It took me fifty years to figure it out, but I’m pretty sure my parents tried to kill me when I was a child.

But first, let’s back up a bit.

Two weeks ago, a kid asked me what sports I liked to play as a child. In typical wise-assed fashion, I answered, “Slip ‘n’ Slide, Horseshoes, and Lawn Darts.” But as soon as “lawn darts” left my mouth, I asked myself, Where the hell did that come from? I hadn’t thought of lawn darts since the 70s, but now that I had thought of them, it was all I could think of.

If you’re not familiar with the dark and sordid history of lawn darts, here it is:

They were a popular toy when I was growing up, and look like they sound: a large dart with a heavy metal tip and plastic fins. You throw them across your lawn and try to get them inside a hoop laying on the ground to score points. And therein lies the problem: they had a heavy metal tip that could kill a kid.

That’s exactly what happened in 1987 when a seven-year-old girl was killed by a lawn dart tossed by her brother’s friend in Riverside, California. But, of course, that hadn’t happened yet when I was slightly older than seven and playing with them in my New Jersey back yard a decade earlier.

Here was the problem with me playing with lawn darts (which my parents bought for me and condoned my involvement with): I really didn’t have many–or any–friends growing up, so playing lawn darts alone gets really boring … really fast.

So I made up my own game, and the game was this: Toss the lawn dart straight up in the air, and run like hell. Thankfully, it’s one of the only games I ever won. And thankfully I couldn’t throw to save my life (although that’s exactly what I did). I was a pitcher in little league baseball–worst position assignment ever for a kid who couldn’t throw–and the only thing I could hit with consistency was the backstop. I shoot basketballs like a girl (and that’s an insult to girls everywhere), and when I tried to assassinate my annoying older sister with an ax or hammer (depending on who’s telling the story), my throw went wide left, over her shoulder.

So I suppose you could say that my athletic ineptitude helped to save two lives when I was growing up. But back to the lawn darts and the point of this story.

When I was in the back yard, throwing the darts up in the air and running like a maniac every which way, there must have been a point when my parents looked out the window and saw me. I can only imagine my father watching me out the living room window, my mother in the kitchen saying, “Anything yet?” And my father saying, “The idiot keeps missing!”

Those lawn darts are long gone now. I know because I looked. And because they’ve been banned for decades, you can’t buy them anymore. Oh, sure, you can get Nerf-tipped ones to throw around, but back when we were kids–when we were men in training–we used lawn darts that could kill you. And most of us survived, much to the consternation of my parents.

But I think I’m going to mosey on over to Ebay and check to see if I can score me a set of the real deal. It’s not illegal to sell used ones, I don’t think. And you never know when one of the kids–or grandkids–are going to annoy me to the point where I summon them out to the garage with a warm smile and say, “Hey, kid…c’mere! I’ve got a present for you!”

My parents would be so proud.