Spiderman

This is our friendly neighborhood Spiderman. He has been hanging against the wall of our daughter's room for almost 10 years now. She has been one of the "paparazzi" since she was a pre-teen, wanting to meet celebrities, attend movie premieres, and be part of the audience during TV show tapings. She would occasionally persuade me to take her to LA or Hollywood, where we would spend hours standing at the ropes around the red carpet waiting to catch a glimpse and perhaps a picture of one of the stars.

One such occasion was the premiere of the movie Spiderman 2 in 2004. By the end of the night, we were determined to bring home one of the posters that lined the red carpet for a souvenir. She was able to convince one of the guards, and we picked up the poster to carry it to the car. Although light in weight, it was much larger than it appeared when we were looking at it. The other issue was that we had nothing with us to secure it to my Camry sedan. We naively thought we could hold on to it through the open window (it was summer time, after all.) A block or two later we realized this would not be possible during the 90 or 100 mile drive home on the freeway. Fortunately, we found a store open nearby and bought some twine to tie it to the roof. Amazingly, the huge poster made it home without damage. Today the sign is going home with one of the painters who has two young daughters that will love it. I imagine many people stopped to stare at the poster standing up in the bed of his pickup truck on the way home.