Meanwhile, this just in from Ohio: Naked Nerf Games. ("We are safe and everything.") - Granite Grok

Meanwhile, this just in from Ohio: Naked Nerf Games. (“We are safe and everything.”)

Nake Nerf players skulking in the bushes?
Naked Nerf players skulking in the bushes?

In further signs of the imminent collapse of Western Civilization, a young marketing genius, Jake King, emerges in Ohio: He’s responsible for organizing this year’s massive…naked Nerf games. 

Ahem!

From today’s Wall Street Journal (you really should subscribe):

Nerf Wars are one of a number of end-of-term rituals some students engage in, such as adorning trees with toilet paper or wrapping shoes around telephone wires by their laces.

But some youngsters, who write their own rules, have added a twist that is raising concerns among local officials and residents. In some versions of the game, nudity confers a player with immunity from being tagged “out” even if hit with a Nerf dart. As a result, participants dress in swimsuits that can quickly be stripped off during attacks, while others hide in bushes with Nerf gun blasters to stake out private property in the buff.

The games, which aren’t sanctioned by the schools, usually last 10 weeks. Players eliminate members of competing teams with Nerf guns until the last team standing wins. Students organize Nerf Wars, also known as Dart Wars or Nerf Assassin, by grade level and typically break into groups of five or six to compete.

The game is played by students from more than a half-dozen schools in the Cincinnati area. Jake King, a 16-year-old sophomore at Lakota East High School, was in charge of his class competition this year. He says the nudity rule lengthens the game and heightens the scheming tactics. For Jake’s game, 112 students participated. Each person put in $5 to play, and the winning team will take the $560 purse. As of Wednesday afternoon, only two players remained.

“It’s pretty intense,” he said. “But we are safe and everything.”

For Ellen Metz, a mother of twin 14-year-old daughters, Nerf Wars brings an added layer of anxiety every spring after she witnessed a naked teenage boy run across a neighbor’s yard two years ago. She called the police, but chose not to press charges. “This cannot happen with young impressionable girls,” she said. “My blood pressure went spiking.”

In the meantime….at about 10 p.m. on a recent Friday, Jake stepped outside a friend’s house when a Nerf bullet struck him on the chest. Another friend, who had been lurking outside for a few hours, tagged him. “He was completely naked,” Jake said.

All is not lost!

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