Lawn Darts

It was definitely another time, another world. That was a time when you could find foot long plastic darts with weighted steel tips. For Kids. My brothers and I were some of those kids. We were also allowed to have a bow and arrows. Not the suction cup type arrows either. Real steel tipped instruments of death. And there were fireworks and a great many other potentially bad decisions and questionable practices by both parents and kids. The most important thing: we all walked away. Some bumps and bruises, a  few singed eyebrows, but we all walked away.
We rode our bicycles without helmets. We rode them to the 7-11 without bike lanes. I had a steering wheel on my Stingray for a while. On my trial run up the street, I turned a little too abruptly and found my face merged with that street. Bloody nose. Some scrapes. A note to myself about turning too abruptly with a steering wheel on my Stingray. This did not stop me from riding my Stingray with a steering wheel. I'm not sure if a helmet would have saved me, but bike helmets were not really an option. Bicycles with handlebars would probably have been a safer alternative for the kids on our street.
It probably also would have been a safer alternative to not drag a group of six or eight kids on sleds behind our family station wagon. That alternative would be not dragging a group of six to eight kids on sleds behind our family station wagon. But we did. My father did. I am relatively certain that this activity was dreamed up or at least decided upon by my father, just like the lawn darts and the bow and arrows. Or maybe it was just another time and another place. Like when we took that basic principle of a vehicle pulling kids on a sled and extrapolated it to the more extreme: a tractor pulling a car hood with six to eight kids stacked on it like cord wood. What could go wrong?
Don't answer. The reality of those times was different. The reality of these times? A fifteen year old Michigan boy died when the sled he was on crashed into a tree. The sled that was being pulled by the family SUV. The family SUV that was driven by his older brother.He didn't walk away. He died. And now maybe I know why they don't sell lawn darts anymore.