Friday, November 03, 2006

Procrastination I: Snow Forts

You can go on about the glory days for ages and everybody sits around, puffing up their chests, and telling a story thats just a little bit better than yours. It starts with the gentle snowfall and the feeling that there is no work to be done.
We were sitting around in our living room, clean for once. The TV displayed the twisted characters of a Nintendo game gone glitched, and left forgotten. Stuart was staying with us that night, and he joined in the general reveling in the past.
The first story was about a snowman gone wrong. The snow was piled too high for anybody to go to school, and the children were out playing it. They pushed a ball, which grew in size as if ploughed its way through the crisp new snow. This is where the term "snowballing" comes from. I only say that because people don't think about the expressions they use often, and although this one is obvious, not all of them are. Some people just don't know what a lot of these expressions we use mean. Stop and think about it next time you use one. The snowball that was supposed to be the bottom of a snowman was too big by the time they got it in position. It was almost as tall as the child that had rolled it. A gleam of inspiration shone in his eye, and with fervor he attacked the snow again. Soon there were two, three more snow balls of immence diameter beside the first. Other children joined in. A ring was made, and a mighty fortress remained from that day unto the spring.
At school, another boy started digging into a snowhill. His friends started digging into the other side. The teachers told them the dangers of collapsing tunnels, and the foolishness of what they were doing, and then that they were not permitted to continue their activity. Yet, the children were too stubborn to listen, and the tunnel was made. the bodies of many children worming their way through worn it smooth and gave it a hard shell. The plow would put new snow in the tunnel, but always the children found it again, scooping out the new ice, lenthening the tunnel, building offshoots, an entire entwork. The mound of ice was an anthill of activity, and the children scurried inside, safe from the reaching arms of adults who could not fit in to find them

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