Rememberment, Chapter V: Spider-Man and The Absent-Minded Professor

My second-oldest brother, Esa, shared my passion for comics.  He subscribed to a couple of magazines - The Amazing Spider-Man and the X-Men, and often took me with him to a secondhand bookstore where we traded his old magazines for unread ones. After school I would often just lay in bed and dive into the fantastic adventures of Spider-Man, who was my favourite. When done reading, I might put on my red woolen tights, wear a paper mask and zoom around the house as Spider-Man incarnate.

Spidey was the best, however here's me doing my best Havok impression.
Behind me is my dad, probably doing his best "Lord have mercy" impression.

Superheroes were so cool that I often just lived inside my head for a whole day and fantasized of being one myself. And the real world occasionally reminded me that I wasn't.

My brother's workshop was still unfinished, and one day they brought a big load of glass wool to our home yard. The stuff was soft and packed in big plastic rolls and piled up so that it formed a pyramid. Knowing me, my mom warned me not to climb it. But if Spider-Man is known for anything, it's his ability to climb. As soon as Mom occupied herself with something, I sneaked out to face the challenge.

Climbing the pile was easy enough, but as I sat on the topmost roll it dipped forward, and so I rode it down. The yard had recently been paved with fresh gravel, which now greeted me as I dove onto it face first. I bounced up and panicked. Did anyone notice?

(Isn't it funny how kids do that?)

I was alone outside, so I just tried to reassemble the pile as best I could, wiped my face on my sleeve and went back inside as if nothing had happened. But when my mom saw me, her jaw dropped. "What the hell happened to your face?" I went in front of a mirror to check out my mug, which looked like it had just received a shotgun blast. Only then I realized that it actually hurt quite a bit, too.

On the first day of school my mother came with me, as did the parents of other kids. She knew some of the other moms and one of them introduced me to her son, a pale and scrawny kid (much like me) whose name was Tony. He also loved Spider-Man, which is the sign of a smart person. We remain best friends to this day.

Since my home was so far from school, I was brought there by taxi each morning. There was another kid who lived close by and would share the ride (I believe it was his father who would often be driving the cab, but this detail I'm a bit unsure of). This kid wasn't scrawny at all, but somewhat overweight and much taller and broader than me. His name was Mika, a serious boy who was interested in cars.

I was fond of our teacher, and some subjects such as maths were new to me which I liked. But first grade was a lot about learning to read, and I grew bored during those classes. While most other kids were trying to figure out how to form words out of letters, I focused on daydreaming and filling my exercise books with drawings. I was often scolded for it and also for not completing my handwriting assignments, which I found insanely dull.

But I was still something of a teacher's pet - she was impressed by my ability to read and draw and by all the knowledge I had picked up from books, which I was eager to share with my thick Ostrobothnian dialect. She started calling me "the absent-minded professor" any time she caught me daydreaming in class. I didn't much appreciate the nickname (and thinking back, it was probably a bad call on her part).

So, as the most un-surprising plot twist of all time, some of my classmates were less impressed by me than our teacher. Mika in particular wasn't a fan of any of my shit, and along with some other boys, decided to give me lessons of their own during playtime breaks. They shoved me around, habitually tripped me over and called me all kinds of things.

It wasn't bad every day, and there was still Tony who I looked forward to seeing when I went to school, but the threat of abuse was always looming over me. I started to maintain a distance to others during breaks and to keep looking at my feet when I walked past them. And in my bedtime prayer, I asked God if he could just give me the powers of the Hulk. Please? That would be a big help.

He didn't give me that. Instead, He started giving me ear infections. Talk about misunderstanding the assignment.