Explain what is happening when The First Stone by Don Aker opens with the potential of violence.

In The First Stone, a super-realistic novel with a subculture protagonist, a group of boys are standing on the pedestrian bridge of a freeway overpass (a bridge under which freeway traffic flows at high traffic speeds) and are preparing to throw stones off the bridge into the oncoming traffic below. Such a action has the potential of causing serious traffic problems: windshields could be cracked; driver's could be frightened leading to wrong actions; hit cars could veer causing high-speed highway traffic accidents.

As the boys are about to throw the first stone a patrol car rounds a corner; officers see the boys on the overpass bridge and one uses a bullhorn to tell them to vacate the bridge. The boys leave but what they do next and where they go is symbolically throwing destructive stones at themselves as the driver's of their lives.