DuBose: First round of the snow fort smack-down

On Sunday morning, after they’d had their fill of bacon and French toast, the conversation among my children and their friends turned to fort building. Noah and his buddy Christopher have built a snow fort at the corner of Christopher’s yard every winter since we moved to Batavia four years ago. But this year, their little sisters are entertaining their own fort fantasies. In fact, Holly and Rachel have decided to build theirs at the edge of our yard, diagonally across the street from the boys’.

Let the games begin. Can’t you just see the snowballs being hurled from one side of the street to the other and back again? First, though, the ramparts must be raised.

As for the girls’ efforts, the boys weren’t impressed.

“They keep saying we only build walls,” Holly complained when I peeked outside to check on the girls’ progress. They’d only been at it a little while but already had a firm foundation in place. But there wasn’t much snow to be had so it was slow going. And experience was in the boys’ favor.

“Hey,” I called, “you guys can use the sled to pile up snow from other parts of the yard and drag it to where you need it, you know?” Holly shrugged and continued packing snow into blocks. I wasn’t sure if Rachel heard me, but it was too cold to wait for a response so I shut the back door.

“We build tunnels that you can go in,” Christopher volunteered when I returned to the dining room. Maybe so, but they hadn’t built them yet; they’d only spent a few minutes the day before staking out their territory. And Sunday morning, they did little more than hunker down and stay warm indoors playing video games on their computers while their little sisters got to work in the 11 degree weather. It seemed the boys were waiting for more snow to fall before they invested more time in the project.

Meanwhile, the girls worried the boys would destroy their fort.

“If anyone destroys anyone else’s fort, I’ll knock theirs down,” I announced, immediately regretting how dumb that sounded. Even Noah, whose raised eyebrow was visible above his computer screen, knew it was a lame threat – and lame parenting. Indeed. I’m not sure what I’ll actually do if someone messes with someone else’s fort. Maybe the offender will be required to help rebuild. Or make snowballs to fill his opponents’ armory. Or take out the trash.