Throwing Things

We used to play games in abandoned parks and cornfields. Games designed to get you hurt, or worse.

It's just in the wiring. Somewhere deep in the lizard brain of boys, there's a switch that says, "Hey, let's throw hard objects at each other and call it fun."

We'd have walnut wars on Hoot Owl Bridge. Teams fanned out on either side, hurling green and black walnuts across the creek. Each direct hit exploded into pulp welts like tiny organic grenades.

Pain was proof you were alive. Pain was points.

And when walnuts got boring, we moved into cornfields.

Late autumn. The stalks were dried and sharp, eight feet tall, rustling like some haunted jungle. We'd snap them off at the base, run screaming through the rows, and hurl them like spears into the air—a physical game of "battleship" where the prize was a concussion, or worse.

"Everyone’s invincible until their battleship gets sunk."

I remember one afternoon—all golden light and laughter—until a scream cut through the corn.

We froze.

Then out burst this kid, wild-eyed and panic-stricken, with a broken stalk stuck directly into his head, waving around like some inflatable tube man outside of a tire shop. His feet barely touched the ground as he ran, legs scrabbling like a cartoon character, blood mixing with dirt and tears.

Someone yelled, "Stop, drop, and roll!"—either a callous joke or just panic logic mixing up fire drills with trauma.

I haven't hurled something at a friend in years, but I think about it now and then. How boys do these foolish things, how pain and danger felt like rites of passage, and how everyone's invincible until their battleship gets sunk.

This has been a love letter to a forgotten thing, and to those wild afternoons when survival felt like just another part of the game.