Let's Bring Back Lawn Jarts

I was thinking about our first-ever Greenland Sharks Picnic coming up on May 31st, and one thought kept running through my mind: Please, dear God, not bag playing.

I get it—bags (or cornhole, for the purists) is a perfectly fine game. Ladderball too, if you enjoy tossing rubber-coated bolas at plastic plumbing pipes. And then there’s lawn jenga, which is essentially a pile of anxiety waiting to collapse on your foot. But none of that hits the spot for me. It’s all too safe. Too… modern.

So I started digging through the garage, thinking about what we used to play. And that’s when I found them. Lawn Jarts.

Not the nerfed ones with soft rubber tips. No, these are the original steel-tipped torpedoes they banned back in the '80s after someone figured out giving children pointed projectiles might be a bad idea. That was the magic of it—it was a bad idea, and we knew it, and we played anyway. You never forgot where the target was, because if you did, it might end up in your femur.

Back then, fun and danger came as a package deal. Do you remember the old Mattel Creepy Crawlers? That was another classic. You’d pour goo—actual, suspiciously chemical-smelling goo—into metal molds shaped like spiders and scorpions, and then shove it into a blazing-hot electric oven that plugged right into the wall. No Batteries. No safety latch. No auto shut-off. Just a childhood chemistry set from the school of hard knocks.

I burned myself more times than I can count. But I never told my parents. Not once.Because if I did, they’d take it away. And the secret pain was worth it to keep the danger-fun going.

I think about that now, how different things are. Today, even playgrounds look like liability brochures. All padded corners and safety-tested angles. But for us? The point was that someone might get hurt. That maybe your toy doubled as a medieval weapon. We didn’t call it “dangerous.” We just called it The Weekend.

So yes, we’re playing Jarts at the picnic. And yes, we’re also launching model rockets—because what better way to honor the inner nerd in all of us than to strap a firecracker to a cardboard tube and pray it doesn’t land in traffic or launch toward your best friend? We’re going to burn some fingers, pull a muscle or two, and probably lose a rocket in a tree. But we’re going to have fun—before safety took over and common sense ruined everything.

And if you’re wondering who’s shagging the rockets? Simple. The guy who loses at Jarts. Circle of life, Shark-style.

You’ll find me at the picnic, smoking candy cigarettes and reliving my misspent youth with anyone who wants to join. I might even bring some Creepy Crawlers molds and see if I can cook one on a Weber.

Come out. Everyone is invited. Bring your memories. Bring your scars. We’re bringing the danger back—one lawn jart at a time.

See you on the 31st.