Reflections: Hello, I Am Peter Parker. My Real Superpower Is Opportunity

By Kulvinder Singh

Seeing the new Spider-Man movie in theatres, I remember again that I am Peter Parker.

When I was a toddler, my parents immigrated and brought my brother and me to Jamaica, Queens. We lived in an apartment. I knew no English. One day, Mom and Dad took me to start kindergarten in the early 1970s. Mom recalls that I said I was going to teach my kindergarten teacher to speak Punjabi. At graduation, I was selected as the student with the highest grades to give a valedictory speech.

That was my beginning in New York.

My parents bought a row townhouse in another part of Queens. We had neighbors from all over the world in what the movies show as Peter Parker’s hometown.

In sixth grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Coleman, was having a baby. She gave me a 65 as a number grade for the first marking period. That was minimum passing. The next marking period, my new teacher announced that one student had increased their grade by 30 points. I still have the commendation card she gave me. It was embarrassing to get it and to have that attention. Other students asked the teacher, did Kulvinder get a 120 when the highest grade is 100? They did not know I had started at 65.

My teacher told me Mrs. Coleman had not had a chance to talk to me. Looking at me, she concluded that I was ‘fresh off the boat’ and not proficient in English. My new teacher knew I was bilingual. That experience stayed with me. Someone had looked at me and decided what I could do before knowing me.

There were other moments like that.

My mom sent me to kindergarten with braids in my hair, red ribbons and mascara. She said that was how her brothers were first sent to school in India in the 1950s. She did not think I looked like a girl. Of course, other students teased me about my appearance. We told school officials that I was a Sikh from India. Suddenly, I was popular with the teachers.

My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. James, had been a missionary in Papua New Guinea in the 1960s. She was in her 60s. One day she brought her daughter to meet her students, me in particular. She would talk to me at recess and tell me I needed to be saved, to accept Jesus or I would go to hell. I told my parents what Mrs. James was saying. They taught me about Guru Nanak and about our faith. They taught me how to respond when people asked what we believed and where we were from. By then I was wearing a turban every day. I had reached my ‘bar mitzvah’ age. I was a prominent student at school and again valedictorian at graduation.

Mrs. James did not like my response to her Christian zeal. She reluctantly stopped trying to convert me at a public school in Jamaica, Queens. I think she was trying to use her daughter to get me to go along. I remember they wanted to take a photograph of me with her. They asked me to remove my turban. I refused.

Those were small moments in the life of a young boy. But they taught me something. I could be different and still belong. I could be questioned and still know who I was. I could be underestimated and still determine for myself what I was capable of becoming.

Living in a house, as Peter Parker, was interesting. I could take the elevated Number 7 train to Manhattan. The new Spider-Man movie reminds me of middle school, where again I did well, graduating as valedictorian.

My best friends were Jewish. I learned Yiddish terms I can still quote to describe things. Like mensch. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Haller, was Jewish. He loved talking to me about astronomy, chemistry and physics. He encouraged me to apply to Stuyvesant High School. I was admitted after taking the highly competitive specialized high school entrance exam. Mr. Haller had confidence in me that I could do anything. That confidence mattered.

I was busy by choice. I joined the Junior Academy of Sciences. I went to Manhattan museums. I did research at Rockefeller University for a nationwide science competition during my high school years. I visited the UN, NYU and Columbia campuses. I walked everywhere and learned about New York’s history. Professors I met welcomed my questions. My inquisitive nature, shaped by these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, led me to think about debate and law as a career.

In the greatest city in the world, at a critical time as a young person in my teen years, doors were opening for me.I could choose what I wanted to study. Where I wanted to study. What I wanted to do.

And what I wanted to do, as a proud New Yorker with an India origin story, was make a difference in the world. At that time, we were proud to be Indians in New York. Sikhs participated in India Day parades marching down Broadway. I was in an Independence Day parade in mid-August 1977, the 30th year since 1947. We celebrated the advancement of my country of origin from British colony to the world’s largest democracy. People were moving to Flushing and Richmond Hill, Queens. Sikh temples opened there.

The city was changing. My community was changing. And I was growing up somewhere between the two.

I finished my undergraduate studies in New York and wanted to go west. Having read about Justice Kennedy’s appointment to the US Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987, I had been to California once before and had heard of the place where he was a part-time law professor in Sacramento. I could move to California. Work during the day. Go to law school part-time. I wanted to be a lawyer in California, where Sikhs had first arrived around 1899 and where a large population lived.

Dalip Singh Saund came to Berkeley at age 21 in 1920. He earned his PhD. He was the first Asian elected to the US Congress, in November 1956, after first being elected to the justice court in the Imperial Valley. I wanted to become a lawyer. Maybe a judge one day. Maybe be elected, as he was, from Northern California, where so many Sikhs had settled and still live.

After I got my JD and MBA graduate degrees in Sacramento, I had to wait for my bar exam results and license to practice law. I was already in Marysville-Yuba City, where I had friends in the Sikh community. Punjabi-speaking immigrants in large numbers told me no Punjabi-speaking lawyer was in active practice anywhere within 100 miles. Whether I had one day of experience or 10 years of experience would not matter when someone needed a Punjabi-speaking lawyer.

That became another turning point.

The child who arrived in Queens knowing no English had become someone people were looking for because he could speak Punjabi. The child who had once been judged by how he looked was now being asked to help people navigate a complicated system. The boy whose teachers had opened doors for him was now standing in a position where he could open doors for others.

The rest of my California story is still being written.

I am Peter Parker. Not because I was bitten by a radioactive spider. Because I grew up in Queens. Because I learned to move between worlds. Because teachers saw something in me. Because my parents gave me a foundation. Because New York gave me opportunity. Because California gave me another beginning.

And because with every opportunity came a responsibility. The Spider-Man principle is a moral maxim often expressed as: ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’

I have always understood that differently from the way a superhero might. Power is not only superhuman strength. It can be an education. A language. A profession. A community. The confidence someone else gives you. The opportunity to walk through a door that someone else helped open.

Lawyers have that kind of power in society. They can help people who do not know how to navigate the system. They can speak for people whose voices are not being heard. They can challenge what is unfair. They can become agents of social change.

So, yes, I am Peter Parker. I am Spider-Man in California. The story is still being written. And I aspire to do more with what I have been given.

(Singh is based in Roseville, CA)