Like many last-borns, my childhood was filled with hand-me-downs; clothes, toys, shoes, beds, and books. Lots and lots of books. In fact, the whole house was filled with books, shelves upon shelves of them, with everything from the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew to dry business texts and settler accounts of the Congo. I spent countless hours browsing through the shelves, and peering into dusty cabinet corners, trying to find the holy grail, a book that I had not read 20 times already.
My mum says I started to read early. I used to pester my siblings to read to me so often, that to get me to shut up and leave them alone they taught me how to read. By age 4 or so, I was happily reading on my own, and the household breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Reading soon became a way for me to escape my own limitations - my lack of friends in the neighbourhood, my nagging sister, my persistent asthma, and books became closer to me than my family almost. I could always rely on books to take me away from it all, show me things that stoked the fires of my imagination, and could leave me feeling happy, or melancholy, or just in awe of what was possible. I soon had a mental catalogue of what books to read to suit my mood; WW II jungle stories when I was mad, Asterix to cheer me up, Steven King when I was pensive, Beano when I was in a silly mood..My books were my nearest and dearest, and I learned to not just read a book, I learned to ingest them, to fold in the paper and ink and glue into my being, hold them next to my heart, feeling the boundaries of the book, taking the words and pasting them over my bones. I learned to inhale books, to read at blinding speed, devouring hundreds of pages at a time, fingers flipping the pages furiously, until the end, when I would sit back with a sigh, and turn to the first page to dive in once more...
One day, I found a small stash of browning comic books from the 70's, and at the bottom was a Spiderman comic. Spiderman was more to my liking as a superhero, I found Superman boring, because he had no weaknesses to speak of, and I just couldn't relate to someone like that. I may have sought escape from my own reality, but Superman was just too much to swallow, I wanted to believe that I could rise above my pudgy self, like Batman - strong, silent, conflicted, but ultimately, human. I digress, because the real treasure I found in the comic was Doctor Doom.
Ah Dr Doom.
Something about him appealed very strongly to me, as I eagerly read the thin, yellowing pages. His genius, his wit, and ultimately the tragedy of his story made me identify so strongly with him. As "the smart kid" at school, I felt isolated by all the knowledge I had accumulated through reading - no matter how much I read, it didn't really help me get along with the other kids at school. I felt Doom's pain keenly, and I wanted so badly to have a suit like his, and pound the dumb but popular kids at school into dust. They would regret their miserable, stupid lives when confronted with the full force of my intellect!!
I could never understand why my skills counted for less than Nicholas's soccer skills, or Jasdeep's killer hockey flick, and I wanted to make them taste the bitter ashes of regret like I had, so often.
Doom was my anti-hero, the geek who gets his revenge, who would stand up for all those who were teased for being smart, or for knowing all the answers to teacher's questions. For everyone who valued a book over a soccer ball, for all the pansies, the weaklings, the nerds, the socially inept, he would wreak a horrible vengeance.
God I hope they do a good job with him in the F4 movie...
posted by WM @ 12:21
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