Pumpkin Slinging for Fun: Really?

Ever heard of Pumpkin slinging? Well, it's not a myth, it's real. On one of the history channels, I ran across a program featuring this odd and unusual sport which started taking place in several American cities in the northeast. Pumpkin slingers' have actually spent thousands of dollars creating the perfect pumpkin throwing devices, which are usually initiated in some type of truck with catapult type mechanisms that are made to throw the pumpkins a far distance. Whoever slings their pumpkin the farthest is the winner. Most of these people look and act like regular middle class people, but most of them are actually very bored rich people.

While looking up more information about this weird sport, I came across some articles from nj.com featuring a story that made it all worth it. Apparently, on Henslee Farms, right outside Belvidere, NJ, there was a Pumpkin Slinging Contest in October 2010, that was hosted for schools, civic groups, and adult individuals. This competition was made to help develop "teamwork and problem solving skills in an adult-adolescent collaboration."

So, this is an event that finally got a reason to exist that was morally associated with charity. Yehhhhh!!!! There are so many people out there in the world, living on the street because they lost their homes to foreclosure or unemployment, and our own government is struggling to make ends meet. I know we have to have something to do that takes our minds off the negative aspects of our present time, and it's fun to create different ways of doing that with maybe a little bit of money. But to do this for sport because you don't have anything else to do with '˜thousands of dollars' of your money is why I've got to ask the question, "Really?'