Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Summer of Stories: The "Snowball Incident"

Rachel, Me & Anna, incognito.


My friends Rachel and Anna and I were destined to be friends in college. We all entered our college experience as members of the Freshman Honor Corps, a group of study-focused individuals (read: nerds) that spent the semester taking challenging courses together and participating in crazy team-building activities. Rachel and I became fast friends and became known as "the Rachels" (I miss you, other half!), and Anna frequently joined us on our adventures.

And we had many adventures, or rather, adventurous mishaps. The most infamous of these was the Snowball Incident of 2003, which began with us innocently enjoying a particularly heavy January snowfall, sliding around in the parking lots and making snow balls out of the fresh piles accumulating on commuters' cars. This progressed to a full-on snowball fight, after which, in a rush of pink-nosed giddiness, we decided to take our snowball fight into one of the dorms and ambush our friend Jackie.

So, we began the journey from our current parking lot across campus to Jackie's dorm, carrying our carefully-packed snowballs. Attempting to outdo the rest of us, Rachel kept rolling her snowball into each patch of fresh snow we encountered. The snowball was the size of a tennis ball, then a softball, then a small cantaloupe. Right before we ran into the dorm, she took advantage of one more undisturbed spot of snow, primly located in the dormitory's landscape area. The snowball was now rather bowling ball-sized; it was no longer white, but was covered in a fresh layer of mulch and dirt from the landscape area. A slushy landscape ball, if you will.

The three of us ran up the stairs, knocked on Jackie's door, and waited. She opened the door, hair freshly washed and dried and a clean outfit on. Anna and I threw our dainty snowballs. Splat. Splat. We all kinda giggled. We looked at Rachel, and she threw the monster. SPLOOSH.

It landed on Jackie's head and kind of slid down the side of her face. And then we feared for our lives, so we ran.

Jackie didn't speak to us for weeks. It took lots of apologies and "please forgive us" cards before we could be friendly again. We even volunteered to come shampoo the dirt out of her carpet.

I've never laughed so hard in my entire life. I haven't seen or talked to Jackie in years, but as for Anna and Rachel and I, that snowball cemented our friendship.

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