A snowballing snowball fight

A snowballing snowball fight

It was a somewhat cold night in the winter of my junior year. It had snowed a TON the previous night and I didn't have any tooling to do the next day (or maybe I did and chose to ignore it). So I'd put on the white board that I was planning to go attack PKT at 9 pm that evening and hopefully ignite a snowball fight. Little did I know what was to occur...

So, at around 8:30 pm, I'm getting psyched up for this, several of the other cold weather types (i.e. not including the Atlantans, and the Californians who dig out their winter coats when it drops to 60 degrees) are getting psyched, when all of a sudden, somebody gave a yell up the center stairwell that we were under attack! Those evil communist pigdog slime PKTs had pre-emptively attacked us before we could attack them!

We valiantly mustered our forces and sallied forth into a blizzard of snowballs as we came out our front entrance. Shouting war cries of unintelligibility, we fought back against the hordes, across the mall and throughout the streets since there was very little traffic because the streets were still deep in slush. Eventually we came to a standstill after 10 or 15 minutes of fighting - when somebody yelled, "On to Chi Phi!!" - this being the name of the fraternity one block further down.

Thus the cry was raised, and thus did we join forces with the PKT horde to assault another fraternity with our force of around 20 people. Poor Chi Phi had apparently not been expecting an assault of this nature, and was completely unprepared as we pelted their house with snowballs as well as any Chi Phi's unclever enough to expose themselves to our onslaught. While waiting for them to do battle, and holding their house under siege, Saferide came by on its route. We, of course, immediately changed targets, and pelted Saferide with all the snow we could get our hands on before it fled the scene. Eventually, the Chi Phi's came forth to do battle in a small force, and lo, did we battle them across the street, diving behind parked cars for protection, and in general, having a good time. And after fighting for 10 or so minutes again, the cry was raised, "On to the Delts!", that being the next nearest fraternity. We had increased our forces yet again, and prepared to do battle for yet another house.

The Delts were more athletic than the previous victims and had some clear baseball training to assist them in powering their snowballs across the street. However, we persevered led by kamikaze exploits like those of Ronco, who used a slow moving taxi (it was forced to be slow moving since there were several people filling the street, not to mention the state of the road) as cover as he ran in front of their house, firing snowballs at every step. We gave as good as we got, and then recruited them to follow us onwards.

By this point, we were becoming quite a force. We had around 40-50 people running down the street onward to the next fraternity, whooping it up, throwing snowballs at most moving targets (and quite a few unmoving ones), and generally raising havoc. After hitting two more fraternities who seemed uninclined to join the fun, we crossed Mass. Ave. to confront the real "Frat Row." In the space of the next block past Mass Ave, were at least 5 or 6 MIT fraternities. By this time, we had entirely too many people, and attacked 3 or 4 at once.

So picture the scene - around 70 people in the street, running back and forth, ducking snowballs, throwing snowballs at other people in fraternity houses who are firing from upper balconies and roofs. Everybody yelling back and forth taunts and the like. Any cars that pass by are slowed to nearly a standstill by the mass of humanity in the streets, using the parked cars for cover. An interesting amusement was that any time a passing car honked to try to clear the way, everybody stopped fighting, turned around, and just PELTED that car with snow until it was 2 inches deep in snow. The lesson was to be patient since we owned the street.

Around about this time, Saferide came through again on its next round. Poor Saferide. Somebody yelled that it was coming, and all combat stopped as everybody targetted the Saferide van. Even funnier was that some poor soul tried to get off in the middle of the block and got absolutely covered in snow for their troubles. By the time Saferide got out of there, it was deeply covered in snow (as would be expected by having 70+ people throw snowballs at it).

By this point, of course, the residents of the Back Bay were slightly annoyed by the situation. After all, they paid exorbitant amounts of money to live in an upscale neighborhood, and these rapscallion college age kids were being far too rambunctious and boisterous to be allowed. The first sign we had of this was when a sedan pulled into the block and honked their horn. As usual, everybody pelted it with snowballs - then we realized that it was an Emerson College police car. However, it was driven off by the assault of snowballs and left the scene as we fought onwards.

Then the Boston Police showed up. With a patrol car, the Emerson College police car again, and a paddywagon. You know? The van that they take away multiple people to the station with? At the sight of that, it was amazing how quickly people melted away, either ducking the other way down the block (which is what I did), or into various fraternities along the street (who provided shelter to several other TEPs until the police went away). Alas, the fight was forcibly over, but not before it had become one of the biggest snowball fights I'd ever heard of - certainly the largest by far I'd participated in. And all that, from the lowly beginning of two neighbor fraternities having a good time!


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