Lawn Darts

With the weather warming up, I have been mentally planning out all of the outdoor activities that I would like to participate in, this summer. For the past few summers, we have managed to include a couple of decent croquet games. Most of them proved to be very memorable, including an entire day of croquet in Rhode Island, summer of 2007. Growing up, my family played croquet all of the time, and I loved it. We had several sets, and would play in our back yard. My grandparents also had a set, and we would often play in their back yard on certain Sunday afternoons.

At my grandparents house, the set was located in a type of yard-care utility shed, situated on their covered patio. In addition to croquet, badminton, lawn mowers and chainsaws, there were all sorts of awesome treasures kept in that shed. One of my favorites was Lawn Darts. For those unfamiliar with the sport, it is similar to horseshoes, in that there are two teams trying to score points based on accurately throwing objects through the air and across the yard. Unlike horseshoes, the object hurled through the air in Lawn Darts, is a giant weighted dart. This game rules.

In retrospect, I’m pretty surprised that there was never an incident like the one alluded to in the warning above, when we played. We would set up very complicated Lawn Dart ranges, with the target rings, to make the game more challenging and interesting. On several occasions, the targets were placed in a part of the back yard where it would have been impossible for the person lofting darts to see if someone was going to walk around the corner, right onto the target range. Anyway, I wish that I had a set of these babies to toss around this summer. Although, I can imagine liability being fairly high, throwing these things around in a public NYC Park. Ah well, I can always reminisce.