2000-06-20

Stephanie and I were in the Camry, stopped westbound on 130'th next to
Albertsons, in the right-hand lane nearest the sidewalk.  There was an
SUV in front of us, and some teenage boys (maybe 14 yrs old) riding
bikes on the sidewalk toward us.  As they passed by the SUV, one
before the other, they each looked over into the SUV, spoke/yelled
something into it as if they knew the passengers, and kept on riding
by toward us.

The one in front passed us by on the sidewalk.  The second, smaller
boy, who was still sort of glancing back at the SUV (or in at
Stephanie, I suspect), on one of those small 'trick' bikes, followed.
As soon as he came up even with Stephanie's window, out of the corner
of my eye, I saw his bike stop - The back end flipped up about a foot,
and the boy went forward, face-first, into the the light pole that he
had just run into.

I swiveled my head around to look at him full-on, in time to see him
and his bike collapse to the ground.  He started to get up very
quickly - almost as soon as he went down - glancing around with that
embarassed grin that you get after doing something _really_ stupid in
front of lots of people.  He looked directly at me at one point.

I wanted to laugh.  Hard.  But I had the decency to ask him if he was
hurt first.  As soon as he said "no", a split second before he took
off after his friend as fast as he could get away.  Stephanie let out
a solid, laugh - generally we're taught not to laugh at people, but
this was just too much to supress.

This entire episode took place over, at most, 5 seconds.  But it's the
funniest thing I've seen in a long, long time.