I am Peter Parker

Just before I started grade nine, I convinced my mother I needed some new clothes. So off we went to Simpsons at Yorkdale, our family department store – my dad worked at the company’s warehouse so we got a discount. I went straight to the youth department knowing exactly what I wanted. First was a white dress shirt, not hard to find, didn’t raise my mom’s eyebrows. Second, a red tie. That seemed a bit odd to her but I assured my mother my new high school was upper crust. It was. I was moving from a poorer, working class school to a more affluent, upper-middle class school (where, I later discovered, nobody wore a tie.) Third, I found a bright yellow knit vest. My mom started to seriously wonder at this point, but I just put it on the pile. And fourth, the hardest thing to find but essential in my mind, a pair of bright, almost turquoise dress pants. My mom paid for the clothes. I suspect she’d given up trying to understand my sartorial choices. I really don’t know how she would have reacted if I’d told her why my outfit had to be this specific.

Grade nine was a chance to reinvent myself. I was moving to a high school outside of my neighbourhood. I had made this happen on purpose, hounded my parents to put in all the required paperwork to move out of my catchment. I told them this new school had higher scores, so I would be more academically successful. The truth was I wanted a whole new set of friends. A whole new experience. A whole new me. The point of all this was to fulfil my singular dream: to become Spider-Man.

I already had the right name – “Pedro” is the Portuguese version of “Peter.” Plus, I devoured Spider-Man comics daily, so I knew his story and tried to follow it to a tee. High school student: Check. Nerd: Check. High grades. Check. I was on the path towards that radioactive spider. But I couldn’t start truly living as Peter Parker without all my old school friends noticing a change.

And I knew that if I wanted to be Peter Parker, I needed to look like Peter Parker. In every comic book from the 60s and 70s Peter wore the same outfit again and again. And now I had that outfit. What I hadn’t thought of at the time was that he wore those clothes because that’s what the writers thought a nerdy kid looked like in the 60s. I was wearing them twenty years later. And more importantly, Peter wore those specific colours because of the kinds of inks available to comic book printers at the time – bright, vivid and primary. It sure made for an eye-catching ensemble on my first day of school.

My plan didn’t work. I didn’t start grade nine as an unnoticed super nerd. In fact, I couldn’t have stood out more from the preppies in their popped collar polo shirts and sockless boat shoes. Plus, I didn’t excel at biology and science, although I was ok in math and history. And I was never bitten by a radioactive spider. But I did achieve something, my first experience of “dressing the part.”

I’ve repeated this process several times in my life, dressing a certain way to change myself or the way I feel about myself. There was the year in university when I was studying Buddhism and only wore black and white to better commune with the essential elements of life. Or my years of Japanese anime cosplay – where I dressed as comic book heroes just for the fun of it. Or now, since I’ve become a father, wearing suits and ties to help myself feel more confident and grown up.

And my dress has changed me. I sincerely believe that if you start acting like what you want to be, you will eventually become that person. Except Spider-Man. You can’t be Spider-Man.