Dangerous Games

So, I was watching my children play outside this weekend and thought to myself. Whatever happened to Lawn Jarts?
I remember lawn jarts when they were called lawn DARTS. Because, hey! Nothing says safe like pointed projectiles hurling toward an unsuspecting opponent. Bring the family outside for fun and death!
Lawn Darts were exactly like they sound. They were 14 inch long "darts" with three plastic feathers. The dart themselves were metal with a "rounded" point on the end and were about two inches long and heavy. Not like pull your arm out of the socket heavy, or "requires use of a trebuchet" heavy, but they were weighted enough to bring the point down and embed it firmly in the ground.
The object of this "fun family game" was to place two round plastic rings approximately 20 feet apart from each other and toss your dart into the air to make it land in the center of the ring. Sounds like fun, right? Well, heck yeah! My big sister and I used to play a lot in the summer.Here's the strange part, we would each stand by our rings and toss our darts at the target- or as I like to think, at each other. How long would it take before one of us went screaming and bloody into the house with a 14 inch lawn dart sticking out of the top of our head?
Now apparently someone finally realized that "Hey! This could potentially hazardous to the other player if I were to miss said target!" So, the game wizards at Lawn Dart headquarters changed the design of the dart. First by changing the name to "Lawn Jarts." Yeah, that helped. No one would ever think of chucking a spike at someone now.
Uh. Yeah, Mr. Ad Man? think again.
Back to the drawing board.
"I know!!" Mr. Fresh-Out-of-College-Parker-Brothers-Employee, "Let's change the design so it has a weighted middle but it looks more like a badminton shuttlecock!"  (*snort*giggle* "shuttlecock")
Yeah, because a weighted badminton shuttlecock (*snicker*) is not going to cause as much damage. Apparently, a concussion is more acceptable than a contusion.
Ok, let's move on. Tetherball. Aw, yes. Tetherball. The only game where you can get smashed in the face AND the back of the head in the same second. A ball is tied to a post on a string the swings around and around helped along by a person while the other person tries to stop the ball. First to wrap it around the post, wins. Sound easy? Yeah, if you are six foot seven and you are playing a person four feet eight.
Many a bloody nose, knocked out teeth and broken glasses accompanied this game before our school decided that Hey! This really isn't that safe after all and we are going to have a LOT of insurance claims if we don't get rid of this menace.
End of tetherball. *sigh*
Big round merry-go-round hanging by chains! OH YEAH!! This was the most awesome playground equipment we had. We would get that sucker going with 2 or 3 people pushing from the inside to the point of where we would hang from the chains and fly straight out. That was totally wicked! Well, obviously that was dangerous when one of the kids would lose their grip and fly like a leaf in the wind off the merry-go-round and land with a thud on the grass. Come on, it wasn't like it was on the cement or anything! I guess the real kicker was when one of the kids got their finger smashed and broken on the pedestal in the center. That was the end of the merry-go-round.
Killjoys.