Concrete

You walk on it, drive on never pay attention to it till its got an annoying crack or pothole.
Then you break it up into small pieces.
You throw most of the pieces into the trailer to take to the dump, most of the pieces.
You save one piece.
Its an odd shape, it fits perfectly into your hand.
You hold it till the reconstituted stone attains body temperature and you marvel at the thought and genius that enable men, the ants on the world, to build and pretend that what we do will last......
Then you chuck it at Justin, and run away laughing when it bounces off his head.
There is a lesson in there somewhere.
Who cares.
We picked on Justin.
No real reason.
I mean, he was our age, he was a decent guy. Pretty good athlete and willing to do anything.
Remember those stupid commercials? About Mikey? The dumb-ass little brother that would eat anything?
Justin was sort of like that.
Minus the Dumb-ass part.
Really, if we would have had video cameras readily available the stuff he did would still be circulating on you-tube.
To tell it in words does not really do it Justice.
We lived at the bottom of a very steep hill, we took three sheets of 1/2 plywood and made this RAMP. It was 6 feet tall at the tallest. Sturdy as 5 wee kids could make it.
We spent an eternity of kid-time building it. About two hours. Then we sat around and dared everyone to jump their bike off of it.
No one would.
Until we pooled all of our money and agreed to pay Justin  6 TRILLION DOLLARS!
Who could resist that kind of money?
Certainly not Justin, he was the only boy in a family of sisters. They were scary and mean as Hell. In fact, remind me to tell you about when we tied karolyn to the tree....
Anyways.
He needed the money, they ate a lot.
So.
He pedaled his bike 18 miles to the top of the hill by our house and started pedaling down. It was a near vertical hill, I never understood how they got houses to stick to the side.
After the the first 1/4 mile he was going at least 124 miles an hour.
When he hit the really steep part he gave up on pedaling and coasted at just under the speed of sound to the ramp.
Miraculously it held together under the G forces. Even more miraculously, so did Justin.
In my mind I have this image burned, as If I had seen this out of my body.
There is us. A gaggle of wee boys, heads craned back to the sky, mouths open, eyes all glued to Justin.
Justin.
Who was 15 feet in the air, cut offs protecting almost nothing, no helmet, no crash pad, no video camera.
Just flying. The wind whistled through spokes and almost drowned out the sound of 15 wee boys and one wee Justin Knievel screaming like wee girls.
He didn't really land it.
He sort of bailed mid flight.
He bounced once and then slid 300 feet.
Tuck and roll?
nope.
Skid and peel.
He was OK.
Ok, that's kinda a lie.
He mumbled a lot after that.
Something about owing him money.............
we never did find his bike.