On Aging

I was a Nerf gun fiend when I was young. Give me a plastic toy that hurls foam cylinders in a straight line and I turned into a super spy, covert agent, rouge assassin, or vigilante mercenary.

Back then, Nerf made about 25 different guns and every Saturday there was a commercial for a brand new gun. They had guns where the barrel could pivot on an axis so you could fire around corners, they had guns that could shoot a dart straight out from the grip so you could fake people out and act like you're surrendering and blam shoot them in the face. Micro darts, mini darts, mega darts, sonic darts, balls, arrows, even discs for a while. A whole childhood arsenal up for grabs, Toys'R'Us had a whole aisle designated for the bright-colored weapons of glass destruction.

The problem was that they were expensive. Probably about $30 for a decent sized one. For that, I only really got them as birthday or Christmas presents. Never mind that anyway, only a fool trusts his life to a weapon. What mattered is that I could have overthrown a small army with any amount of Nerf weaponry, if I were provided a continual stream of the $8.99 30-packs of darts.

Since I'm getting older, my mind returns to fancies of days long past. Lately I've been reflecting over my career as a LEGO maniac. My older brother and sister were the ones with most of the LEGO sets, mostly I just got to look at theirs and occasionaly touch them (hands off the giant working Moonbase monorail transit system in the basement, Aaron). I had a few LEGO sets of my own, mostly birthday presents. Lately I looked through LEGO's selection of sets and was just disappointed. Star Wars, Bionacle, Batman, "Exoforce", what happened the the simplicity of it? You'd buy a set for an airport, hospital, castle, or jungle hut and spend an afternoon crafting it into its complete form. Now you need Ph.Ds in LEGOonomy and LEGOology to put together these giant Star Wars monsters, or you can play with these Bionacle things that are pretty much just action figures made by LEGO.

And what of Nerf, the defense contractor for children? They make three guns now. They make more foam footballs than guns. I was at a Target today, and I bought the biggest Nerf gun they had. It was eight dollars. EIGHT DOLLARS. What is that? What does that mean? Are children not allowed to have their pick from scores of less-than-lethal assault gear? Does every toy have to educate them now? I grew up with Batman, Ninja Turtles, LEGO, and Nerf heavy armaments and I'm some kind of genius (if I may say so); all these kids growing up with their Dora the Explorers and their Leapsters are all morons. What good is knowing how to spell "cat" when your house is attacked by aliens?

And don't get me started on Super Soakers.

I acknowledged that I'm 20 for the first time today. I was filling out forms to re-join the gym that I used to belong to but had no right to because I couldn't afford it. I'm 20, all the toys out there suck now, and the children of America are growing up without any basic plastic weapons training.

For shame.