Snow Day #3

The typical "fun" things that kids talk about doing in the snow tend to run out of entertainment value faster than a coke whore. Snow angels? Blow me! Lying in the snow and flailing your arms around is only fun if you're watching someone have a seizure.

Building a snow man? It's okay at first, when you have grand visions of sculpting out of snow a human form that will put Michelangelo’s David to shame. But ultimately they all end up looking like... well like three snowballs stacked on top of each other. And all the hand-me-down scarves, carrot noses, and corn cob pipes don't change that.

Sledding rules, no doubt, but you do eventually get tired of dragging that thing back up the hill over and over again.

Snowball fights... Shit yeah! Stupid aggression checked by hurling weapons at each other with force. I don't know which bully first thought of packing frozen water into a ball and hucking it at someone else’s face, but they were brilliant.

I remember my brother and I both had "secret weapon" snow balls that we would bust out as the need arose. My brother loaded his with a chunk of gravel in the center. This was a little messed up, and frankly hurt like a bitch, but it did add a little more realistic threat to the snowball wars knowing he had one in his arsenal. I would make a hard little ball, roll it in water and let it freeze up a little, then pack a bigger ball around it. Those fuckers could cause concussions.

I used to have fantasies about full scale, neighborhood snowball fights. Our team would have snow tunnels and igloo like bases, a rotating squadron of folks building snowballs so our arsenal would be full. And radios, oh yeah, we'd have headset radios so we could talk to each other while we were sneaking through the dark and snowy woods with a ball in each hand. Eventually we would frighten their team (by not only our amazing strategic abilities, but by a constant weapon pounding) into mistakenly trudging out onto the frozen pond, snow blind and terrified. The ice would crack and plunge them into a freezing, horrible, watery death.



Writing your name in the snow is also pretty cool I guess...