The Unstoppable Force Meets The Immovable Object

Today is my best friend Matt’s birthday. Matt and I have known each other since we were little kids, I  was four years old and he was only three when his family first moved into the neighborhood, and we quickly became best friends. We grew up across the street from one another, at opposite ends of an oblong shaped cul-de-sac In the Huntley Square subdivision, the neighborhood just south of what used to be the football field of the old Holt High School (now the Holt Jr. High) on Aurelius Road. My mom’s house was on Stonehurst Avenue and backed right up to the football field property, while Matt’s family lived in one of only six houses with Pearson Court addresses that made up the little enclave that us neighbors affectionately referred to as the “circle”. Because my mom’s house was one of four properties (along with the Robbins to our east and Barb Knuth and the Vosovic’s to our west) that were situated right where the horseshoe part of Pearson Court merged with Stonehurst Avenue, we were also considered part of the circle, since our houses technically helped to form the northernmost boundary of this imaginary  loop.

The neighborhood “circle”

The circle (which  actually wasn’t a circle at all – like I mentioned, it was an oblong shaped grass island that was about thirty feet wide by 125 or so feet long, with curves at either end that were formed by the contour of the surrounding streets) was in fact a social construct of the adults, who saw this little strip of land as an ideal  communal space for all of our families to gather. During football season, this usually meant potluck dinners prior to heading over to watch the game from the Vosovic’s backyard, or even from up on the roof of our covered back patio, before everyone would eventually migrate back to the circle afterwards for a late night bonfire. In the summer, we would have similar get-togethers to watch the annual 4th of July fireworks display, which the Delhi Township Fire Department used to shoot off from over by Kiwanis Park. And back when Holt used to put on its big summer festival, complete with a parade, carnival amusement rides and a beer tent, the circle would also become the unofficial site of the “Bed Race” time trials, which consisted of four grown men pushing another grown man around in an unnecessarily  souped-up bed or crib on wheels. The “driver” or man sitting in the bed or crib who wasn’t actually doing any steering would usually be wearing a motorcycle helmet, goggles and racing gloves. So, yes. I’m pretty sure beer was involved.

Of course, the circle was also a natural place for us neighborhood kids to congregate, since it was centrally located between all of our houses and provided for a wide-open green space for us to play. Our parents loved the fact it was relatively easy for them to keep an eye on us, and hanging out in the circle  kept us off the street and away from the busier car traffic on Stonehurst. By far, the number one activity that us neighborhood kids used the circle for was to play tackle football. Looking back at it now, I’m amazed that we didn’t suffer more serious injuries, since after all, the out-of-bounds line was a concrete curb next to an asphalt street, there was a large metal street sign in the middle of the north end zone, and a depression in the ground just outside of the southern goal line that served as the adult’s bon fire pit, which was often times full of charred black coals and the occasional broken beer bottle. The oblong shaped cul-de-sac also made for an excellent speedway for us to race our bikes and wooden go-carts around, and the straight away portion of Pearson Court was just long enough to accommodate impromptu games of street hockey using roller skates, a tennis ball, and whatever brooms, bats or tennis rackets we could muster up to use as sticks. Of all the games we played, all of our crazy stunts, there is one incident that stands out above all others. And today, it’s the story  I offer up as a present to my best friend on his birthday.

There are some things that you just can’t unsee…

Kids at the table (from left to right): Chris, Scott Hadwin, Joe Thompson, Chris LaRoue and Matt.

Shortly after I launched this blog, my friend Matt requested that I tell this next story. After the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of the March Madness tournament, which in turn,  ruined the plans for Matt and I to make our annual pilgrimage north to Pentwater to binge-watch the opening weekend of the tournament, and since more recent developments have forced everyone to shelter in place which means that Matt isn’t going to be able to go out somewhere for his birthday, I figured I could at least try to make his self-imposed solitary confinement a little more bearable by granting him this one birthday wish.

We were probably ten or eleven years old at the time of this story, which meant our neighbor Timmy Robbins, who was a year or so older than me, would have been twelve or thirteen. Timmy lived next door to me and although we considered him our friend, he sometimes came across as a bit of a bully--not because he was intentionally trying to be mean or cruel, but a bully in the way that an older, bigger kid just naturally tends to dominate the smaller, younger kids. It was late summer or early autumn, sometime in the late afternoon or early evening and Matt, Timmy and I were hanging out at the circle. We had come up with a new activity, one of our more daring ideas, which involved tying a twenty foot long piece of rope to the seat stem of Timmy’s BMX bike with the other end fashioned to a short stick of wood which served as a sort of handle, so that we could take turns pulling each other around on roller skates, like a water skier getting pulled behind a speedboat. Each of us took turns, either riding Timmy’s bike to pull whoever was roller skating, or strapping on the roller skates for our turn to get pulled around. We would do four or five laps around the cul-de-sac and then would switch so someone else could have a turn.

By our third time through the rotation, we were all getting the hang of it and going moderately fast, being careful not to gain so much speed as to swing out too far that  we wouldn’t be able to navigate the turns at the end of each straight away. For what ended up being the last turn of the night (none of us could have anticipated the events that were about to unfold) I was being pulled around by Timmy while Matt looked on from the grass infield. We did a lap or two, maintaining a steady, but brisk pace. Then Timmy started to pick up speed, noticeably laughing while he pumped his legs harder and harder to pull against the dead weight dragging on the other end of the line, in other words, me.

As we continued to build speed through the front straight away and headed toward the closed end of the circle at the south end of the cul-de-sac, I repeatedly yelled ahead to Timmy to slow down, just as I took a wide swinging arc, nearly jumping  the curb and clipping the fire hydrant in front of Amy Doll’s house. As he pulled onto the back straight away, the taut rope straightened me out as well, but I realized that both Timmy and I were now taking a completely new line around our “track” that was much further out than where we had been, undoubtedly a function of the increased speed that had forced us to take a much wider path through the turns. I knew it was just a matter of time before physics and geometry would take over, and this new outer line combined with my widening swing would prevent me from making it around the next turn, so again I yelled to him to slow down, or I was going to have to let go of the rope. This only seemed to stoke some deep demonic force that was welling up from inside of Timmy, as he peddled harder and faster while letting out a defiant, and maniacal laugh. As I had correctly suspected, the buildup of speed down the back straight away made me swing even further out than before, taking my arc well into the far side of Stonehurst Avenue. It was instantly apparent to me that the arc of my turn was going to force me to overshoot the beginning of the front straight away, so as Timmy pulled me through the turn, I did the only thing I could. I let go of the rope just as I jumped the curb and tumbled into the small section of grass between the curb and sidewalk in front of the Frazier’s house. After rolling to a stop and doing a quick check to make sure nothing was broken, I propped myself up on my elbows just in time to see Timmy peddling away from me, still pumping his legs like crazy, still laughing like a maniac. I also noticed that trailing after him, skipping along on the pavement some twenty feet behind, was the block of wood that we had fashioned to the end of the rope and had been using as a makeshift handle.

As Timmy approached the turn at the far end of the circle, the rope and block of wood that lagged behind him was naturally swung outward, which is when I first realized what was about to happen.

There, as I lay in the grass, propped up on my elbows, still more than a little pissed at Timmy for making me wipe out, I saw it. From my advantage point I could see that the trailing block of wood was on a direct collision course with the left rear tire of Matt’s parents’ 1976 Plymouth Volaré station wagon, which was parked out in front of their house.

In the matter of a few split seconds I saw the block of wood get hung up in the tire, while Timmy unknowingly peddled on, as the coil of rope he was dragging went from slack to a rigid tightrope that seemed to suspend itself there in mid-air for what seemed like minutes. His bike jerked to an abrupt  stop, and Timmy was instantly thrown over the front handlebars and was sent flying through the air.

Now we had all had our share of nasty spills. As kids we were fearless, so it wasn’t uncommon to find us  attempting some rickety jump made of 2x8 boards resting against a stack of cinder blocks. Or every once in a while, we would get too close to one another when racing our bikes around the circle, before awkwardly going down in a heap of twisted metal and scraped knees. But nothing comes close to what we saw Timmy do that day.

Of course, this was back in the '80s, well before the time kids wore bike helmets, so thankfully he didn’t end up with a more serious head injury. I don’t believe he ever lost consciousness, but he definitely got his bell rung, and although we didn’t talk about it as much then, I have no doubt that he must have suffered a concussion. His mom, who was a nurse, decided to use smelling salts to try and get him to come around, before walking him back to their house and eventually taking him to the ER to get checked out. 

Once the initial shock wore off, Matt and I tended to Timmy’s bike. Timmy had been going so fast, and the force that had propelled him over the front of his bike was so strong, that the handlebars had been pushed all the way forward and were resting on the front tire. In fact, the force of the handlebars being pushed forward was so great that they had actually bent the rim and popped Timmy’s front tire. Meanwhile, the block of wood that had got hung up on the car tire was wedged under the treads so far, that Matt’s dad had to move the car so that we could retrieve it from underneath.

Now I should pause here and say that, except for a few bumps and bruises, Timmy was fine. He even had a good sense of humor about the whole episode, stopping short, however,  of taking responsibility for having created the whole predicament in the first place.

As for me, I felt a little bit of guilt afterwards, that I didn’t try to warn Timmy about what was about to go down, even though there is no way he would have been able to react in time to avoid the inevitable, it all just happened so fast.

Matt and Chris at Matt’s wedding.

I’m relieved that we were all able to laugh about the whole incident afterwards, the same way that you watch America’s Funniest Videos and cringe when you see the guy get hit in the groin when his little leaguer accidentally hits him with the backswing of his bat, but then you’re like, “well he must be okay, and he obviously has a good sense of humor about it, because he’s putting it out there for the entire world to see”., But then part of you thinks that maybe he’s still traumatized by the whole thing, and he just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to potentially win $10,000, or worse yet, it wasn’t him that even submitted the video, it was his mean-spirited wife that sent the tape into Bob Saget.

I ran into Timmy a couple of years ago and we had a chance to reminisce about some of those childhood memories, including the time he got flipped over the front of his bike. Even though he was the unsuspecting nutcracker dad in my AFV analogy, I don’t believe he ever considered Matt or me the opportunistic wife type trying to profit off his misfortune, and I’m pretty sure the event did nothing to traumatize him. In fact, I think he actually relished the role of the kid who fought the station wagon and lost, happily wearing those bumps and bruises like a badge of honor, while putting up with all of our good-natured jabs and laughs at his expense.

All I know is that if we would have owned a video camera back then, if America’s Funniest Videos had been a thing, we would have probably been $10K richer, which in 1983 dollars, was like $10,350. 

Instead, what I am left with is that unbelievable, unforgettable scene that I can only play back in my mind, something it turns out that only two other people saw, and just one of the two remembers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful that Timmy only suffered a concussion and that he wasn’t more seriously hurt, which is why we can look back now and joke about what happened. And at the same time, I’m so grateful that Timmy was a jerk to me that day, and that he purposefully made me wipe out, because he ended up giving us a story that we’ve been talking about for 35+ years now. The day when that unstoppable force met the immovable object.

Happy Birthday Matty!