anywhereisbetter

Ninja. Awesome.

What 12-year-old boy doesn’t love throwing stars?

On the 51 percent chance that you were never a 12-year-old boy, throwing stars are hand-held, star-shaped hunks of metal with between three and 12 points around the edges, used in a similar manner to throwing knives. Shuriken, as they are known to the more well-informed preteen, are the long-distance weapon of choice for discerning ninjas, and in the countless ninja-themed movies of the 80′s, they were used in a dazzling array of methods. There’s the conventional star-through-the-forehead routine, but they were also used to pin down opponents by their clothing, or simply left as an ominous calling card. Any which way they were used, throwing stars were cool as hell.

You’d think ninja weapons would be hard for a 12-year-old to come by, but in in Phoenix‚ a city where every grocery store posted a sign kindly asking all customers to check their firearms at the front desk prior to shopping‚ you’d be wrong. There was a pawn shop not far from my house, and they’d sell us just about anything short of a live grenade. About once a week, we’d pay the store a visit, and drool over the brass knuckles, butterfly knives (another coveted weapon of the ninja), and other weapons under the glass counter. Actually purchasing anything was a rare occasion, but when the time came, holding that shiny new throwing star felt like you’d just taken out twenty ninjas with a single mid-air-spinning-roundhouse-dragon kick. New shuriken in hand, we’d rush out to some empty field to “train,” throwing them at whatever unfortunate cacti we might find.

My obsession with all things ninja was soon to end, though, and by the age of 13, I had abandoned my Jiujutsu magazines for something more aggressive: punk rock. Trips to the pawn broker were replaced with trips to the record shop, and at school, I stopped getting picked on for being a dork, and started getting picked on for being a freak. I started following the alternative radio station’s top 20 lists religiously, wearing increasingly iconoclastic clothing, and was too busy fighting the system (in this case, junior high) to mess with kids’ stuff like throwing stars. Just like that, everything changed. Funny how it happens so quickly.

What’s even funnier is to think that I hadn’t had another such sea change until age 28, 15 years later. Oh, I grew up in plenty of ways‚ finally shedding my fear of women, for instance, was a landmark achievement in my bridge to manhood‚ but other things remained the same. Then last year, I just kind of… mellowed. I haven’t rejected the things I used to love‚ I still rock Double Nickels on the Dime on a regular basis, and you’ll have to pull these Doc Martens off of my cold, dead feet‚ but these days I’d rather stay home and steam some vegetables over a glass of cabernet than go out and throw back bottle after bottle of Bud. That’s not to say I don’t like going out and having a good time, but I never really stopped liking ninjas, either. It’s just that partying until dawn and learning how to use a kitana sword aren’t priorities of mine these days. Just like when I was 13, in my late twenties, things have had a way of changing.

Except brass knuckles‚ those are still totally cool.