Well, it is time for another round of Quirky (true) Stories.  This time, I have a theme, which is: The evidence I have so far accumulated that many cartoon tropes (and cartoon-style physics) are, in fact, based on pure reality.

Evidence the first: Cockroach encounters.

Okay, to start, I grew up in Montana, where we kinda, mostly don’t have cockroaches?  I mean, maybe we do, but if so, they keep a very low profile.  So, the first time I ever remember encountering a cockroach was when I spent a summer in D.C., for an internship (an astronomy internship—they have those there too).

They had us living in dorms, and one day my roommate and I are in the bathroom and there is a very big bug climbing up the tile wall.  I cannot pretend we reacted calmly—we screamed.  And one of the guy interns saved us by running in and smashing it with a shoe.

So, pretty bland story.  And really not cartoon-y.

But the next day I encounter my second-ever cockroach, this time in the hallway.  There’s more space in the hallway; this seems, to me, much less alarming.  Although, what is sort of alarming is how tall the darned thing is.  It’s down on all sixes, and still it’s standing a good inch off the ground.  But, the alarm factor here was more of a “Huh, look at that, there really are intimidatingly large bugs in the world” sort of thing.  I saw a movie once where the cockroaches were singing and dancing, and this big bug looks like it sure is leggy enough to pull that off.  And this one’s right in the middle of the floor, standing its ground.

And that’s when it happens, the cartoon moment: Some other student (a guy but not the one who saved us yesterday) comes walking around the corner of the hallway, spots the cockroach, jumps straight up in the air, knees going all pointy, lands on the ground again, and is gone.

And that’s it.  Still, I think that is very clear proof that life sometimes does imitate cartoons.  Or rather, it absolutely is the other way around!

Evidence the second: The Slow-Mo Action Scene.

Alright.  You all know what sort of scene I’m talking about.  Sometimes it’s like Neo dodging bullets.  Other times it’s the punch we all see coming, but yet the character is powerless to dodge in time.  Most of the time (when it’s not Neo) is seems very much like the whole point of it is purely an artistic choice, slow down the action to let the audience relish either the precision and perfection as it is executed, or the full and painful beat-down.

But I know that the Slow-Mo Action Scene is actually real.  Before there were video cameras, Slow-Mo Action Scenes already existed.  I found this out on a trampoline.

You are now perhaps imagining something extremely fancy, perhaps something like mid-air summer-saults and near-misses between multiple trampoliners!  But no.  Sorry.  Truth—even fundamental, reality-vs.-cartoons truth—is usually not so dramatic, and this time it mostly is not.

What my mother saw was me, her daughter, deciding for whatever reason to step off the trampoline by doing a cart-wheel.  Actually, my mother is the one who taught me how to cart-wheel.  (Somehow this lesson was accomplished in what to me, now as an adult, appears to be a very short and narrow hallway.  That detail aside, my mother is left-handed, and so are my cart-wheels—just f.y.i.)  So, she sees me do a cart-wheel to get down from the trampoline, says, ‘Good job on that cartwheel,’ and probably barely remembers it to think of it even once ever again.

What I saw was my foot not landing on the rim of the trampoline so that I could simply jump down (not-at-all fancily).  What I saw instead was my foot going though between the springs of the trampoline, and how, very clearly, I was about to break my knee just as soon as my momentum finished carrying me forward and down and into that metal trampoline rim I’d been aiming for with my foot a split second before.

But by then I was already in a Slow-Mo Action Scene.  And that was extremely helpful.

In the Slow-Mo Action Scene, I had time to notice not only that I was about to break my knee, but also that I could avoid breaking my knee if I turned myself over so that said knee would bend around that trampoline rim rather than hitting hard and snapping.  And not only did I have time to think of this solution, I had time to do it, too.  1. See it clearly.  2. Just twist this way, and all will be well.

And then I was on the ground and had done a cartwheel to get off the trampoline (that is, if my hands even had been involved in that maneuver, I’m not sure they were).  Yikes.

That day my take-away was: “Wow, adrenaline really can give you super-powers.”  But you know what else has Slow-Mo Super-Powers?  Cartoons.

And now, evidence the third: The Sudden Stop.

So, for the finale, let me tell you about how truth is sometimes very dramatic.  And what, you might ask, is more dramatic than physics! properly applied?

So, Sudden Stop.  I know that the cartoon half of this example is something you’re pretty familiar with.  Think: character walks into a lamp post, or: character smacks themselves in the face stepping on a rake.  The more intense variation is: character is flying through the air and bug-splats themselves on a window.  But rather than the Bug-Splat Pose, with the hands up by the face and all in a plane with the body, in the more basic Sudden Stop, the body gets stopped, but the limbs keep going, leaving them stuck out straight in front of the character in the direction they were going.  If it’s in a cartoon, there’s always a nice, big pause here, too, as the character and their body adjust to this very sudden rearrangement of their limbs (often as or before they fall down).  It’s not really a Slow-Mo Action Scene—it’s much more cartoon-y than that.

Next, for the reality half of this example we will be using a light sparring match that took place during a Tae Kwon Do seminar between a black-belt student and his instructor.  It was a very short match.  The student decided he was going reuse his winning technique from a past match (against a different person) and spring forward with a jump kick the moment the ref yelled ‘Start!’  And…his instructor blocked this attack with a standing side-kick, which, especially in this instance, is a kick where you stick your foot straight out, heel first, and let your opponent run into it.  Result: Very classic Sudden Stop, complete, at least in the eyes and minds of the viewers, with big pause before the student falls down.

Now, it should be noted, our instructor had long warned us of the perils of jump kick attacks during sparring.  Tae Kwon Do may be known for its jump kicks, but historically that’s against a mounted opponent (on a (traditionally) short horse).  Against a standing opponent, a jump kick just means you’re now ballistic—you can’t do anything to change direction, and your trajectory is imminently predictable, either from first principals, or by anyone with any life experience what-so-ever in catching a ball.  Usually, if you ask our instructor about jump kicks during sparring, he’ll mime taking aim at the jump-kicking opponent, duck-hunt style—boop boop boop boop boop KERBLAM!  Yes, a jump-kick may overwhelm some opponents, especially if they’re not expecting it, but maybe not an instructor who a) knows you really well, and b) is already standing comfortably in ready stance.

So, those are the two basic pieces.  Now, when we put them together, I can tell you that what I saw was much more than character-walks-into-a-lamp-post.  This black-belt student was flying, so this was more the full-on Wile-E-Coyote-got-shot-out-of-a-cannon-and-hit-a-tree-branch variety of a Sudden Stop.  As a friend who was there noted, that student folded over that kick like a taco.  Hands and feet, both, straight out in front of him.

And there you have it, perfect, classic cartoon.  But in real life.  Because really, the cartoons are just telling it like it is.