The Blood Brothers, Part 3: Physics

Junior High has one more important story to tell. For gym class, Mr. Hogan loaded us in the bus and drove us out to Lion’s Park. The schools of our small town share one football field and good track that is close to the High School. For the next few days, we’d be coming down here to practice funny jumps into piles of sand and belly-flopping huge mattresses.

The guys and I were too cool for that. We asked Mr. Hogan if we could do our own thing as long as we stayed in the park. He grunted something about “free country” and “failure at life” but we took that as an answer in the affirmative.

Our intentions were just to wander around the track. They don’t combine boys and girls for gym class, so there were no ladies to try and impress (or be worried about not impressing) so instead we just talked about impressing them.

Suddenly, Mark stopped dead in his tracks. He grabbed Johnny, and had a visibly hard time indicating to Johnny the idea that just struck him. It became quickly evident that this was because this was one of the best ideas any of had thought of in a long time.

Before I go on, it is necessary to explain the geography of Cardston a little bit. The “downtown” portion of Cardston is nestled in nicely at the base of four hills. Lion’s park was located at the base of the west hill, where the hill had a very steep decline into the park. The incline of the hill starts only a few feet away from the park’s track.

Johnny saw what Mark saw. Then we all saw it. There, in the bushes, was a tire. But this wasn’t just any tire. It was a tractor tire. The kind of tire you can fit a whole person in.

And there was a big hill.

The four of us got the tire out of the bushes and started making our way to the hill. It’s amazing how heavy these tires can get. Even the four of us alone couldn’t get the tire that far up the hill. A few of our mischievously-minded classmates joined us and helped us roll the tire to the top of Lion’s Park hill.

As we neared the top of the hill, Ryan wondered aloud what Mr. Hogan would think of what we were up to. I glanced down to the field where Mr. Hogan was raking the sand in the tricky-jump pit. As if sensing me looking at him, he stood up straight, took off his sunglasses, and looked at us while shading his eyes from the sun. Then he put his glasses back on and went back to raking the sand, muttering something. Probably “dumbass kids” or something like that.

By the time we made it to the summit of Mount Stupidsoundingness, everybody on the field below stopped to see what we were going to do with it.

We were going to roll it down, of course. Ryan, Johnny, and I were all a little worried about the tire not going very far and probably flopping over at the bottom of the hill. Mark, the genius that he is, reminded us about something-something-mass-velocity-gravity-9.81-metres-per-second-per-second-something and indicated that we needed to be very careful where we aim the tire because it will go pretty fast and probably cause a lot of damage if it hits the wrong thing.

Ever the cautious of the 4 of us, Mark elected to go back down to the field to help with the tire’s trajectory. He was joined by another savant named Jorden. I really want to say they pulled out calculators and notepads, but that would be a false memory for sure. Their savantness is a backed up claim – Mark is in med school, Jorden is an electrical engineer or something awesome like that.

We started to prioritize the un-targets. Definitely not the announcer’s stand. Not any kids. Not the parking lot. Not the playground. There was a narrow area on the other side of the field that lead into some trees and concrete picnic benches. That seemed like the least worrisome landing zone. What’s the worst that could happen?

We positioned the tire perfectly. Mr. Hogan stopped what he was doing and watched intently. We sent the tire rolling. Even after a few bumps, it continued its course down the hill. It picked up a surprising amount of speed that even felt dangerous from the top of the hill. I don’t know about the other guys, but I wasn’t so sure those picnic benches or trees stood a chance, and I was filled with instant regret.

It was going fast, but at least it was on target.

Then Chad decided to be a moron.

As the tire was picking up serious speed, Freddy (another classmate who will remain anonymous) waddled into the path of the tire, did a little columbian jig, and got himself far out of the way.

Chad, not to be outdone by Freddy, ran over to the hill. He positioned himself in front of the tire. He faked a couple of dodges. Fake right, fake left, fake right, and then jumped left, out of the way.

At least that’s what he meant to do. He didn’t make it completely out of the way. Only *mostly* out of the way.

As he dove through the air out of the way, the hire hit his foot in midair. This sent Chad on a couple of aerial flips and to the ground, whimpering about his leg and muttering obscenities. Mr. Hogan saw this and after assessing whether or not Chad had died – and satisfied that Chad was, in fact, not dead – went back to raking the sand. Jorden’s face looked like he had just won the lottery.

But Chad’s freaking foot wouldn’t be the only casualty of the day.

The encounter of Tire vs Chad was too much for the tire, and the tire wobbled and lost momentum just short of the high-jump mat. Because our experiment failed due to an uncontrolled variable, we decided to try again and hoisted the tire up the hill one more time. At Mark’s signal – and with everybody out of the way because they didn’t want to end up like Chad, who had by this time hobbled far out of the way – we let the tire roll.

The tire veered right. It stormed through the soccer net like a freight train through a spiderweb. The bottom bar of the net gave the tire a bounce that sent it about 4 feet into the air, and it smashed right into only what we know to call a, “power box.” It was probably leaning in an unnatural direction before, and the four-inch gap between the concrete foundation of the box and the dirt was probably already there, but now it had some rubber on it. Made it look kinda nice. The tire rebounded back, then wobbled into a couple of bushes to a stop.

The four of us sat at the top of the hill, relieved that nobody died and no buildings were stampeded. We gave each other high-fives at a job well done. Mischief managed.

Apparently, potential property damage is where Mr. Hogan drew the line and he decided to shut down our operation.

The next day, Chad showed up in crutches.