[6 June 1995] On my way in to work this morning on Route 128 (fabled of tale and song; well, tale, anyway), I experienced a new commuting hazard. Dozens of plastic balls (the cheap inflated ones about a foot in diameter that you can get for around a buck in most drug stores) were rolling and bounding about the roadway. [One can only conclude that some truck must have dropped them, but there was no sign of any truck that might have done so.] I was following a car transport truck, about 60 feet back or so. My first indication that anything was unusual was when he hit his brakes and started his emergency flashers. I was just switching into the next higher-speed lane to avoid being behind a truck with his flashers on when I caught my first sight of one of these balls rolling across the lane. This particular locale was sufficiently out of normal context for such an object that I hadn't yet consciously recognized it when, a moment later, I heard the "BOOM! .... BOOM! BOOM!" as the truck began to run over some of these things. I managed to avoid running over any of the balls, except for one that had already been flattened by my friend the truck, so this didn't cause me any delay in continuing on to work. Several cars pulled over, however. One can only hope that there weren't any actual heart attacks...