Some of the most fun I ever had as a teen-ager was being a member of this group between 1981-1983. My dad had to sign a liability waiver so the Twin and I could join since we were under 18, but they let us in after that. I'd mostly forgotten about it, but I'm glad they're still going.
At first, I didn't quite "get it"- for instance, I tried to fashion a longbow from a really cool stick I found in the woods and some kitestring. I'd seen people do this in movies and said, why not?
The guy inspecting weapons asked me if my "bow" worked.
No. It sucks.
Did I know that I could go to a sporting goods store and buy a real bow?
Nope.
Later, he used a padded arrow that an older player had made as an example of how to make a safe arrow that flew straight. It was good advice. I wound up playing an archer since it involved a lot less of getting trapped and clubbed like a fur-bearing mammal than the melee character option.
Anyway, my D&D geek buddies had our own mini-league that used to have small battles in our neighborhood woods and parks.
These tiny wars were a lot of fun unless your name was Jay. If your name was Jay, you sucked and you were doomed to be picked last every single time. Even the kid with no arms got picked before Jay.
Jay was a nice enough kid, but he was helpless in combat and had a habit of whining and claiming that you hadn't hit him when you knew that you had and such other rot. Most of us made sure we hit Jay as hard as possible in order to minimize debate.
After one of these debates, my buddy Ken got fed-up with Jay. I can't recall what he did , but Jay profoundly pissed Ken off. Turned out that Ken had somehow gotten a pair of handuffs and decided that it would be a good idea to shackle Jay to a tree and leave him there.
He had plenty of help.
I didn't help, but I didn't exactly step in to stop them either.
There's a lot of things from my childhood I'd like to change.
Watching Jay struggle in terror as his arms were pulled behind him, wrapped around a young birch tree and cuffed together is not one of those things. That fucking whiny-ass momma's boy deserved it. Besides, he was only there for a ...
Come to think of it,I think we wandered off and got stoned or went shoplifting or something and forgot Jay was chained to that tree.
Ooops.
That was twenty-four years ago.
Oh well.
Poor Jay.
2 comments:
Last summer we were at a park where there were about 10 individuals dressed in medieval looking outfits and had bows etc. The weapons and even the chainlink armor they had made themselves. It was very cool.
Yeah! The Twin made two suits of real chainmail armor all by himself. Pretty amazing when you think about it.
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