REMEMBERING WHEN: The schoolyard snowball fight
By Keith Schell
When I was growing up, snow was a fun and magical thing; unlike today, when I cringe every time I see the first sign of snow and start looking around for the snow shovel. As kids, we thought of all the fun things we could do out in the country when it started snowing; tobogganing, skiing, going snowmobiling, playing pickup hockey in the driveway or on the pond, making snowmen and snow angels, and all the other winter activities that kids enjoyed. But the one winter thing back then that many kids loved to do in the schoolyard was to have snowball fights.
Because of the threat of injury, snowball fighting was originally banned in the schoolyard by our teachers. But telling kids they can’t do something, unless you had the ways and means to successfully back it up, was like pouring gasoline on the ground and then telling the lit match you threw into it not to start the fire. When the snow began in the late fall, the schoolyard would fill up quickly and the school board would have to tender a contract to get someone to come in and clear the snow from the playground. The contractor would come in with large front-end loaders, clean up the playground, and dump all the snow in one section of the playground, creating a huge snow mountain in that area.
We kids would play ‘King of the Mountain’ on that huge pile of snow. The big kids who got to it first at recess were the ones to scale and occupy the top, and the rest of us who got there later would try to knock them off the mountain and take over the top by any means possible, charging and scaling the mountain with war whoops and flinging as many snowballs as possible at the kids on the top in order to drive them off the mountain.
Snowball fights being banned at recess, all the kids participating were quickly caught by the teachers and marched into the school, lined up in the hallway, and made to wait for the Principal to come to administer discipline. Because our Principal also taught grade eight in the early days, the grade eights were hoping that all the other kids would all get the strap because it would take so long for the Principal to administer punishment that their class would get out of schoolwork for the rest of the day!
Of course, kids being kids, they invariably started throwing snowballs again the very next recess. Unable to keep the kids in line and unwilling to put in the extra time to police the situation, the teachers finally gave up. They bowed to the inevitable and eventually created a designated snowball fighting area in the schoolyard. The area in the playground where the loaders piled all the snow, creating a large snow mountain, became the designated snowball fighting area. The entire school was warned that if they ventured into that area they did so at their own risk. And the snowball fights began in the schoolyard in earnest.
Me being a prime target and a lousy thrower, I rarely ventured into the snowball fighting area after it was created. But when I did go in, I learned to duck pretty quickly! I sure saw a lot of great snowball fights back then! And there were always a couple of kids you didn’t like who were throwing snowballs in the designated area that you hoped would get one right in the puss!
No matter how many times you told them not to, there was always one smart-alecy kid in every crowd who loved to ‘poke the bear’. One day, our own ‘King of the Smart-Alecs’ climbed atop the highest peak on the giant snow mountain in the snowball fight area, spread his arms as wide as they would go, and yelled down to the crowd on the ground, “FREE SHOT! FREE SHOT!” And of course, everyone throwing snowballs couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that! They stopped throwing snowballs at each other, turned their attention exclusively to him, and started throwing all their snowballs at the Smart-Alec. Incredibly, everybody missed him! Emboldened by the poor aim of the snowball-throwing mob, he continued to loudly taunt the crowd with a smirk on his face, daring them to hit him. This went on during every recess for a few days, but one day, the kid’s luck finally ran out. One recess a kid on the ground wound up and finally hit the smart-alecy kid right in the face with a snowball in mid-taunt and bloodied his nose! Holding his face, he shut up and ran down the hill and into the boys’ washroom to tend to his bloody nose. Lesson learned, he never taunted the snowball-throwing crowd again!
It was mostly all boys in the snowball fighting area, but sometimes the odd girl would go in to throw a snowball at someone she was mad at. Not many boys threw snowballs back at the girls, unless it was their sister, because you weren’t supposed to hit girls, right? And aside from the odd bit of snow going down someone’s shirt when they got hit, no one ever really got hurt unless someone played dirty and threw a slushball, which occasionally happened.
Not that it still doesn’t happen sometimes, but I highly doubt if schoolyard snowball fighting is sanctioned in this litigious day and age. Kids aren’t allowed to be kids anymore. The risk of injury and lawsuit these days is just too great. Compared to the stuff we did, it seems like kids aren’t allowed to have any fun at all in the schoolyard these days.
But the memories of our schoolyard snowball fights, where we learned to have fun and sometimes face the consequences, will always bring a smile to my face. They remind me of simpler times when fun could be found in a handful of snow and a schoolyard full of kids.