A street robbery with nun-chucks? Ah, yes. Everybody wants to be Bruce Lee. When I was a boy, all my friends picked up a set of the things at one time or another. They would stand in front of groups of their peers swinging the things, like high-class chefs having seizures.

They were impressive for about nine seconds before they lost control of the clubs and pounded themselves in the elbows or right above the eyebrows. They looked momentarily stunned as they examined the pain, and then they ran from the playground screaming because even the girls were laughing at them. Dreams of starring in a major martial arts movie faded even as the bruises on their elbows blossomed into giant purple flowers.

Nun-chucks. I know there are a select few out there who are actually proficient with the weapons. And I don’t need you to show up on Park Street looking for me with the things whirring like helicopter blades. I’ll take your word for it.

It’s just that in my day, nun-chucks were pure novelty, like a Rubik’s Cube. A lot of people had Rubik’s Cubes and they didn’t know how to use those, either. But a cube of colorful squares wouldn’t shatter the bones in your arms or your kneecaps. Except for that one kid, but bad things always happened to him.

Keep ’em guessing

For us, nun-chucks served the greatest purpose if you carried them draped over your shoulder and claimed to be a master of them. Nobody really believed you, but they couldn’t be sure. You could spout off about being registered as a lethal weapon and your friends would laugh, but they would secretly wonder. Meanwhile, other kids, less adept at playing the psychological game, would continue to swing their nun-chucks, and they would continue to impress the girls by screaming things like: “Ow! My eye! Somebody call my mom!”

I have a friend who went on to gain a black belt in karatejudochi, or some such thing. He now teaches it to kids. As soon as I see him again, I plan to ask him about his skills with nun-chucks. If he tells me he’s a master of them, I’ll have my doubts. But I won’t ask for a demonstration. That’s the way the game is played.

Back in the day, more than a few of us had switchblade knives, too. Most of them were mere combs when the switch was flicked, but a few had the real thing. Very impressive. A switchblade would get passed around at parties and everyone would express awe and admiration for the owner of the device. Imagine, we said. Imagine what you could do with such a thing.

Pumped up

What you can do with such a thing is carry it around in your back pocket and tell people about it. You couldn’t so much as slice an apple with a switchblade because either the button was always sticking or a teacher would see you doing it and swoop in to take it away. Later, at a staff meeting, the teacher would show it to his or her colleagues and everyone in the teacher’s lounge would express awe and admiration as they chain-smoked.

We all had BB guns, too. At first, just a Daisy that only needed to be cocked once. You could shoot a bird with one of those things, and the pellet would bounce right off. The bird would laugh and fly off to tell his friends.

Then we got more advanced BB guns that required that you pump them 100 times for maximum power. By the time you were done pumping, your prey was a mile away and anyway, you were too tired to fire the thing. So we moved on to carbon-dioxide-gas-powered pellet guns and took to shooting at windows instead of live things.

Ah, the toys of youth. Some of them are passed along from generation to generation, like the nun-chucks. Others fade into nostalgia by the time you’re out of high school. Like those canvas belts with the intricate, brass buckles. Remember those? You had to slide levers to cinch the belt, which was fine unless you were involved in one of those rare moments of teenage passion.

I still have one of those belts. I have it right here, in fact. The cool thing about those belts is that they make a whistling sound when you swing them. See? Look how cool that is. Why, a person could … Ow! My eye! Somebody call my mom!

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. Visit his blog at www.sunjournal.com.