Picture from here

You know those moments when you are a kid and you find something that you can do that you think is extraordinary? I had one of those moments and it dealt with climbing walls. I was so convinced it was extraordinary that I thought I had been bitten by a mutant spider. I think it helped that I was into Spider-Man at the time thanks to the Electric Company.

My superpower was being able to climb walls, literally. In the townhouse, I grew up in (it was called a condominium, but I don’t really think it was a condo) the walls in the stairwell were close enough together that I could shimmy up the walls by putting a set of hands and feet on both sides. My grandmother’s house was the same way. I’m sure having a child somewhere between 5-8 years old literally climbing the walls of the house was enough to run my family up the walls themselves.

They spent hours trying to convince me that I wasn’t related to Spider-Man. I also remember them not being happy about scrubbing footprints off the wall at eye level. Somewhere along this time frame I also managed to get a picture of myself on Spider-Man’s lap taken at Midway Mall in Elyria. I had that picture for years, but for some reason, it’s now missing :(.

I do remember attempting to fly and levitate for years, but I wasn’t as successful as I was at being a wall-crawler.