Snow Play

Brrr...it is colder than a witch's tit on ice out there. Why isn't it, 'colder than a witch's heart?' Why is it 'tit'? Well, that's another matter. Oh, I remember the days in my youth when, after high school gym class, we would tear off our shirts (well, the guys, anyway) and dive onto a huge mound of dirty snow in the parking lot. Ah, what fun that was. Hot bare skin against freezing snow. Good thing we only stayed there for a few seconds before running back inside screaming "Holy sh** it's cold!" Otherwise, we would probably have died of hypothermia. Eventually.
Anyway, I remember other good times in the snow. Like eating it! And then my mom telling me only to eat the white snow, not the colored stuff. This was way before high school, of course. I knew better than to eat pee-soaked snow by the time I was fourteen, thank you very much!
And sledding. The best times of the season were spent sledding. My friend Pat and I would go down this super-steep, long hill that had three dips on the way down and terminated in the road. We would always bail before we hit the last drop. Well, almost always. There were times when we just didn't quite make it off the sled. Those were the fun times, the DANGEROUS times. The times when you really felt the rush. I remember landing on the shoulder of the road as a truck whizzed by about a foot away from my head. Now that's living.
Then there were the times we managed to just barely grab hold of a tree and hang there while our sleds rocketed on into the street, skidding across the roof or windshield of a passing car. This was followed by screeching brakes, and us scrambling and sprinting towards the house.
Then, with my buddies, Drew and Tom, I would attempt other acts of derring-do and recklessness, including piling all three of us onto a training snowboard however we could fit and descending at full speed down a hill towards whatever fate awaited us. The challenge, of course, was to see who could last the longest before falling off. And for the very brave--us, of course--there was the HEAD-FIRST descent. This worked better on a sled, generally speaking, than on a circular saucer or inner-tube, but we tried them all. It was generally okay--until you hit the big bump, or "jump" as we called it, with your groin instead of your buttocks. The first half of the ride was generally more fun than the second for this reason, as you can imagine.
At my own home, we had quite the wild time jumping the fence on our sleds or snowboards or tubes. My dad would plow the snow right up against the fence, to the top, so that if we gained enough speed on the descent, we would fly, or flop, at least, right over the fence and into our own backyard. What great fun that was. Until, of course, we got a bit too heavy and the fence suffered a fracture. A fracture which was then exacerbated when I tried my hand at the plow and went just a little too far.
Ever try this one? I was feeling particularly daring (foolish) one day and thought, why not put one foot on one sled and one on another and go downhill on both simultaneously, like a cowboy riding two horses in the Wild West? I know why NOW, of course, but it didn't cross my mind then. See, try as you might to match them up, the sleds rarely go at the same speed the whole way down. The effect is something akin to a split, if you're lucky, or the breaking of a wishbone, if you are not. Fortunately, I only had to experience the split before I realized that this was probably not the best decision I had ever made. But it was fun.
What about snowball fights? Lame, I know. A snowball fight is nothing compared to a snowball WAR. With competing armies behind barricades (of snow) and a wide open swath of "No Man's Land." Some would say a ski-mask is always best for this type of warfare, but I say the vision you have to sacrifice and the risk of looking like a fool if it doesn't fit right outweigh any positives. Besides, how are you going to get a scar (or an eye patch) to show off to the ladies or to your enemies in the next snowball war, if you've got a face mask to protect you from that lump of ice in your enemy's projectile?
A note: I do not recommend challenging a good baseball pitcher or team of them to a snowball war. However, if they challenge you, you of course must accept. You must never back down. You must fight, even if that means you and your whole army go down, dead to the last man. It is the Snowballer's Code. To back down is to heap endless shame upon yourself, your family, and your unborn children. It also shows poor Christmas spirit. What would baby Jesus think of someone who backs down from a challenge?
Regardless of the type of snow play, it always ended in drinking hot cocoa, sometimes with marshmallows or even graham crackers, while warming our frostbitten feet by the fire. Ahh, nostalgia.
Yeah, I'll probably repeat all that again this year.