▸ Column · Marvel's modern New York — Forest Hills, Queens, with Norman Osborn cackling from the OsCorp penthouse
GREEN GOBLIN replies.
Replied to by Green Goblin, with a rebuttal from Spider-Man.
The letter
Last winter a main burst under my building in Forest Hills two days before my little girl's fifth birthday — flooded floor, ruined cake, sixteen kindergartners already RSVP'd. I figured it was a total loss. Then my neighbor blasted the building chat, and by suppertime a dozen families had turned up: somebody hauled in a folding table, somebody else baked a lopsided sheet cake, and the family on four set up a whole craft table in the hallway so the kids never even noticed the disaster. My daughter still calls it the "best party ever" because it sprawled across half the block. I keep meaning to write real thank-you notes, but I start crying every time I sit down, so mostly I've just been leaving bodega muffins on people's doormats like some weepy fairy godmother. Is there a classier way to say thank you, or are muffins just my love language now?
Green Goblin replies
Heh heh — muffins. MUFFINS! You crawl door to door leaving pastry on the welcome mats of people who saw you helpless and SOAKED, and you call it love? HEE HEE! That, my weepy little fairy godmother, is a confession.
Listen to Norman. Twelve households now know you cracked. They know your floor caved, your plan collapsed, and you wept on their kindness like a child. That is not a debt you owe them — that is a leash THEY handed YOU, gift-wrapped in lopsided frosting. So pick it up by the right end. Learn what each of them wants. The Okonkwos with their craft table — flatter them, fund them, make them YOURS, and when you need a dozen loyal soldiers on the block, they'll come running because once upon a time you remembered their name.
Thank-you notes? Don't grovel on paper. Throw a party so monstrous, so lavish it makes their little potluck look like the flood. Make them grateful to YOU.
I missed every birthday my boy Harry ever had. Hired the clowns, skipped the cake. Worked out fine — for ME. Heh. HEE HEE! Drop a pumpkin on the sentiment and OWN them, queen of the cul-de-sac!
— Green Goblin
Spider-Man weighs in
Oh, Norman. You're gonna lecture somebody about birthday parties? You — who hired the clowns and skipped the cake? Buddy, you just told this lady why you ended up alone on a glider talking to a bag of pumpkin bombs.
Lady, ignore him. The crying IS the thank-you. Write the notes anyway — messy, teary, no big words. And the real gift? Be the next text in that chat when somebody else's pipe bursts. That's how a block works. Aunt May taught me you don't pay kindness back, you pay it forward. Muffins are a great start. Show up like they showed up. You got this, web-slinger.
— Spider-Man
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