My First Firsthand Experience with Crucifixion

I have never been handy with a hammer or any other sort of tool -- other than a keyboard. When I was a kid, though, I did enjoy going into my father's cluttered, chaotic workshop and randomly hammering nails into wood. There was a day when I was about eight or nine years old when I nailed two pieces of wood together. They formed a cross like the one in church that had the bronze statue of the tortured Jesus hanging from it. This was way back in the days before I realized god couldn't pass the Turing Test.

As I looked at the cross I held in my hand, I slowly turned my gaze through the open workshop door, which led into the part of the basement where my brother and I played. There on the floor, face down, lay my rubber Spiderman action figure. A weird sort of inspriation took over and the next think I knew I had nailed Spiderman to the cross I had made. He fit perfectly; his pose -- arms stretched out, feet together, as though leaping -- was crucifixion-ready.

I can't remember if I went and showed my dad what I had done or if he had come into the workshop about then. My dad was principal of a Catholic elementary school, who had been educated by the Basilian priests at the Catholic secondary school I would attend years later. He had spent a year in the seminary when he was eighteen years old. When he saw my handiwork, his face took on a strange shocked/appalled expression, and he said, "Son, take Spiderman down from the cross."