My Very Own Superman

A boy and his father bond over the classic movie

We’re talking about the original Superman movie, my friend and I, and he’s telling me about the first time he saw it at the cinema. He’s telling me about his dad’s excitement at Superman’s heroism. How he had actually gone along as much to keep his dad happy as to see it himself.

We’re talking about the original Superman and how it was a formative experience for a boy and his father. How they had bonded over the definitive Man in Tights saving the world.

How such experiences in the cinema can become so precious in later years. For reasons we’re not discussing but are always there when you get to our age.

What we’re not talking about, though — and maybe my friend spotted this — was my first experience seeing the Christopher Reeve Superman. Oh, I’m thinking about it. As soon as the movie is mentioned, I can’t avoid thinking about it, not least because it was an experience I shared, too, with my father.

The man I don’t call my father. He might have been “Daddy”, then. A few years later, he’d be referred to only ever on first name terms. If he was referred to at all.

What we’re not talking about is my memory of the Reeve movie, not on the big screen — it would be years before I went to the cinema. I never did go with either parent. But it was away from home. It did involve a trip. On the bus into “town”, as we called it. To the part of “town” that my mother sneered about most.

I had never been before, as I recall.

She told me I wouldn’t want to go back.

Superman, with bad tracking and muted third or fourth generation colours, was playing on a sort of a big screen. And there was an audience. It felt like a crowd. Young and old. Very young and very old.

The first cinema I would ever visit was an Odeon or an ABC in Southampton, before the multi-screen era, when people still queued round the block for the popular films, and when the proper big-screen auditorium was a riot of hurled sweet wrappers and expletives.

This was, although I wouldn’t know it then, very like that.

The youngest in the audience was a toddler wearing a nappy. And only a nappy. It needed changing. There was ample evidence that it needed changing. Some of that evidence was on the toddler’s hands.

The oldest in the audience was an octogenarian, or someone who was making a very good go at looking like an octogenarian. This screening of Superman was, it seemed, not an occasion that necessitated the wearing of teeth.

There was no popcorn or Coke. What my family called “pop” or “fizz”.

There were bottles of stout and cheap supermarket cherryade. There were no programmes or flyers (were there ever in the cinema of old?) but someone had broken out a set of playing cards. The “special” type, illustrated with naked ladies. Some of them very naked. The children present, in particular, enjoyed that particular sideshow.

What makes it worse is that, as with my first trip to the cinema in 1989 (to see Star Trek V whether my friend Billy wanted to see it or not…), I wasn’t alone. School friend Paul was with me. I have absolutely no idea why.

I didn’t go into “town”, on the bus or otherwise. I didn’t go with my father. I didn’t go to this venue. And I certainly didn’t do anything with any of the friends who were never invited round to my own home.

Not one. This isn’t hyperbole. Not one. Not even to the door. Not even to ask me to “come out to play”. Never.

So why was Paul there as the kid ran round the room with filled nappy and very dirty hands?

Why was he there as the stout was passed round and the playing cards were sniggered over and the intermission chips were brought out? Chips, by the way, cooked in lard and with more fat per square inch than any foodstuff I had ever previously encountered.

Whose idea was it to bring Paul?

It can’t have been mine.

I wouldn’t have wanted him to see this.

My father wouldn’t have cared. Although it was — let’s face it — a bit suspect that I had never visited this place before.

And I never would again.

I’m guessing that Paul was there because my mother thought I shouldn’t go unaccompanied.

I knew what she thought of those people.

I knew what she needed me to think of those people.

On this occasion, she was pretty much right, too.

All of this comes back to me when Christopher Reeve’s Superman comes up in conversation. Paul is long gone but here is a friend willing to share with me his formative experience of seeing Superman with his dad.

And here am I having cause to remember yet again the massive disparity between Superman and my dad.

Although, having met his family just that once, and realising that there was never any indication he saw them at any other time, I do have to wonder at the superpowers he had to exercise in escaping them.

165 Medium pieces in now (and over 500 since beginning my writing again after the worst happened nearly a decade ago…), I think I am getting the hang of this. If you would like more of the same, here’s a piece about a very…peculiar childhood ambition of mine, and here’s another about the therapeutic value of behind-the-scenes DVD extras.