Yard Darts and Relative Dysfunction

In The Locker Room
Yard Darts and Relative Dysfunction
The Names are Changed to protect the Guilty
By Terrance Gavan
Okay, so some of you may remember yard darts.
It was a lovely little “fun for the whole family sport” which raged round backyards in the late seventies and early eighties. It was a staple at many family parties.
Yard Darts are 12 inches long with a weighted, pointy metal tip on one end, and three plastic fins on a rod at the other end. The darts were tossed underhand toward a horizontal ground target, where the weighted pointy end hits first and sticks into the ground. The target is typically a plastic ring. Less typically, but more or less frequently, dependant upon the level of alcohol consumption, the heavy, piercing, two pound projectile would find other, more entertaining, places to land. The family heirloom crystal punch bowl, Aunt Neddy’s unsuspecting 18-year-old Siamese cat, the windshield of Uncle Tony’s 1965 vintage Porsche or the newly installed $5,000 bay window on cousin Edwina’s solarium.
For those of you too young to remember the fun – since Yard Darts were banned in Canada in 1989 – it goes something like this. Picture a yard filled with a dozen or so semi-toddlers, 26 scrambling teenagers on summer hiatus from strict Ritalin regimen, eight doddering seniors, twenty to thirty middle-aged adults in erratic and various states of inebriation, three dogs, two cats and two teams of three twenty-something cousins, each with beers in hand, at opposite sides of the rambling yard. Now picture a brightly colored fire-engine-red projectile with a heavy metal sharpened tip whistling with whispered finality toward earth, from a 93-foot orbit, and into this cacophony of oblivious humanity.
Hasbro, or Mattel or whoever made the Yard Dart version of the game suggested placing the target hoops about 50 feet apart or “further dependant upon skill level.”
We Gavan’s have always had a very high opinion of our various and sundry skill sets. We preferred setting our targets 40 yards apart. Extra points were awarded for trajectories that mimicked Homer Hickam’s backyard boyhood rocket shots.
The game is played like horseshoes. In horseshoes, however, people are warned away from the playing area by the sharp clang of metal shoe on iron post. The beauty of Yard Darts, I think, rested with the tranquility of the pursuit. Hasbro invented the first truly astral stealth technology. Dependent upon your perspective, this can be a mixed blessing.
In conducting my de rigueur Internet research, cruising You Tube, Google and America’s Funniest Home Videos, I came across a few humorous Yard Dart moments but none to match my real life redux at the expense of an in-law who we’ll call Tom.
Cousin Tom had married into the Gavan clan and like a lot of our tribe didn’t mind the occasional nip now and then, and again, now and then. He had, after several, or seven, or 17 Jameson’s on the rocks, apparently forgotten the unwritten law. Gavan’s First Law of the Summer Reunion goes something like, if you intend to get drunk and wander aimlessly about the yard babbling to all and sundry, make sure, first and foremost, that you remember where the Yard Dart runway begins and ends. This is important, especially if you are new to the family and some people at the party have forgotten your name. For some reason the words, “Hey, you … staggering guy … ummmm… like, heads’ up there buddy,” doesn’t carry quite the same cachet as “Hey Tom! You slobbering drunk! Look out!”
But I’m letting the eighteen-year-old Siamese cat out of the bag here. (Her name was Tabitha, by the way, and she lived another four years. The yard dart barely grazed her luxuriously appointed tail.)
I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was watching with four of my cousins from the safety of the covered porch as the Reverend Donald Francis Gavan toed the dart line and let loose one of his patented Apollo moon shots.
Up the Yard Dart rose. And up. And up. It was, in a word, one of the most prodigious lofted Yard Dart shots I have ever seen, before or since. Up it went like a hawk drifting on seminal zephyr. It seemed to disappear to spec before it reached apex, where it suddenly stopped and shuddered, in the way that yard darts do. And then, it fell, grasping for terminal velocity at 32 feet per second squared, I heard the fateful words from cousin Don who was standing beside me. “Oh, crap,” said cousin Don.
We averted our gaze from descending projectile to the meandering specter of Tom, stumbling inanely toward a date with dart.
The dart seemed suspended in flight and I swear we had time to discuss several probable scenarios in the interval.
“Whattya’ think.” I asked. “That’s not gonna’ hit him, is it?”
“Yep … yep … I’m pretty sure that it is … yep, no doubt about it now,” answered Don. I was, like Don, and my two similarly afflicted cousins (names excluded to protect their sensibilities), suddenly and inexplicably devolving into a paroxysm of laughter.
“Should we yell or something?” I sputtered. “Nope … I think it’s probably too late … yep, geezuz … this won’t be pretty,” stuttered Don, derailing into spasm. My other two cousins were already floor of the porch, chuckling like demons.
“Oh crap ... that’s gonna’ hurt,” I said crumbling to the floor.
We watched with tears in our eyes as the descending dart landed with a solid thunk on poor Tom’s shoulder. I swear to god it hit and sort of stuck and then it stuttered like an arrow on a Roadrunner cartoon … boiinnnggg! … for a split second, before falling to the ground. Tom dropped like he was pole-axed. “Ohhhh … yoooo … owwwwww!” said Tom. Then he suddenly sat up and took a sip from his drink, which by some miracle had made it through the accident unscathed.
The Reverend Donald Francis went from concern, to relief and then suddenly – upon seeing Tom sprawled smack on top of the plastic bulls-eye, and now calmly sipping gin, and realizing that Tom had deflected the de facto the game winning toss – to anger.
“Geezuz, Tom … are you as dumb as a bag of hammers or what? Judges, we need a ruling here … rethrow … dammit … I get a rethrow … Tom for god’s sake, quit moaning, get the hell up and throw me that dart … I’m throwing again. And put some ice on that shoulder … it’s looking a bit swollen.”
Lest one get the wrong idea, Reverend Donald Francis was loved by his parishioners and the students he taught. He was just … hmmm, let’s see … a little edgy when it came to the sports thing. We four cousins quietly retreated to the kitchen, lest our relatives get he wrong idea and book us for an intense regimen of psychotherapy. My sides hurt for two days.
I think it should be noted here that Yard Darts were banned in the US in 1988, Canada in 1989, but are still legal in the United Kingdom.
I have my own theory about that. We know that the Irish have an affinity for the sport. And we also know about the Brits’ ingrained antipathy for the Irish. At the risk of getting all Ollie Stone here, I have put two and two together and have come to the obvious conclusion.
The British Parliament, by their tacit support of this dangerous pastime, is waging a concerted and covert campaign of genocide by Yard Dart. I have sent cease and desist letters to the Prime Minister in London, to the UN, to authorities in Geneva.
If that fails to garner response, I’ll consider a hunger strike. Hell, it worked for Gandhi.