Monday, November 24, 2003

"WET PAINT (this is not an instruction)"

It snowed!

First snow of the year!

Yay!

And finally this year it’s snowed before Christmas!

I don’t know why that’s important, but for some reason it feels like it should be. As kids… okay, still today, we make bets on when it will snow, if there will be snow on the ground for Christmas, and how long it will last.



A few years ago we made a 9 foot tall snowman, and even though he melted a little though the weeks, he stayed a big ball of ice in early May. We’ve tried to recreate that sweet snowman in the past, but the urge to crush them, topple them, and roll them over unsuspecting little kids has been too great. Also, the fact that we haven’t gotten much snow lately has made it difficult.

It used to be that we could make great snow castles, tunnels, forts, thrones, sculptures, and battle fields. For hours the neighborhood girls worked on their fort on the left side of the drive way, and the boys worked on theirs on the right side. Both groups helping to shovel the driveway first so they would have a clean sheet of ice to fight on.

The boys were agreeably more practical in their battle plans. Piles of snowballs sat behind short, thick protective walls that had rough holes in spots so they peek though if need be. Garbage can lids were shields. Shovels were fixed into catapults. Their only decoration was a flag made of a piece of paper with a pencil thrust though it. Their fort was finished in a quarter of the time it took us girls. They were ready for a war.

The girls took their time with their fort. They crafted tall walls with decorative spikes of snow on top and pretty carvings on the façade. We each had our own room to fight from, sleds lined the bottom to keep us dry. We sculpted little shelves to place our snowballs in and searched long and hard for the best snow to use.

When the time came to fight the rules were drawn up.

1. No aiming for the head.
2. Timeouts can be called twice for each team.
3. No rocks.
4. You can’t cross the crack in the driveway and come onto the other teams side, you have to throw from your own side. If so much as a toe crosses the crack you get a penalty. (We never did come up with a penalty)

And it started.

After all the work did, all the planning, and preparation, the snow ball fights sucked at first. We were all so tired from making our defenses that we didn’t have much energy to fight.

Only after our second wind kicked in, near the end when the boys were throwing great scoops of snow from their shovels, the girls were out of prettily formed snowballs and resorted to throwing handfuls of their fort, and at least two people were crying because they got snow down the back of their coat or in their ear, was it fun.

After the forts were destroyed in the battle we stomped them down and mushed them into ramps. It worked out that after a running start you would land on your sled, race bumpily down our hill, (a small one, but it still attracted all the kids in the neighborhood) you would hit one ramp (the girls old fort), slide across the ice of our paved drive way, hit the next ramp (the boys old fort), whoosh over the grass, try to miss the pine tree, and sail into the icy street and down the hill.

All it took was to have one kid always near the adjoining main street so he or she could scream down at us when a car turned on it’s blinker to turn onto our street. That of course caused all of us to run around wildly and try to pile up on the current child who would be sledding down the hill in hopes of stopping him or turning him before he reached the road. It was always a glorious occasion when we succeeded, and only once did we fail. The kid was my cousin and she crashed into the big back tire of a truck on her yellow sled. Thankfully the driver had stopped when he saw her coming.

Oh, I love the winter.

Right now I’m sitting in my bed fully dressed. Blue jeans, sweater, boots, scarf, hat, gloves, and all covered up with two big comforters because it’s so damn cold in here.

It‘s not really bad, though, I’m used to it. For 12 years my room didn’t have a heat vent or any other kind of heater in it. Every once in awhile I’d bring the outdoor thermometer in my room and leave it on top of my TV for a few hours. I think the coldest I remember my room recorded at was 38 degrees. Yeah, I think I could of survived with the wolves in the artic. Run around naked and at night curl up in a little ball in the snow and sleep.


And, have you’ve done something wrong, but the police still haven’t found you? Do you have pent up guilt about this incident? Well don’t worry anymore because the this site will help.

No comments: