Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

sideeki -- as they fell (grew up in 'Maple Heights', 6 maple trees in our yard and many more all around), I used to imagine that they were gigantic invading warcraft, and my job was to blast 'em as they lay on the sidewalk (home territory) -- which I did by bouncing one of those rubber-coated baseballs on 'em (perfect bounce on the sidewalk, came right back to my hand for nonstop action), the impacts of which I imagined as great energy-beam blasts -- the best ones were the big ones that had mostly dried out and hardened and took the most 'hits', blasting away at the thinner foil of the wing and resulting in a different wounded but still fighting invader every time, until a kill shot finally smashed the thicker leading edge of the wing -- of course the ultimate kill was a direct squish hit on the seed (the massive occupied core of the invader, of course) on the first shot (or with ones that had more completely dried out, instead of 'squish' sometimes they'd just explode) -- but that wasn't as much fun (didn't take as much control) as wrecking 'em a bit at a time firing just behind the leading edge of the wing

a favorite little game of mine during the blizzard of maple seeds every spring, until I grew older and left that bit of fun behind . . .