Spider-Man Speaks At Career Day

Hi, kids. I just thought I’d swing by and give a little speech to you youngsters about picking a career that you’d like to do for the rest of your life.

I was going to do my regular “with great power comes great responsibility” spiel, but your principal actually already covered that in his introduction of me. It’s nice to have an introduction, don’t get me wrong, but he stole a bit of my thunder when he went on to literally say all of my famous lines.

Honestly, right now, I’m pretty angry with your principal, kids. As you’ll learn when you grow up, sometimes the worst kind of evil isn’t some super villain bent on world domination; it is a stupid principal who screws other people with his simple lack of commonsense. For example, if you have a guest speaker, maybe check with him what he’s going to cover in his speech so you don’t trample all over his material. Also, if you’re going to go over someone’s origin story, at least get it accurate. It was not an insect that bit me; it was an arachnid. Spiders are arachnids, not insects. Spiders have eight legs. It’s basic third grade science. He might as well have said that it was a dog that bit me.

Now is the time where I was going to throw in a joke such as, “Is that potential I smell or is that just my spider sense tingling?” But your principal also used that line when you guys were entering the auditorium.

So, plan B. I guess I’m going to go over what you can be when you grow up. Since you already know that crap about power and responsibility, I’m just going to tell you what I wanted to be when I grew up: a scientist. I know it isn’t awesome or anything, but when I was little I was interested in molecules and cell structure. After a radioactive spider bit me, everything changed. I had to become a superhero. I honestly just wanted to be a research scientist working in a lab. You get your own special lab coat, maybe have lunch in the cafeteria or on the lawn if it’s a nice day.

The point is, a lot of you probably want to be a superhero or a fireman. But your life is going to throw you for a loop, and instead of your special dreams you will be forced to pick something real based off of your abilities. For example, the chubby redhead kid in the front, you probably won’t pass the police physical so you’ll have to take a job in a law firm maybe filing papers.

And you little girl in the fourth row with all lip-gloss on—you’re probably going to face a lot of pressure from the boys to engage in sexual activities. Even though you may want to be a physical therapist now, if you become pregnant at sixteen, you’ll be stuck working the registers at the A&P.

If I were a kid now and I had to pick what I’d like to be when I grew up, I’d probably choose to be that guy from the movie Good Will Hunting. He’s pretty amazing, super smart, good at fighting, and he was abused as a child. It is a pretty badass story. I mean, sure, I’ve had some hardship. My Uncle Ben got murdered, but to be honest, Uncle Ben was pretty old when this happened, and he would have died in a few years anyway. I would never tell my Aunt May that, obviously.

My favorite line is when Will says to that one Harvard guy who thinks he’s hot stuff, “I got her number, how do you like them apples?” I want to say that to somebody so bad.

But at your age, you guys are just starting to discover women. You are going through a lot of changes. Like some of you boys are probably dealing with wet dreams and… Wow! Sit down, principal. Just sit back down. You had your time, now I have mine. Don’t make me use my web shooters in front of the kids.

So the point is most of you will have to take a day job that you don’t like, that’s soul crushing, but it pays the bills. Since being a superhero doesn’t pay at all, I also have a day job. I can’t really go into it the details of my work because I don’t want to blow my alias. However, I can tell you that you shouldn’t count on your industry being around forever. I mean with technology changing so rapidly, I don’t think newspapers will be around much more. And who’s going to pay for my photos? Well, look, I’ve said too much already.

Some of you are probably wondering why I’m bleeding from my abdomen. Before entering the school, I was attacked by the security guards. I swung onto the roof, which is sort of just how I operate, and the two security guards you have on duty here at the school thought I was some sort of maniac or pedophile and jumped me. But that makes sense. I mean why would a guy in a spider outfit be at a school? Unless maybe the principal of that school informed the appropriate people that Spider-Man was going to be the guest speaker. You just have to rely on the person with the most power in the school to man up to their responsibility.

The biggest and most important lesson that I can teach you kids today is that your principal is evil, and I am naming him henceforth, “The Principal.” And I hate him. I hate him so much. More than Dr. Octopus, the Green Goblin, or that a-hole professor in Good Will Hunting who was trying to ride on Matt Damon’s genius to become famous. Matt Damon just wanted to do it for the love of math.

I’ll close by saying that you all should read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That book will f-ing blow your mind! And I hate your principal more than anything.

I’m done.

[Pushes over podium.]