I wasn't there and I'm no ballistics/cosmology/neogeewhizalogy expert, so I can't speak for what really happened. But it seems to me that the supposed hypervelocity pea could have created a crater and small blast to knock the kid over. No one said, or in my lazy skimming, I missed where anyone mentioned the initial trajectory possibilities. An object entering perpendicular to the atmosphere would experience far less drag than an object entering at an oblique angle. I think NASA knows a thing or two about that. Is it simply that the 1950's meteor was an oblique angle trajectory while the smoting (had to use that word again) meteor was closer to perpendicular?

Yay for engineering. The science of stardust is just beginning.