Last week I sold my Nerf gun collection. It was truly a sad moment when I handed that massive, blue-plastic Ikea bag to the guy, dumped in the basketful of darts, and watched him walk out the door. He told me he’s planning to modify some of them for use as laser tag guns, so I guess we can call this my Nerf obituary.
You may be wondering why Nerf guns are worth blogging about, or why I had a collection of them in the first place. Well, Nerf and I have had some wonderful moments together, let me tell you…
It all started for me a few years ago. My friends Peter and Tyler had a few Nerf guns, and we used to hang out at Peter’s place shooting each other or his roommates, basically just to be annoying. On Sunday nights Peter and his roommates held an event they called “family dinner,” which was basically just an open potluck. Inevitably, the Nerf guns found their way into a few family dinners, creating plenty of chaos.
On one of these nights, I had the idea of introducing just a little bit of structure into our Nerfing. I suggested that we create rules around the effects of being hit in different places on our bodies: a shot to a limb means that limb can’t be moved anymore until the end of the round. A shot to the back “destroys” both legs. A shot to the head or chest is a kill. We tried it out, and it was awesome. Gradually, our rules evolved slightly: if you shoot someone’s gun, that gun is “dead” for the rest of the round. If you hold a dart in your hand, it acts as a knife, and being stabbed has the same effects as being shot. Some of the craziest times we’ve had during our Nerf sessions came from two people having three limbs out each, and flailing at each other with their “knives” trying to score the kill. It’s especially hilarious when someone has a dart in their mouth, lunging around trying to stab their opponent.
Things really escalated when Peter received a Vulcan for his birthday. (I think it was his birthday.) That led us to create “storming the fort” scenarios, three-on-ones, and all kinds of crazy setups.
In 2009, Peter and I became roommates in a small basement suite, and we managed to get our third roommate, Jasper, hooked on Nerf, as well. Jasper was an engineering student, and loved to tinker, so he started taking some of the guns apart and replacing the springs or removing the air restrictors. Tyler and Peter had fiddled with modding guns before, but Jasper took it to a whole new level. His Nerf Elite was just plain deadly. We spent many hours holding one-on-one or two-on-two shootouts in our hallway, setting up tables and mattresses to hide behind and shoot around.
On the morning of Tyler’s wedding, Peter and I took him to Wal-Mart and bought him the newest Nerf gun, the Raider. We had stayed the night in an empty church sanctuary, and we spent a couple of hours playing with barricades built out of tables and couches, one person holing up with the Raider and the rest of us trying to flank.
Gradually, we all began to amass more weaponry. We wanted to have enough for our friends to join in! Our combined arsenal was especially large when we factored in the collection belonging to Peter’s brother, Andrew, whose history with Nerf goes back even longer than the rest of ours.
All of this culminated with what may have been the greatest Nerf night of all time. We got access to a school gym for an entire evening, and invited everyone we could think of. We had somewhere around 12 guys in total, I think, most of whom are in the picture on the right. (I’m holding the camera.) We set up a whole bunch of tables and benches, and laid out several bags of Nerf guns, and then we went at it. At that point we had two Titans, and we created some Titan-specific rules. In addition to a Titan rocket being a one-hit-kill no matter where it hit you, if you were hiding behind a table and a rocket hit that table, you had to immediately clear out and find new cover, because that cover would be considered “destroyed.”
That evening was a total blast, if you’ll pardon the pun. The wide variety of weapons, play styles, and strategies made things really intense. Was your opponent holding a single-shot pistol, or a Longshot with a six-dart clip? How much time did you have between reloads? Was there someone on your flank with a RapidFire waiting to unload 20 darts in the space of three seconds the moment you stepped out of cover? What would you do if your Maverick jammed? (Pro Tip: Never use a Maverick. They jam.)
Shortly after that Nerf night, some of my friends from Loading Ready Run began to catch on to the Nerf craze. I introduced my rules system, and we had some awesome nights of Nerf battles at Graham and Kathleen’s house. Matt picked up his own Vulcan, and James invested in a Longstrike. As so often happens with LRR, real life made its way into videos, most noticeably the commodoreHUSTLE episode Arms Race.
Ah, so many wonderful Nerf memories. Over the past year and a half, though, my arsenal has been sitting in my closet, taking up a lot of space. Larissa and I don’t have a lot of space to begin with, either. Tyler and Peter have both moved away to pursue their teaching careers, Andrew lives on the mainland, and LRR has moved on to Magic: the Gathering. I simply haven’t had many opportunities to break the Nerf guns out.
The last time I played was at my bachelor party back in April. I wanted to recapture some of the old glory, so I requested that we turn Peter’s apartment into a battlezone. It was fun, but cramped, and we didn’t play for that long.
I finally realized it was time to move on. We needed the space, and I actually got a decent amount of cash, which is always helpful, especially with a baby on the way. If the opportunity ever comes up again to have a Nerf night, I’ll definitely be there; maybe I’ll even reinvest some of the money I got for my guns back into a new weapon. In the meantime, though, thank you, Nerf, for all the memories!