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What follows in this post is a story about growing up in Collinwood, a neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. These stories, unlike my other posts, may contain situations that are inappropriate for work and will almost certainly contain vulgar language. There won’t be anything completely explicit, such as detailed descriptions of intimate acts. Even so, some of these might only be borderline workplace safe and you may want to wait until you get home before clicking the More button.

(Continued from Walt Visits)

Live Explosives
Walt had come home from basic training over the summer. I went to pick him up as a favor to his family. As we drove home, Walt showed his trademark grin. It was a grin that meant he was going to get us in trouble. Speeding north on the interstate from the airport, Walt reached into his carry-on duffel bag and pulled out a grenade.

(Aside: Yes, Walt transported a practice grenade…and several bayonets…in his carry-on luggage.)

Grinning, Walt bounced the grenade in his hand.

“That’s not a real grenade, right? It’s just a prop?”

Walt’s grin got a little bit wider. This no longer meant trouble. This meant big trouble.

“Nope. Well, kinda. It’s a practice grenade”

I was driving on a busy interstate, cars all around us in mid-day traffic, with my best friend bouncing a military-grade explosive device in his hand.

“I met a guy in basic who was from a big military family. They lived in the area and collected military gear. They had some of these and were willing to part with one. They also had some surplus bayonets. I’ve got those in the bag, too. One’s for you!”

“What are you going to do with it? It’s explosive, right?”

I was pissed off and nervous. Walt came back from basic training with a grenade. A few weeks earlier, I could have considered the intellectual concept of a grenade and said I would be cool and collected if I encountered one. The idea of a grenade is simple, but the reality of a grenade is powerful. I was not cool or collected.

Walt’s plan was simple: Get folks together, find a place to lob the grenade, and watch the results. “You’ll get to see what it’s like to have one of these go off. You can’t really understand it until you experience it.” He grinned again.

The Gathering
A few nights later, our old crew of high school buddies got together, extended by the presence of my new girlfriend, whom I met in the computer lab that summer. She had met the other guys, but asked to come along for the demonstration and to meet Walt.

We assembled across the street from my parents home in a city park. The city had torn out the parking lot and was rebuilding some of the structures in the field. As a result, it was a jumble of dirt heaps, rubble piles and other construction detritus.

We stood there in the dark for a moment as Walt got the grenade out of his pocket.

“Here’s how it works,” Walt started as he started to bounce the grenade in his hand again.

“This is a practice grenade. We used them to simulate battlefield conditions. They make a huge BOOM! and a really bright flash, but they aren’t dangerous unless you are right on top of it when it goes off…and even then, you’d probably only have hearing loss. I’m going to pull the pin and throw it over by that dirt pile.”

He pointed at the silhouette of a dirt heap fifty feet away.

“Ready?”

Everybody nodded.

I was standing a way back from the group of guys around Walt. I was with my girlfriend, watching as Bill, Chaz and Ted backed away from Walt when Walt advised they do so in case the grenade was defective and exploded in his hand.

Walt pulled the pin and tossed it to Bill. “A souvenir,” he said with a grin.

He pulled his arm back and catapulted the grenade in the direction of the dirt pile. In the dark, the grenade disappeared immediately upon release.

We stood there. Three seconds. Five seconds. Ten seconds.

Nothing.

Walt turned to the guys who had moved back up to him. He was grinning.

“Well, it looks like it was a dud, guys. Bad luck for us. Let’s go.”

The others turned to start walking towards us.

My girlfriend turned to me and said “now what do we do?”

Walt was looking right at me, grinning even larger as he put his fingers in his ears.

“Get ready for it. It’s about to go.”

BOOM.

My girlfriend and I had been standing back from the others about twenty feet. The guys had only taken a step or two towards us while Walt plugged his ears, manic grin on his face.

There was a light. There was a sound that you heard in your gut, because your ears weren’t made for anything that loud.

The guys instinctively hunched their shoulders and ducked their heads. Their arms jerked up, automatically preparing to cover themselves. The windows of the houses on either side of the pathway to the park rattled in their panes.

A dog started barking down the street.

Walt, jogged past the guys who were still shocked, laughing as he ran and said, “I think we better go before the police show up.”

Windows were lighting in houses up-and-down the street.

As we speed-walked to my car, my girlfriend looked over at me and asked “how did you know we should wait?”

The Dust Settles

Six of us piled into my car, started it up and calmly pulled away from the curb. Driving up the street, we heard police sirens in the distance. As we waited to pull onto Lakeshore Boulevard, a police car tore past us in the direction of my house and the field where we had just detonated a practice grenade. I looked around from the driver’s seat at the others.

“We probably shouldn’t have done this in front of my house. I’m gonna get killed when I get home.”

Walt looked at me from the back seat with a serious look on his face.

“Maybe, but have you ever experienced anything like that? Now that you saw it, would you want to undo it?”

Traffic broke and I was able to turn onto the boulevard. We headed down the road to get something to eat and see a movie. After the movie, I dropped my girlfriend off at her parents’ well-kept suburban home and she said “I don’t want to hang out with him again. I can’t stop you from hanging out with him when he’s here, but remember that he’s dangerous.”

Later that night, I thought about Walt’s question as my father and I earnestly discussed why the street was visited by six police cars and a detective and why they were looking in the field where we had been.

I didn’t have a chance to answer Walt’s question that night, but the answer I picked then and would pick today isn’t hard to guess.