Captain's Log, Day 15: Fun, Fire and Fleeing on the Fourth

          Nerf guns. Off the shelf, some of the most pathetic things I have ever seen. But properly modify them, and they become deadly. It’s awesome.

          Me, my brother Nemesis, and two of our friends had a huge Nerf war in our basement yesterday. We split up into teams, making sure that my brother and I ended up on opposite sides (we tend to turn on each other in the heat of batt—who am I kidding? We’ll shoot at each other just for the heck of it!), rearranged some furniture, and started shooting. It got really fun, really fast.

          I didn’t start with my favorite gun, though (I didn’t want to give my team too much of an advantage). However, midway through our first fight, I got a little annoyed with the gun I was using. It’s got good range and fairly accurate shooting, but nowhere near what I was used to. At the end of the round, I abandoned it in favor of…

                                          THE NERF LONGSHOT

          Best gun that Nerf ever made, easy to modify, and is incredibly accurate. I once shot 15 feet and put 5 shots in a row where Nemesis’s nose would have been had he not kept ducking behind the fireplace (he was just lucky). It’s a serious sniper rifle now.

          Anyway, this is where the battle really picked up. My buddy kept up a constant stream of fire with his automatic to keep the other team under cover, and I stood ready with my sniper rifle to pick them off when they tried to pop up for a quick shot. After two wins, my brother managed to crawl around the couch and catch me in the side while I was aiming at his comrade. I died, but so did my brother when my teammate hit him with a full burst from his automatic. After that, it was really a contest to see who ran out of ammo. My team lost when my buddy’s gun jammed.

          On a totally unrelated note, I set what is probably the speed record for driving a riding lawnmower (and a broken one at that). My dad decided to take it in to town because it was spewing smoke, so for ease of loading we backed the truck up against a ditch at the end of our road and drove the lawnmower in. I stayed on the lawnmower as Dad drove back to the house; I’d bet he broke 40 mph. Win or what??

          Also, the refugees made a reappearance at our Fourth of July party (see Captain’s Log, Day 14). Unfortunately, our Clone Wars squadron had no rockets, so we planted a bunch of “mines” (homemade sparkler bombs and legit firecrackers) and threw smoke bombs at the approaching droid army. A refugee came over and thanked us at one point for making it so “realistic” and asked if we could possibly light off a salvo of smoke bombs so they could sneak back across enemy lines and rescue “Esmeralda” (an imaginary player they kept leaving behind). We replied with an intensified barrage that knocked out all enemy drone sensors and, in reality, drove off all the mosquitoes in the surrounding three counties. We had a lot of smoke bombs.

          But next year, we are making dang sure we have rockets. It’s way more fun to shoot the oncoming troops.