“Charge!” The outer circle boomed, quickly advancing forward throwing everything we had at the enemy. I took cover quickly along with my fellow warriors Justin, Grant and Dan – brothers that went through everything that day. Lying just in front of the inner circle we opened fire, attempting to flank our enemy and split them in two. Smack, I was hit. My shoulder stung, but only for a second as I wiped the snow from my jacket.
The DuPont Circle snowball fight saw everything - artillery from the back, full out charges, back hits, face hits, American Flags, shower curtains, a Brazilian flag that seemed slightly out of place in a snowball fight, Associated Press photos, sore arms and more laughs then I can remember having.
The perfect formula fell into place: two feet of snow that crippled DC; two thousand people with nothing else to do; a temperature right around 30 degrees for great, wet snow; and a message about a snowball fight at 2 pm that spread across DC blogs, social media and word of mouth. I think I’ll be the first to dub this DC’s white revolution.
Epic is now what people are calling it. And I can’t argue with that. I don’t ever think I’ve felt more like a nine-year-old, not even when I was actually nine. I mean, two-thousand people all there just to have fun, and lots of it. Throwing snowballs at everyone – some doing more watching from the back, others having face bruises from standing right up front. No one got angry when they got hit, no tempers flared. Just lots of good ole’ fun.
A sense of community and ease filled the air. Yes, we were snowed snowed it with nothing else to do, but it made me proud to live in DC, that something so big and, well, epic, went off without issue. The last time I felt a similar air was Obama’s Inauguration.
Even before we headed to Dupont shortly before two, Justin, Grant and I felt the snowball fight might be big. The word was spreading, that was clear. But it also was turning out to be a rather beautiful snowfall with fairly warm temperatures. So, with the city paralyzed, we got dressed like kids to play in the snow. We walked straight down Connecticut Avenue with hundreds of other people.
I became anxious, we all did. Like getting ready for a big game anxious. Like the big first date anxious. Like the Christmas morning anxious. We wanted to run, well at least I did, but we walked. Maybe out of fear of looking too much like, well, a nine-year-olds. Little did we know.
It already started when we arrived, we could see if down the hill as we approached. What a sight. Literally thousands of people crowded Dupont Circle, which isn’t all that big.
The snowball fight former around the middle. A solid group – maybe a hundred or so – held their ground in a circular formation around the base of the fountain. Everybody else circled around them about 10 meters away. Let’s just say the people in the middle got hit a lot, but clearly were having some of the most fun.
It was a mix of capture the flag, artillery coordination launching onto the center circle and charges led by people like Grant, Justin, Dan and me. Yes, we were those guys. Well, kids, we were only nine-years-old.
We packed our snowballs, took cover behind one another and recited battle line after battle line from the Revolutionary War, to Brave heart, to every other classic line from a battle or war movie you can imagine. And people laughed, so we kept yelling.
Some two hours later, energy fading, we called it quits. We had engages in two snowball fights, the one in the middle and a splitter fight off to the side. We hardly left the front lines. Soaked, tired and starting to get cold, it was time to leave. And there is only one more thing to do on a snow day, head to the bar to warm up.