Hey, these kids look too safe; let’s give them some bows and arrows

I’m not sure who made the final decision. In my mind it’s something that should have gone through at least 3 levels of vetting before being approved. Somehow, the “powers that be” at our Jr High thought that we should have a day of indoor archery during gym class. Archery? You heard that right. It would have been safer for them to give us access to enriched uranium.

Let me set the scene for you. Targets lined up along one wall of the gym and a line of 75 kids at the opposite end of the gym. I think the teachers knew better because (for the most part) they basically stood in the hallway once we had the weapons in hand. Now I’m going to guess that maybe 1 person in our class had ever used a bow and arrow in their lives. As a result, as soon as we got the go ahead arrows went in every direction: towards the targets, into the floor, into the ceiling, towards other targets, towards other students, etc. It was pandemonium. After a while we got a little bored and started trying to bounce the arrows off the floor at the targets and trying to shoot the ducts on the ceiling. At one point someone shot at the teachers while they were putting a balloon on one of the targets and that was pretty much the end of class. These were real arrows too, the bows were kind of a joke (made of hard plastic and single stringed), but if you got into one the arrows could penetrate a hard target at 50ft, so they could do some damage.

It’s not really a surprise that we only had archery gym class once in my 3 years at Jr High