In Class 5 I was convinced I was gonna be Spider-Man. I was barely a man, even less a spider. But I was bitten by a spider, or so I believed.

There was a red bump just above my ankles. Barely noticeable, but believable. Something had crawled out of my knee-high socks before I’d acknowledged the pain. I was scratching for hours. My desk mate was the one who saw it, and the first to scream, “Spiderrr!!”

I was scared of bugs at that time. Still am. Little crawly things freak me the f out. Must be because when I was younger than Class 5, I was riding my tyre and a caterpillar was riding along with me, up the sleeve of my arm. It must have crawled from the tyre up my arm.

Caterpillar doesn’t quite put my terror into perspective. You know oywo? Yeah, those little hairy, itchy bastards. One camped on my inner sleeve for minutes before I realized what was itching me was more than an itch.

Since then I’ve feared bugs, and I don’t shy away from that truth. Self-awareness type of stuff.

Younger than class 5 I wasn’t an attention-seeking child either. I got more than enough attention at home. I had no reason to clout chase being bitten by a spider. Self-aware and not attention-seeking. You’d think such good traits count for something in this Nairobi dating pool at this age, lakini kiawa!

My ambitions of being Spider-Man weren’t even that high anyway. There are no skyscrapers in Muhoroni you see. But something was paining my leg, and I decided to endure it long enough because I believed that was how I’d become Spider-Man.

Fast forward a few whips of the cane from a teacher who saw through the BS, and I didn’t become Spider-Man. I mean, here I am writing articles in my boxers for a living. It was a rash that had developed from consistent scratching of itchy, scaly legs. I’d almost taken a shot at the dispensary for a false self-diagnosis.

How that story helps you, I don’t know.

I just thought I’d share it, especially now that Spider-Man is more than a swinging red and blue kid in the streets of New York. He’s a struggling young man with a girlfriend who doesn’t recognise him, no job, and developing into a full time spider. Very relatable, it’s like looking into a mirror.

Thought I’d share this to remind you how everyone wanted to be Spider-Man at a young age. And Ben 10.

But as I said, no skyscrapers. No aliens either, probably just Ruto and his minions.

What pains me more than that itch-bite is that I haven’t watched Spider-Man: Brand New Day yet. The one time, the ONE TIME, I wasn’t near a cinema is when the whole world decided to sell out tickets and for cinemas to become a thing again.

And the reviews are killing me. They’re making me itch, wondering how it was. Wondering how it’ll all be tied to Doomsday, and what the Punisher has to do with Spider-Man.

I’m livid with myself.

Reagan..✍🏽