THE PURPLE RIBBON ON MY SWEATER MEANS I SUPPORT CD PLAYERS

I went to the mall for my first round of Christmas shopping and I managed to bang out Liv's gift package in a mere half hour. This means that I'm either a consumer genius or a clueless idiot, depending on her reaction, leaving me in either the "dog house" or the "kiss tent". I'd tell you all about what I bought, but since the tradition of giving gifts relies heavily on the element of surprise, I'll instead tell you about this fun game I played as a boy.

For this game you need a tennis ball, three people and a diving board with a pool.

The game is called "Nighthawker" and was invented in grade 6 I think.

One guy jumps off the board while one of the other guys is at the side of the pool armed with a tennis ball. The jumper tries to avoid the throwing of the ball while in the air. If he gets hit it sucks. You then go through the rotation as many times as it takes one guy to get hit 3 times. If you get hit three times you have to jump off the diving board with your arms and legs spread out and you can't try to avoid the balls that are thrown by the other two so you get hurt provided the other two guys are accurate.


In the suburbs tennis balls were like an important item in an RPG video game. They were used for everything -- as weapons, as tennis balls, as baseballs, as hockey balls, as currency, and for the family living in the marsh, as a late night snack. Me and my friends had this shitty phase when we thought it was fun to hide in a park and throw tennis balls at cars, then running away if they stopped and got out. I once devised a scheme based on this pastime to get free pizza.

For this scheme you need:

A tennis ball
Two teams of dudes
An abandoned house in the neighbourhood or a fake address
A park

First, a call is placed ordering a bunch of pizza to the abandoned house. In my case, there was a house on my street that had almost burned down that was perfect.

Then Alpha Team waits in the park at a point where they know the pizza man will drive by. When that happens Alpha Team pummels the delivery vehicle with tennis balls. If all goes to plan, the guy gets so mad that he stops, gets out and chases Alpha Team.

Beta Team, who is hiding across the street, then makes haste, enters the pizza car and takes all the pizza they can carry. By the time the delivery man gets back, his supply has been depleted and when he checks the house he was supposed to deliver it to, he'll realize he's been duped, return to the parlour and maybe get fired. PERFECT PLAN. I got the folks at Disney/Pixar to create an accurate graphic of what the plan would've looked like in my neighbourhood:

I never actually did it because it's the dumbest thing ever, but still, I think it was pretty flawless. The only "if" was the driver getting out of the car.