My brother, Chris, and I had blue Wham-o superballs , they were amazing.
Heavy and brick hard,
they are responsible for the familiar sentence,
"Don't play ball in the house!".
The ads said something about "50,000 pounds of kinetic energy!!!"
It was like holding a hand grenade, or a stick of dynamite.
FIFTY! THOUSAND! POUNDS!
of ENERGY!
...in the palm of my hand.
Wow.
I think I was 7 (would have been 1968) the Summer our street was being resurfaced. The crew was using a steam roller, and I wondered - as only a 7 year old could - what damage 50,000 lbs of energy would do to it.
The next morning, I non-chalantly sauntered up the hill, eyeing my chance,
then,
I struck.
I rolled the ball down the hill to the approaching steel roller,
unseen by the unsuspecting driver,
and stepped back to get out of the blast zone...
...Sadly my dreams of high explosive fun were turned to powder,
along with my blue SuperBall.
