Grinning like an idiot in the chill winter air, my nose dripping like an open wound, I repeated the young man’s call of ownership and waited for the inevitable.
“I got dibs* on this one.”
* Dibs has almost religious meaning for young boys and calling dibs on something, anything, carries the weight of a Holy Decree carried down from the Mount. By calling dibs on something, a person has declared that they ‘own’ it. This is not to say that they actually own anything at all, but rather that everyone else must acknowledge that the dibs caller has specific rights to the item in question. Should someone else then try to acquire said object before the dibs caller, or before the dibs caller relinquishes his rights, then something unnamed and undefined yet suitably horrible would happen. Something like having to eat a booger picked fresh from the dibs caller’s nose or having to suffer the “Gas Chamber”. The Gas Chamber meant being sat upon, and farted on, by the biggest, fattest boy in the group. Hey, kids can be cruel.
I was a predator lying in wait for my next victim. I was a silent, invisible specter of doom in my bright orange jacket with brown, fake-fur lining around the hood. My blue, white and green mitten covered hands almost shaking in anticipation. The sheer thrill of the hunt filling me with more energy than any Kool-Aid and Pixie-Styx concoction ever could. Practically vibrating in place from excitement, I watched as my quarry came closer, seemingly unaware of the danger ahead.
I was holding The Most Perfect Snowball Ever™ and waiting for a bus.
Every kid growing up in the city knows about the almost symbiotic relationship between snow, kids and city buses. When snow falls in the city it’s the responsibility of the children to make like Thor and rain down fist-sized balls of powdery death upon every city bus that dares to enter their turf. And it is the duty, nay the honor, of the city-employed bus drivers to keep driving as if being pelted with thousands of soft, white, puffy meteorites were a normal part of their every day. It should be a badge of honor to them, something to brag about at the water cooler every evening.
“Hey Joe, I got hit about a thousand times on Avenue D and Flatbush. I bet there were oh… twenty, twenty-five kids out there today.”
“Ah Dan, that’s nothin’. Those kids near Ocean Ave and Kings Highway must have gotten a new leader or something cause they’re making plans. Can you believe they set up an ambush for me today?”
“No! They didn’t!”
“Yep, sure did. There musta been about a hundred kids and they all aimed for the front windshield.”
“Man, you are so lucky.”
“Don’t I know it.”
On this particular day I was with about seven or so other kids. We’d been throwing snowballs for the better part of an hour at our favorite spot, where you could see the bus coming from twenty blocks away. That left plenty of time to make snowballs and get into position before the bus got within striking distance. Everything was fine until I spotted something different about this bus, something out of place. Something so amazing, so astounding that it set my heart aflutter and my mind reeling.
The bus driver’s window was open!
I stood there for what felt like forever, staring in awe at what must have been every city boy’s winter wet dream. The perfect target for the perfect snowball. I distinctly remember thinking that whoever was driving must be new, or perhaps just stupid beyond all comprehension. An open window on a city bus when there was snow to be found?
Inconceivable!
Quickly, I set about creating The Most Perfect Snowball Ever™ and informing my compatriots that I had dibs on the next bus. This was key, because if I hadn’t called dibs, someone else might have seen the open window and called dibs first. That would have sucked and would probably have lead me down a different path on the road of life. One filled with trailer parks, lawn chairs, six-packs of cheap beer and a broken-down, gas-guzzling Ford.
Yeah, I would probably have wound up in Jersey.
I waited patiently for the bus to get close enough for the other people in the group to notice why this particular bus was so important, so special that it required a ‘Dibs Call’. It only took a few moments before they saw it too, and then everyone was in awe of my amazing luck. They all congratulated me on my find and acknowledged my right to go for the window first. Even the bigger, older kids could only look on in rabid fascination as the bus drew nearer, its open window beckoning like the high score on a Pac-Man machine, for someone brave enough to find a way to knock it down. At that moment I was like a tiny winter god to them, lording over my kingdom as I waited to pronounce a death sentence on a village idiot.
My nipples were hard.
The bus came and I took careful aim. Everything was riding on this throw; my reputation was on the line. If I missed the other kids would know that I had had greatness within my grasp and let it slip through my fingers. I would forever after be a snowball outcast, last picked during snowball fights and relegated to only making snowballs for others or being a living shield and ‘taking one for the team’.
Oh, the horror.
I couldn’t let that happen, I wouldn’t let that happen. I threw that snowball as hard as I could and it flew from my hand as if it were a hunk of steel with a laser guidance system and the bus driver was a giant magnet. It went right through the center of the open window and hit the driver square on the side of his head. Upon impact it exploded like a miniature nuclear explosion, white shards of ice and snow flying outward from the impact epicenter like a flower petal opening up in the morning sun. It hit so hard that I bet he spent the rest of the day picking snow and ice from the deep recesses of his ear canal.
My god, it was beautiful.
For the rest of the winter season I was ‘The Man’. All my friends wanted me on their snowball teams and even the older kids knew my name. I lived like a celebrity and loved every minute of it. I was famous and I owe it all to a nameless bus driver who committed the cardinal sin of driving a bus during the winter in the city and leaving his driver’s side window open. Thank you New York City bus driver, wherever you are, for being brave enough to do the unthinkable and bring joy to a young boy in Brooklyn.
Or, for being a truly stupid man and not realizing the danger you were in. Whatever.
