Grown Men and Snowballs...

It's been snowing here... it's practically a blizzard!  Well, okay, it's a "blizzard" by our standards anyway.  Like I said in my previous post - it rarely snows here, so when it does we get really excited.

So I was cooking dinner and I kept hearing the faint sound of snowballs hitting the side of our house.  I thought "oh, how cute... the kids are having a snowball fight."  I knew that Jason and Benjamin were out making a snowman - or at least that's what I thought.

I went outside to check on them and that's when I learned that the men on our street - yes, the grown, adult men - were in the the middle of a huge snowball fight.  And according to the witnesses I spoke with - my husband started it. The poor kids didn't stand a chance.  And the men spared no one... every one, small children included, were fair game.  

One woman was innocently getting out of her car after returning home from work and was pegged in the back with a snowball.  Luckily she was a good sport about it.  Jason and our neighbor Tony conspired to attack our neighbors across the street.  Tony rang their doorbell and then hid around the side of the house, and when they opened the door and Jason yelled "Hi neighbor!" from across the street, Tony ambushed them.  They were good sports, too.  In fact, they were really good sports - they started grabbing at snow and retaliated. Good for them.  

I am not sure what it is about an undisturbed yard full of freshly fallen snow that makes grown men act like nine-year-old bullies on a playground, but I witnessed the phenomenon first hand. Grown men, fathers, flying through the air pelting each other with tightly packed balls of snow.  Adult men squealing and laughing and hiding on the sides of houses and behind cars, waiting for a victim to attack.  It was hysterical.  And at the same time, oddly sweet and charming.