“Let’s go play with THESE!” exclaimed Randall, clutching a brand new package of lawn darts my brother had just purchased a few days previous.

Fear coursed through my body. ”NO! He will KILL us if we use his stuff!”

”Oh, come on, he won’t know. Besides, what can he do?”

I shuddered. I knew EXACTLY what he could do. Most children, when they think of their older brother, think of noogies or Indian head burns or wedgies. I thought of being hog-tied with an extension cord and tossed into the dark void of the basement or being duct taped to my bed and spray-painted yellow. I still have a scar on my left index finger from where Ben decided to practice the trick Bishop performed with a commando knife and a shipmate’s extended palm in “Aliens”.

“We’d better not. Seriously. He will beat us senseless!”

I hadn’t known Randall long. I met him a few days after moving to the sleepy backwoods town of Toccoa, GA, so I had known him for perhaps a month or so at that point, however one thing that struck me immediately was his utter lack of concern for consequence. This kid would get from one place to another by holding on to the backs of cars while on his skateboard. He regularly shoplifted the smaller transformers and sold them to the kids at the school for pennies on the dollar. In him was a complete lack of both logic and accountability – he did absolutely anything he got the urge to do.

He snatched up the lawn darts and bolted down the stairs from my brother’s room before I even had a chance to stop him. To tell the truth, I was actually glad he did. While I feared the repercussions of absconding with my brother’s possessions, I secretly wanted to play with these lawn darts as much as Randall did. I mean, come on… what 8 year old boy wouldn’t want to play with gigantic sharp things??

I carefully shut Ben’s door behind me in a vain attempt to conceal the fact that I had trespassed into his domain, then made my way down the stairs and into the back yard to join Randall in the merriment of chucking gigantic darts into trees and – if we were lucky – a small furry mammal or two.

We broke open the box and took 2 each. We completely ignored the fact that this ‘game’ came with a gigantic plastic target that was to be laid out and used to gain points. What fun is it to hit targets you are SUPPOSED to hit??

We immediately adopted roles as our childhood heroes, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. In our little fantasy, they had both left their respective teams to form “Ninja Guys, Inc.”, a freelance group-for-hire much akin to the A-Team – only we were ninjas.

Every tree in the yard was impaled by these implements of destruction at least twice. We slinked around the house as if we walked on air, silent assassins who slew every enemy we could reach with our elite weaponry. Once we had silenced every evil-doer we could before it was just plain boring to stab sapling oaks and crate myrtles, we began taking aim at just about anything that was in our field of vision. Flower pots, passers-by on bicycles, cats, dogs – anything. Not actually being ninjas, we had absolutely horrible aim and hit exactly nothing we aimed at. This, too, became tedious after a while.

It was Randall’s idea to start gauging the height that we could each achieve – exactly the same excuse I gave my mother after what transpired.

Randall and I took turns lobbing the lawn darts straight up into the air, watching them fly upwards as far as our childish arms could toss them before arcing and plummeting to the earth, burying themselves in the soft sod that had just been laid out. He had just set the record when my turn came, and I was determined to out-throw him.

I grabbed my dart underhand and bent at the knees. With the style and grace of a seasoned power lifter, I exploded upward while flinging the dart, which achieved a height previously unrecorded by modern instruments. It drove up and up and up – finally pausing in mid-air just long enough to change direction and begin its descent. We both stood there watching this winged javelin swoop directly downward.

Not wanting to get hit, I stepped to the side and watched as Randall – who wasn’t nearly that clever – proceeded to unintentionally catch the dart via his left trapezium and shoulder.

I was in shock. Before me was a skinny shirtless kid with a gigantic lawn dart sticking out of his neck. Randall looked over at the dart then looked back at me. Calmly, he said “Wow. It doesn’t really hurt.”

Then he fell over.

I just stood there, completely frozen due to my immense fear. There was NO WAY I could hide this from my brother now.

Luckily, Mr. White - our across-the-street neighbor - happened to witness the whole event while trimming his hedges. Being of far sounder mind than I was at that moment in time, he sprinted over to us and began asking if Randall was ok. I couldn’t understand a word he said – every sound entered my ears and echoed as if spoken into a five gallon drum.

He ran up to the house and knocked loudly, shouting for help. My mother opened the door and proceeded to shriek as she saw Randall laying there with the red-and-green-finned implement jutting out of his shoulder. She ran back in and dialed 911 who immediately responded with an ambulance and 2 police cars – which I presumed were there to haul me to jail for the murder of Randall Cunningham. Not an altogether bad consequence, considering the slow and merciless torture that awaited me at the hands of my barbaric older brother once he found out about this.

”I’ll come along quietly, officer.”

“Oh, son, you aren’t in any trouble. Your neighbor explained what happened. It was an accident. Don’t worry, he will be fine.”

”No, please. Lock me up. I deserve it. PLEASE.”

He chuckled, patted me on the head, and returned to the conversation with my mother about the very mild winter they had just experienced. A few hours later, Randall’s parents called to let us know that he was fine. The dart had caused mostly tissue damage and a poked a little hole in the trapezium. He would be fine in 4 to 6 weeks – perfect timing, as that’s how long I expected to be beaten with a cane and made to eat out of the vacuum cleaner bag as retribution for sneaking into Ben’s room and taking his stuff.

Ben came home around eight that evening. I was terrified. I locked myself in the bathroom and pretended to have explosive diarrhea – complete with grunting sounds. I figured this charade would buy me a good 30 minutes before I was beaten senseless.

My mother came to the door and knocked. “Honey, are you ok?”

”No, I’m sick to my stomach.”

”Well, lunch was peanut butter and jelly and dinner was macaroni and cheese, neither of which have a reputation for causing sore stomachs. Why don’t you open the door and let’s talk about it?”

Reluctantly, I unlatched the hook that locked the door and opened it, peering outside for Ben. Mom entered and shut the door behind her.

”I told Ben that I went into his room and got the darts for you, figuring it was a nice day outside. Don’t worry about him.”

Ahh, good ol’ mom.

A few days later, I visited Randall at his house. I brought him the new Snake Eyes figure – the one with Timber the wolf enclosed – as a get-well present. He told me about how he had stolen a bunch of hypodermic injectors from one of the drawers at the doctor’s office and that we could use them as stealth water guns once he got back in school. He had also stolen an entire blister pack of gauze, with which we proceeded to make ourselves mummies.

He was back to normal after a few weeks, and in no time we were back to combatting the forces of evil as Ninja Guys, Inc., traipsing around the woods with our makeshift swords and “acid shooters” made from the stolen hypos.

My brother still beat me for playing with his stuff, but thanks to mom, it involved just a wiffle ball bat and lasted only a few hours.