The rock that hit our car

Part I

On May 8th, my mom and I headed to Battle Creek to visit Grandma Sailor.  My mom was driving her Ford Taurus and I was riding shotgun and we were just heading out of Lansing heading west on I-496.

Just before driving under Grand Ave. I noticed three teenagers underneath the overpass and thinking they shouldn’t be there and wondering what the punks were up to.  They must have been 12 or 13.

Just as I noticed them there was a tremendous bang and clunking noise.

My mom didn’t see the kids, but told me she saw something come flying out of the air out of nowhere, and said it was a large rock the size of  her hand.  I didn’t see it, but I knew the kids must have thrown it.  If we weren’t on the freeway I was ready to have my mom stop and ready to chase them down.

The rock fell just in front of the car and bounced up underneath the car.  It sounded terrible I thought surely something must be broken, but everything appeared fine.

My mom was confused to where it came from, having not seen the kids.  I called 911 immediately and reported them to the police and we drove on.

I was seriously bothered by it having heard terrible stories of a**holes throwing things over overpasses before and hitting cars, and we were lucky it didn’t go through the windshield.

My frustration passed and I didn’t think about it.  A couple days later my mom drove back home to Baraga.

Part II

Last week I was walking downtown Lansing with some friends and we were right next to I-496 and one bridge away from where this whole thing happened.  So I told Khalid and some others about the rock that hit our car.

I noticed I missed a phone call while I was telling this story and it was my mom who had been trying to get a hold of me for a couple days, saying she had an amazing story.

I got my mom on the phone and she said that she had just brought her Taurus to the shop to get the brakes checked out.  When my dad went to pick up the car he noticed a big rock sitting on the service counter and proceeded to ask the service manager what the rock was all about.

The service managed responded “We found this rock lodged under your car.”

The rock that the kids through bounced off the pavement, up under my mom’s car, breaking the inside of the grill, and sat in the same spot for another 600+ miles of driving.

When the whole incident happened I was wondering if my mom was exaggerating the size of the rock, saying it was the size of her fist.  Then she sent me the photos of my dad holding the very rock that hit us (below).

We were indeed lucky the rock didn’t go through our windshield.  My mom decided she would keep it.

It was sure strange that she happened to tell me all of this when it was the only time I’d ever walked down there, and I had just told my friends about the story.

Illustration

Here’s an illustration showing the Google Streetview of our location and the rock that was found inside the car at the garage.

Click the graphic below for a larger version.