Sometimes the news on the weather channel is more chilling than the outdoors wind chill factor.
In one of those semi-news tidbits sandwiched between highs and lows, among the jetstream and El Nino, we heard the other day that children in a New Brunswick community are being saved from the dangers of snow that is formed into balls.
While playing at recess and noon hours, on school property, children in that city are not allowed to participate in the age-old custom, an annual rock-em-sock-em game of snowballs, boys against girls, teachers against students, wet snow slithering and melting down one’s neck, cheeks reddened from outdoor activity, a rite of passage that is all part of winters that actually have snow.
The New Brunswick adults who make the rules for children to follow, in their wisdom and forgetting their own childhoods, have deemed that snowballs and the throwing thereof, are potentially dangerous to the health and welfare of students who attend this specific school.
Thus mittens may touch snow, but hands in mittens may not form snowflakes into snowballs to use as any form of projectile.
Adults suggest that snowballs are potentially dangerous and if constructed incorrectly could pose a danger to the recipient. Rather than have a snowball inspection person on the playground, the rule is that snowballs are forbidden.
The news clip featured a young student, in an apparent brainwashed mode, telling what she’d been told — that snowballs are dangerous and children could be hurt if snowballs were a permitted activity on the school yard.
I am ever so grateful to the adults of my childhood for allowing children of the day to face up to the challenges of winter traditions, whether they be snowball fights, snow fort construction, toboggan rides over bumpy terrain, playing pickup hockey on a mixed team without helmets, and even anti-eye-over through the snowbanks.
In my years of participating in snowball activity, I cannot recall one incident of serious injury to any of my fellow combatants. Some of the older boys had a better arm and eye for making contact, but they backed down quickly when the teacher decided to be on the girls’ side of the contest — not that we asked him specifically to give us his expertise but we didn’t send him away.
So much in love with snowballs were we that our outdoor winter festivals on Friday afternoons always included this activity, and occasionally a neighbouring school would be invited to participate.
It was cold, it was wet, it was fun, but none of us ever considered it a danger to our personal safety, and snowballs were never banned by the superintendent of schools.
If there were any danger in the sport, it might have come after school hours when those older boys would lie in wait, with a pre-rolled supply of snowballs, for the girls to pass by the alley. We could circumvent their strategy by taking the long way home or wading through the deeper snow on the back trail down the hill — but in our minds, the boys liked us and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have thrown snowballs at us. That meant deliberately taking the direct route so we could squeal and scream as we got smacked with clumps of snow.
I can’t speak for the tricks those boys used in forming the best snowballs when they played boy-on-boy, but again, injuries didn’t seem apparent.
So, as this community in New Brunswick insulates its schoolchildren from a “dangerous” snowball fight on the schoolgrounds, who will insulate them when they step off the schoolyard, into a world where some people still believe that snow is meant for throwing, and having normal fun as a child shouldn’t be forbidden?
Joyce Walter can be reached at 691-1259
