So where was I with the 2002 Spider-Man film?

Oh yeah…waiting for it to come out.

My wife and I saw the film on opening day and sadly I’m going to have to give some backstory before I get into that story. Because some context is necessary.

In February of 2002 my wife slipped off the back porch and shattered her ankle. As I believe I previously explained, my wife has a genetic condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, which is Latin for “imperfect bone formation”. My wife’s bones are honeycombed and break easy. If you’ve ever seen the movies Unbreakable or Glass you know something of what I’m talking about.

(Quick aside, you have never had a more fun experience seeing Unbreakable than I did when we saw it on Thanksgiving in 2000. My wife had strong opinions on the use of Osteogenesis Imperfecta in the film and was not shy about voicing them. Someday I hope to meet Samuel L Jackson to tell him that story.)

Rachel breaking her ankle wasn’t a simple affair. It required surgery and months of recovery. She had to learn to walk again, in a manner of speaking, because of how bad the break and the stuff done to correct the break were. It was months of her being in pain and slowly getting, literally, back on her feet.

She wasn’t quite there in May of 2002, so she needed a wheelchair to get around. Thankfully her family had one, which came in handy the very few times we went out as she got better.

Because of the wheelchair we had to use the accessible seating at the AMC 24 in Morrow, Ga, which is where we went to see Spider-Man. Because the movie was the big release of that week it was in all of the main auditoriums of the theater. Those auditoriums had two sets of accessible seating. The first set was all the way down on ground level (AMC 24 was one of those stadium seating theaters that became a thing in the late nineties) and the other was all the up at the top. Rachel gets motion sick if she sits too close to the screen, so we elected to go for the upper seating.

So, we took the elevator up and found a spot to park her chair and I took the seat next to her. This was right in the front part of the back of the theater and there was this little wall in front of us. Behind that wall was nothing. There was a slight drop going from the upper part of the auditorium and the lower part. Not hundreds of feet, but enough to injure you if you fell.

I mention that because shortly after we took our seats I nearly pushed a man over that wall.

Here’s what happened.

As I said, we were at the end of the row. Rachel was tucked into the place for the wheelchair as far she could manage, but her feet still stuck out a bit. We were at the end of the row, it was opening day for a huge movie, so we knew people were going to be going past us. There was plenty of room to do so.

At one point, this group of Grade A, Central Casting, Wannabe Frat Boy douche bags came into the theater. They wanted to sit in the row we were in, so we tucked in as much as we could, but one of them bumped Rachel’s bad ankle and she let out a small cry of pain. I asked if she was okay. D-bags smirked and kept getting to their seats. I glared.

Then, they got up again and worked past us. I guess they needed a drink. Or popcorn. Or to flex for each other and then chest bump. I don’t know what guys like that do when I don’t have to put up with their existence. Once again one of them bumped Rachel’s bad ankle and she once again let out a small cry of pain. Once again I asked if she was okay. Once again the D-bags smirked and kept going.

Then, they came back and once again one of them bumped Rachel’s bad ankle.

Once is an accident. Twice is happenstance. Three times is enemy action.

What happened next is a little blurry and Rachel had to fill me in on all of the particulars. They bumped her bad ankle. I heard her give a cry of pain. I remember looking up at the dude in front of me. And then I remember Rachel throwing one of her arms over my chest, which kept my arms from shooting out because I apparently decided it was time for one of these assholes to take a little trip.

As soon as I felt her arm over me I stopped. The D-bags did not seem to notice. I glared as they finally settled down, no doubt dreaming off all of the high fiving and chest bumping they were going to be doing later that night.

And then I looked in front of me and realized if I had shoved the guy, which was my full intention, I would have pushed him right over that little wall and down the short drop on to a bunch of people waiting to see the movie.

And then I got a small headache from the adrenaline rush.

The rest of the movie went without incident. I quickly forgot nearly assaulting someone that kept hurting my girlfriend (we’d get officially married the next year) and I got lost in the film. I loved the opening titles and the theme. I was enjoying the movie.

My only other real memory of seeing it was the audience’s reaction to Peter letting the guy robbing the wrestling promoter go without trying to stop him. Peter tells the promoter that the guy getting away was not his problem. The audience clapped and cheered. They were fully on Peter’s side here, as they should be since Peter just got ripped off, and I realized, very quickly, that most of these people had never read the origin of Spider-Man. I didn’t realize it in a snotty way. It just hit me that something I took for granted as common knowledge was not common knowledge.

“Wait for it,” I said. Loudly enough to be heard but not enough to overpower the clapping that was going on.

I don’t remember what we did after the film. We probably got takeout and headed home because going out was still rough on Rachel, but she wanted me to see the movie because my wife has been awesome since the beginning.

We would go on to see Spider-Man 2 and 3 in the theater as well as Amazing Spider-Man, but by 2014 we had gotten away from seeing every comic book film the weekend it came out. Some of this had to do with life just evolving, but some of it had to do with the fact that comic book films had gotten really good at having scenes where limbs get broken and/or the sound of bones cracking being a thing. Because of the ankle injury, and because of two subsequent big breaks (Rachel broke her femur at work in 2007 and was in a really bad car wreck in 2013) Rachel has developed a bad case of PTSD and the seeing limbs on crooked or getting broken and hearing even the sound of it trips her. We had a small incident when went to see The Dark Knight in 2008 and another when we went to see Batman v Superman in 2016 and I love my wife so I don’t want to put her through that.

So, with some exceptions, I now prescreen these movies before we see them. And we see them at home so I can mute the television and tell her when to look away when the stuff that will trip her is about to happen. Thankfully the few times we have gone to the theater, like last year’s Superman, we have a bunch of friends who give us a heads up when something might bug her.

And thus, me writing about the lead up to 2002’s Spider-Man is done and, for the moment, so is Sunday with Spider-Man. When I launched this feature it seemed like a fun idea. Now I realize that I have less to say about Spider-Man than I thought I did. I may bring it back here and there in the future, but going forward I’m going to find something else to write about on Sundays.

Plus, I have a big project I’m starting on and I need the time to get that done in the time frame I want to get it done.

I apologize if you’ve been enjoying these musings and are in anyway put out that I’m stopping. I do appreciate the fact that you liked them. If you did. Which, I assume you did because you’ve made it this far into the post.

As ever…more to follow…