"Dodge Darts" Anyone?

So the other day I was listening to my favorite radio talk show host, Dori Monson. He read a news story where an “adult” was injured slightly while playing “Lighter Fluid Tag”. His clothes had caught fire and it seems he was burned a bit.

Duh… Apparently the game is played by squirting some lighter fluid on your own clothes. The fluid is lit by someone else while you try to put the fire out. You are “IT” until you put it out and can then light someone else on fire and the whole process starts over.

Well this led to a radio discussion of how stupid these guys were but it didn’t take long for the conversation to change to all the stupid things the rest of us had done, including some surprisingly near death experiences. Turns out these morons weren’t that different at all.

So at dinner that night Ali asks me to tell the story of “Dodge Darts”. Apparently mom had put her up to it. Well I told it and of course then realized it needs to be put on my blog of stories.

So here goes nothing…..

This story begins in the 60s when I was about 7 or 8 years old. My family was headed over to Bill and Marilyn Porter’s house for dinner one night. David and I were dressed and ready to go while the rest of the family was pulling it together. It was cool fall evening so we were wearing sweaters with stylish baggy sleeves.

We headed outside and before we know it we found a dart with a sharp metal tip. We tossed it around for a bit and then we had the bright idea to begin a game of “Dodge Darts”. We had never played before and rules were not established. That didn’t matter as each of us soon realized the dart is thrown at you and it was your job to avoid it.

Because David was 10 years old, was much more skilled, and carried an ornery streak, he was much better at this than I was. Before we both knew it he had landed a solid strike in my inner forearm of my left arm. He looked at me, I looked at him and neither of us had the nerve to pull it out. At this exact moment my parents came out the back door with the announcement. “in the car, let’s go”. I acted quickly. Knowing my dad would be furious at our stupidity I did what any smart kid had would do. I pulled my rolled up sweater sleeve back down to my wrist and hid the dart under it. “That’ll fix it”, I thought. “We’ll just deal with this later”.

Well the drive to the Porters was at least 15 minutes to get from our house and onto the base. We had a good dinner but I really wasn’t in the mood for much food. The dinner had been served and all the kids were in the backyard tossing balls, climbing trees, etc. I, for some reason, felt more like sitting inside with the adults and remaining still. It had probably been about an hour and a half since the initial impact and I was turning green.

My dad came over and said to me, “Son, why are you sitting in here with us old folks, why don’t you go out and play with the others?” By this time I was about in tears from the pain in my arm. I tried but couldn’t utter a word. I simply reached down and pulled the sleeve of my sweater up to my elbow exposing the dart still stuck in my left arm.

Well I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. I am pretty sure my dad pulled it out….hold on…yeah it’s gone. I don’t recall what kind of trouble I got into for that stunt but if history repeats itself I would guess that I went to bed as soon as we got home and David was given seconds on dessert.