The new move Avenger: Endgame, opening this weekend,  has some resonance for me, personally and culturally.

No person my age can reasonably expect to keep up with the pace and range of modern technology and culture, from gaming to Reddit to the evolution of superheroes to AI –  from a geeky fringe subculture to the very profitable mainstream.

Geeks used to be the kids asked to run the slide projector. Now they run the companies that make their successors.

I feel like an interloper in a sense even going to see this movie.  I suspect I will be one of the oldest people in the theater – again. It happens a lot.

In one way, I was there first. I grew up on Marvel comics, they were part of the very limited culture that was open to me – mostly radio and comics.

We weren’t allowed to watch much TV.

The Marvel comics I read – I waited for hours every Wednesday for them to arrive in the funky little store that sold them the line was full of geeks,wonks, bedwetters and outcasts.

We were all targets of the roaming gangs of Irish kids who specialized in taking our lunch money and chasing us for miles.

The comics were a big deal, arriving in pristine condition in taped plastic bags, Each week, I paid for one and ordered one more. I read them all at least a hundred times. I was eager to fight alongside Captain America, the world’s first superhero.

The Marvel comics I read had only a glancing relationship to the blockbuster movie coming out today, and the stunning growth of Marvel. Stan Lee was once a geek too.

Stan Lee was a well known figure in my youth, but he is the subject of myth now. He sold his company to Disney for billions of dollars.

I have been writing about the digital culture and studying the Internet since it began – I wrote about it for Wired and Rolling Stone, among other places. I am no Luddite, I love my blog, my computer and my smart phone, they have all been woven into my life. I am happy to launch a podcast with Maria.

New tools for creatives, they make my life possible.

Unlike a lot of people my age,  I am comfortable with new technology and open to it, within the boundaries of my ability. I started a blog in 2007 when publishers considered it foolish heresy. It is my living memoir.

I also have no illusions about my deep grasp of culture today. Any 14-year-old is doing and seeing things I have never heard of, let alone used. I need to learn more about Mysterio.

Parents used to be able to understand what their kids are doing. That is no longer true.

In the new culture, you almost need to be a teenager to have the skills – the memory, eyesight and reflexes – to master technology. Our sometimes turgid educational system has yet to recognize the skill  and creativity of things like computer gaming. They just don’t get it.

I don’t get a lot of it either, although I respect it greatly.

Still, Marvel comics and the idea of the Superhero had great meaning to me, and does still. If you’re a bed-wetting geek sissy running from the Irish kids, the idea of the Superhero has more meaning than entertainment value.

It becomes the fantasy of your life, powers to imagine and yearn for. What kid doesn’t want to be a hero with supernatural powers and endless courage?

Nobody will laugh at them in the gym or take their lunch money.

This movies promises to be a turning point from what I read, it honors and marks the transition from one period to another. As such has significance to many millions of people, most of them young.  And for me, beyond my love of movies.

Some of the Superheroes are being killed off or retired, something unimaginable when I was younger – there were all supposed to be invincible. I can’t help but think my own approaching endgame is somehow reflected in the movie. I bet it is.

I am not unhappy being old, but some things make me feel especially old and remind me that I too will be “endgamed” in the not too distant future. We all end, and something about my culture and childhood will end today. I feel it.

In our time, culture moves too fast and is worth too much money to stand still for long.  To make room for  new and relevant characters, you have to get rid of some of the old ones. They do seem dated. That is the law of life – for publishing, movies, TV shows, art.

We all end, this movie is an evocation of this, from what I read.

So I will be there to see this film – the plot is all over the Internet, I won’t spoil it if I write about it. Maria says she wants to see it also.

I can’t claim to see it with the eyes of a 15-year-old boy, but I can see it through the eyes of a trouble and frightened kid who read  himself to sleep many a night with Marvel Comics, they fueled my fantasies, they taught me what it is like to be powerful.

They were good to me, in their own way, the Superheroes helped me survive, at least in my head. There is emotion for me there.

If some of the Superheroes are going to die in this movie, I owe them a final visit, to mark their passage, and my own. I think I’ll be saying goodbye to some things of my own.