edensgarden's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Snow War I and Snow War II I got a call last night from one of my old college roommates. It was nice to talk and nice to remember our old fun times together. You really get to know a person when you share a room with them for almost 3 years. Cooper drove a Dodge Colt. (Do they even make Dodge Colt's anymore?) We called it the Coopermoblie. It sat 11 unsafely and 7 safely. Guess which way we usually drove it most of the time? We used to drive around the streets of our college town honking the horn, lobbing rolls of toilet paper at the houses of our friends, driving on the wrong side of the street, Chinese fire-drilling and so on. Those were definitely the days. The conversation turned to the weather. Cooper lives 45 minutes north of our college town with her husband and child. She mentioned that it had been snowing rather heavily the last week or so. Then the subject of snowball fights came up. What person doesn't love a snowball fight? Cooper and I are both Arizona desert rats, so naturally our first winter we took every chance to hurl snowballs at each other and unsuspecting passers by. One evening Copper and I enticed our other 2 roommates out into the front yard of our complex to "make a snowman." Upon completion of our snowman, I threw an innocent handful of snow at our roommate the Beautician. The Beautician promptly returned the favor with a much larger handful of snow. An exchange ensued, Cooper joined in and we all conspired to get our fourth roommate, Kathleen Caffeine in on the m�l�e. We soon grew tired of each other's company and began to lob snowballs at the window of our neighbors, The #7 Boys. Boys being boys, the #7s, as we lovingly called them, came bounding out of the door ready for a fight. The snow flew back and forth. We chased up and down the stairs, we tackled, and yes, I even managed to get snow down the backs of at least 3 of the boys. This, I soon found out was not the wisest thing I could have done. I soon was being rolled in the snow, and having considerable amounts of snow shoved up my shirt, down my pants and anywhere else they could get their young boy hands. The #7s, after having turned all of us into soggy messes, grew tired of our game. We ran off down the street to find new friends to play with. We ended up at the Hammock House (so named, for the hammock that swung from the front porch). It was a well known fact in our neighborhood that the boys who lived in the Hammock House rarely, if ever, locked the front door. We took full advantage of this and burst in their front room and threw as much snow at them as we could before they chased after us, and chase after us they did. Tom, Dick and Harry came racing out, fully clad in their boxer shorts and t-shirts. Apparently frostbite wasn't an issue with them. The three of them proved to be much more ruthless foes than our previous playmates. I was doing everything in my power to keep from being used as a snow plow by Tom, while Cooper, the Beautician and Kathleen Caffeine were distracting Dick and Harry from behind a hedgerow. The retreat was sounded and we ended the fun by running away, around the corner laughing and screaming toward our apartment. (These events became known as Snow War I and Snow War II and led to a semester of practical joking and pranking between us and both sets of boys.) Later that night, after having changed clothes and having consumed considerable amounts of warm beverages, I walked back out into the snow and stood under the street lamp on the corner. A new layer of snow was beginning to fall, covering our footprints in the snow. The street lamp gave off a pinkish glow that reflected up the ground, making the rest of the street, and the air pink as well. It was totally silent and marvelously breathtaking. Sometimes I miss the snow, the sound of it under my feet, how peacful it looked as it gently fell and how pink it looked from my vantage point under the street lamp. 3:28 p.m. - December 06, 2001 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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