Superball

One of the two schools I attended had a great roof. It was several stories above a bustling downtown corridor. I don’t remember who showed me how to get up there, but it must have been a graduate in my freshman year. No button on the panel existed for the level required, you actually had to push two buttons at once.

On that seemingly non-existent floor were shelves and supplies for building maintenance and access to the HVAC system. The facilities people didn’t care and the roof became our own private oasis. Amy and I ate lunch up there almost every day with a great view of the city.

I met her on my first day of art school. I was so nervous. Around my shoulder hung a huge portfolio. In my hand, a big Art Bin full of supplies. I was told there were a few forms that needed my attention in the office and I feared being late for my very first class. Not a great way to start things off. I signed and handed the forms to the secretary, turned and bolted out the door.

What followed was a train wreck of epic proportion.

Flying down the hall, on the other side of that door, also late for class and loaded down with all her supplies, I collided full force with Amy. Heads, shoulder, wall, ribs, portfolio, fingers, waaay too sharp stainless steel T-square, knee and finally the floor. I remember it all in slow motion.

Both of us laid low on the floor floating about in that concussive space of fuzzy sound and blurry sight. It’s a miracle neither of us were rendered unconscious. I tried to apologize and my words failed me. When she came into focus, she was really angry.

We both had absolutely splitting headaches and it was a full-on yard sale. Our bins and bags broadcast their contents upon impact all over the hallway. Since most of our supplies were new, neither of us knew - exactly what belonged to who.

Be still my beating heart and behold the stunning bohemian, counterculture goddess.

Long raven black hair, big hoop earrings against that olive complexion, black punk t-shirt under a leather vest, torn jeans and boots. Full arm sleeves and jingle jangle bangles. Deep green eyes that saw right through me.

Being late for class wasn’t the only reason she was angry. I’d soon learn that Amy requires control. In every situation. It was impossible to project the self-assured young woman she’d painstakingly crafted in the midst of atomic cataclysm. Further compounded by the realization that we were heading for the same class, I unknowingly stripped away her ability to make the carefully planned first impression she’d hoped to with our classmates.

When we stumbled through the door into the classroom almost fifteen minutes late, the instructor advised that “the two of us not make a habit of this.” Amy snarled at me in front of everyone, like an animal swearing revenge. Our classmates got a good laugh out of that.

We ended up developing a really interesting relationship.

Fast Forward. In three days we were set to graduate. Four years together as classmates, friends and occasional lovers. Lots of great memories and it was sad to think that this might be the last time we’d meet... up there on the roof.

We were silent as we surveyed the streets from above. Amy remembered something and pulled one of those little rubber bouncy balls from her pocket. It was acid green. She wound up like a major league pitcher and made a motion like she was going to throw it.

I told her, “Oh, you’ve got to!”

Down it went in an arc. Across the street, bouncing off the glass façade of that building, into the street and back up again, creating a barreling motion. We lost track of it, but you could see it’s impact in the responses of people. Someone dropped a newspaper, another person turned quickly in surprise as it zinged past them. We laughed.

We stood there, looked into each other's eyes with an uneasy smile and held each other tight.

On the way back into the building, she laughed again and said, “Imagine doing that during rush hour with hundreds of them.”

A year later, we were both gainfully employed. Amy was just over the Ben Franklin Bridge in a design group that produced graphics for the casinos in AC. She was a Jersey Girl after all.

I landed a job in a design group with a well known toy manufacturer in Philly. On a side note, my crew prototyped, tested and produced a version of the original Power Drencher water gun which we renamed the Super Soaker. You might have heard of it.

In the studio, there was always something airborne. I got hit in the head multiple times each day with foam darts, sticky spiders, you name it. It was a great environment for me. I proved my ability to take lead on projects and they trusted me to get everyone working together.

Whenever the creative director entered the room, whatever was in flight froze where it was in the ballistic curve then fell directly to the floor.

Everyday at lunch I’d go down to the basement and get a soda. Eons ago, there was a company in Philadelphia that made the best soda. It was called Franks. Their motto was: ‘Is it Franks? Thanks!’ They made a black cherry soda to die for.

There was a Franks vending machine at the bottom of the basement stairs. It was illuminated by a single incandescent bulb, hanging on a cord above the front of the machine. Other than the small circle of light from the bulb, there was nothing. The pitch black nothingness of a vast, expansive basement.

In the year I’d been there, it never crossed my mind, but this day was different. After the coins clinked into the machine, I pushed the button and the soda clunked down the chute. The cooling condenser cycled off and there was just enough silence to hear something I hadn’t heard before.

Coming from the far corner of that musty, deep black forbidding basement was a series of interesting sounds that repeated in a pattern. It went Guurg, guurg, guurg, guurg, Clink!… Thuddle, thuddle, thuddle thuddle and then started again. I had to find out what it was.

I set out from the vending machine in the direction of the sound. Just as the light at the Franks machine faded away in the distance behind me, another light came into view about twenty or so yards before me. As I started walking towards it, I stepped on something round and landed flat on my back. It felt like an old section of cast iron drain pipe.

As I got back on my feet I thought, someone could get killed on that thing.

I shook it off and continued until I was standing in front of the light. It was a one by two foot glass window on a big box. This box was about the size of a cargo van. On the other side of the window there were many colors. It was like watching rainbows blending with each other. No idea what I was looking at, but if you were on acid, you’d be watching it for hours.

This was the thing making the guurg, guurg, guurg noise. It was a lot louder since I was standing right in front of it. Then I noticed a slide coming out the side of the machine and something rolling across the slide. The slide emptied out into a huge hopper. I looked into the hopper and I was in shock. I reached in and picked up a handful of warm, freshly minted multicolored rubber superballs!

I kept one in my hand, turned around and ran across the basement. Not seeing it, I took a ride on that piece of pipe again, but managed not to fall. I ran up the stairs to the third floor where the design group was, turned and ran down the hall to the assistant creative directors office.

I walked in and I was completely out of breath. I had a good relationship with him. He’s the one who recruited me at the senior portfolio review. He looked at me and said, “Well?” I got my words together and asked him if he knew there was a machine in the basement that makes…

He cut me off with “Superballs, right?”

Yes. Say, do you think they would mind if I took a few of them. I mean there must be millions of them in that hopper.

“Look, if you’re going to take some, go out the loading dock and I never told you that, okay?”

Right, yes and thank you!

I turned and walked out of his office, ran down the hall, downstairs to the payphone in the lobby. Yes, there were still payphones and no, not everyone at this point in time had a cellphone yet.

Amy answered the phone at work. I told her what I had discovered and she nearly blew a fuse. Of course she remembered. She told me to get as many as I could and meet her on the roof of the school after work. I told her I’d see her there.

Back at my desk with three hours of the workday left, I just couldn’t keep my technical pen straight. I was shaking with anticipation. Time crawled by until five.

I found a cardboard box. It was about two feet square. I almost filled it to the top. Man was it heavy. I tried to be nonchalant as I walked out the loading dock. To my surprise, there was absolutely no one there. I walked out to my Oldsmobile and put the box in the trunk.

I circled center city looking for a close parking spot, but there weren’t any. I had to park what felt like miles away. I was running a bit late when I got to the building. My buddy Carlos was still in charge of security. We used to shoot stick (billiards) a lot. I told him I had something for one of my professors. He pointed at the elevators. There were bollards with caution tape across the elevators and I turned back and said, you’ve got to be kidding.

Carlos told me that they'd been working on them for days.

I was stuck taking the stairs. With every floor, the box felt ten pounds heavier. When I broke through the door on the roof and collapsed, Amy came running over. She opened the flaps on the top of the box and she started trembling. We dragged the box over to the edge.

We looked at each other with a clandestine smile like this was meant to be.

“On three.” She had one side of the box and I had the other.

Down below, rush hour was still in full effect. People getting off work, students leaving class, commuters getting on and off busses, sidewalks bumpin’.

The load was away and it followed the same path. Bouncing off the buildings across the street first, then firing up off the sidewalks. We watched as people began diving for cover into doorways and under bus shelters. Dropped briefcases, papers blowing everywhere, people screaming as this multi-colored monster continued barreling around in a circular pattern.

A block away, a mounted officer heard the screams. Yes, there was still an equestrian unit in Philadelphia Police Department at the time. Our hero charged into the block on his trusty steed which immediately began getting pelted by stinging superballs. It reared up and dropped the officer on his ass.

We were laughing so hard our faces were red and all that came out were squeaks. When we looked down again, there were ten cops looking up at us who all ran into the building.

Amy and I looked at each other like, Oh Shit! We gotta get the hell outta here. We couldn’t go back through the building. There was no place to hide. I spotted an open door on the roof of the building next to ours. We took a running jump across the seven or eight foot gap over an alley, rolled a couple times, got up and ran through that doorway.

It was an insurance company. We tried to raise as little suspicion as possible as we made our way down to the street on the other side of the building. I’m sure the cops were slowed down a bit with the elevators being out of order.

Moments later, we were walking through Rittenhouse Square laughing. We decided to go to Chinatown for dinner, catch up and recount our deed. The perfect end to an improbable day.