m a geek after all.)
It may not have been the best comic book movie ever — heck, it’s not the best of the three Spider-Man flicks — but it’s my favorite.
Because, when the lights went down, the trailers played and then there I was, with my two best friends.
