The 4th grade girls all giggle, “Peter Parker!” calling me like I need to save them from elementary school drama. I’ve been working at the La Plata County Boys and Girls Club for a year, and I’ve been Spiderman since day 1. Spiderman could shoot webs, swing from rooftops, had super strength, and saves the girl every time. I am 6’4, lanky, love anime, and can’t handle public applause. “I hate you!” screams David. Not everyone wants to be saved. A pack of 6th grade boys doesn’t understand the difference between a rebel and an idiot. Rudy Francisco, once described young boys as bayonets that shoot in the wrong direction. So my coworkers and I seem to find ourselves taking their bullets, we let our patience bleed between clenched fists so we can’t tell when to teach or when to praise. When I tell young people about my job, their eyes get large, “that sounds hard,” I’m not sure what parts of speech can describe how it feels to be loved and hated in the same moment. Showing maps of possibilities to the next generation is harder than it seems.

I have never really been a Spiderman fan, we share too many similarities, and I know far to well that the Jane’s of planet earth actually want nothing to do with the dork who lives down the street. The only superhero I seem related to is Deku, from My Hero Academia, but he isn’t even a super hero that saves the world yet. He just believes that you can be a hero. There are things as a teacher, mentor, or coach I can’t say. I can’t look at Beth who struggles with beauty “You are the only one who can’t see your beauty.” I can’t show my scares to Charlie, an 8th grade boy who tries to touch the sun “We all fall, it is how we choose to rise from the ashes, that separates us.” I wish I could show Josh that stutters through a sentence, “you will fly.”

It’s what kids need to hear and the world robbed adults to say those words. Between being forced to stand up by ourselves, and knowing that help doesn’t always arrive, somewhere, adults never heard themselves. Some nights, I imagine that we hold children like little lights, but we can’t decide whether it will turn to a wild fire that must die or beautiful lights we must let shine.

Once, I was teaching a girl how to shoot a basketball. The ball bigger, than her body but smaller than her dreams. Beaconing me to be Peter Parker, to be Spiderman. “Who am I super hero for?” The exhaustion emptied out my mouth. Her eyes looked at the ball. “Well, you are super hero to me.”