Man has three primal urges: eat food, breed with women and throw stuff at a wall. But after meeting the first two needs by going to 7-Eleven and buying beef jerky and a copy of Maxim, where do we go for the final piece of the testosterone triad?

That’s why God gave us darts. No, not that God. It was Mars, the Roman god of war. He doesn’t enjoy being ignored.

But people don’t dig darts all the time. They’re mega popular for a while, then they inexplicably leave us for a few years and come back in our lives as a much older companion … oops, sorry I started talking about John Travolta.

Dart fever is like the common cold: everyone catches it more than once but it’s always a little different each time.

The average family buys 58 dart boards a year, because upon purchase the family thinks, “Darts! Sweet! Now we can throw stuff at the wall!”

Then they throw stuff at the wall, but because the 10-year-old has the hand-eye coordination of a diseased walrus riding a unicycle, the wall becomes riddled with tiny holes, just like a mouthy “Sopranos” extra.

Then the kid is grounded for throwing stuff at the wall, and the dartboard becomes attic-bound, where it is introduced into the society of lost toys.

Then, once the family realizes throwing sharp objects at the wall could be a bad idea, they buy an electronic dartboard. “It will keep score for me,” the family says in amazement. “And the dart tips are dulled, so I can throw stuff at the wall without it getting stuck in the wall!”

But eventually the fever subsides (the dartboard breaks) and the electronic dartboard shares a duplex with an old Speak ‘n’ Spell.

Dart boards have no place in a house of love and curfews. That’s where bars come into play.

Bars such as (insert your favorite bar in BG because if I explicitly name one, it’s unfair advertising) have it made. They provide free walls at which paying customers can throw stuff, which is a great idea because beer-drinking patrons need the ability to impale their friends.

And it only takes one punctured aorta to lose the will to throw stuff. And consciousness, for that matter.

At this point, it may be curtains for the dude’s dart-throwin’ days, but his late nights of television surfing are far from numbered. After shockingly bypassing the chance to watch Ozzy Osbourne plant azaleas while muttering something about dog poop, he turns to Fox Sports, which is airing a dart tournament from England. “Why would anyone watch this?” Joe Channelchanger says to himself, after already watching three straight hours of it.

And as the professional dart competitors throw stuff at the wall, the audience woos and wows at the placement of the thrown stuff. Then the crazy British announcer yells something wacky like “He’s got the wobblies!” and England nods in agreement, because they’re knowledgeable in the ways of pro dart throwers.

So why does England have professional darts? Little known fact: England is actually located inside a giant bar, but over there they don’t call it a bar — it’s a “pub,” which I think is short for “pubescent urges.” I think.

So popular is the wall-stuff-throwology in Great Britain that some local blokes will give up their day job for it. An average chap named Justin Irwin left his job at a children’s charity to pursue a professional darts career. A photo on his Web site (www.bachelorofdarts.com) depicts a man with no emotion, an expression as if time left him behind and he has nothing left to offer us … sorry, I was talking about Travolta again.

Irwin says he practices four to six hours a day on his game. Like a kid with matches, he’ll get burnt out quickly, unless he prays to Mars for a terminally ill case of dart fever. Or that his lively chum doesn’t accidentally hurl a dart at his bum. That would be total rubbish.

To have eyes on such a prize — and succeeding — is as unlikely as writing 750 words on darts — and making it funny.

We raucous Yankees may never understand England’s mastery of throwing stuff at the wall to the point of having a professional circuit. After all, our store-bought dart boards go unused and kill time by making sweet love with the Christmas decorations.

But we can try throwing other things at the wall in hopes of them sticking.

Like 7-Eleven beef jerky.

E-mail Matt with comments at [email protected] or send him a dart ultimatum via his bedroom window. But please, no more poison darts.