Snowball Fights, White Elephants and Upton Sinclair: A Teen Reports from Winter Break

After five days of testing, I was ready for two weeks of freedom.

Fourteen days of no obligation, homework, or stress were calling my name. From the very first exam, anticipation had been growing and it culminated into the final bell. There isn’t one high school student who doesn’t feel this way about Winter Break. I could have talked to anyone that last day and the sentiment would have been identical, something along the lines of, “let’s blow this popsicle stand!”

The reasoning behind this desperate need for a break is simple mathematics. Seven classes a day (or eight, if one takes a zero hour), plus any extracurricular activities (most students I know are in at least two and don’t leave school until 6 p.m.), added to any other obligations (work, activities outside of school), multiplied by hours of homework every day and even more on the weekends effectively equals almost no free time.

Well, the break wasn’t completely worry-free. Almost two hundred pages of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle were due back on Jan. 6, read and annotated for literary devices. A few other assignments with these first 16 chapters needed to be completed before our English class returned to school. Not an overly difficult task when spread over 14 days, but teenagers suffer from chronic procrastination.

Adults are busy over break. There are holiday parties to attend or host, estranged relatives to put up with and teenagers who are no longer in school to keep tabs on. We teenagers have our own plans. We too have parties to attend or host, some estranged relatives to put up with and constant Facebook checks to perform in order to know what our friends are up to.

Once the Christmas hustle and bustle was over, I set about with the diabolical planning of my first Winter Break adventure; an adventure so purely epic that it would rival anything from the movies.

On Dec. 28, opposing sides would face off on the white plains of the field in the middle of the subdivision, some would fall and some would emerge victorious. Yes, the eight combatants were all 17, but who doesn’t love a snowball fight, especially a snowball fight that turns into a snowman-building contest (the poor snowmen were later dismantled to create snow-projectiles)? With hot cocoa and cookies waiting for us after we’d worn ourselves out, it was a classic winter moment.

Of course, there were a few more “normal” activities for the break. I did go to a few parties on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (one containing a hilarious White Elephant Gift Exchange). A few of my friends were lucky enough to escape the cold in warmer places such as Florida or the Bahamas. Overwhelmingly, however, and universally, we teenagers enjoyed the company of our friends. Whether it was hurtling snowballs at each other, relaxing at a party, counting down to the New Year, watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy in one day, or simply talking and laughing, it seemed I was never alone. After talking to a few of my fellow students, I realized that I wasn’t the only one who had spent my Winter Break this way. Teens are not solitary creatures, after all.

All the schools in Tinley Park have resumed by this point, and it’s back to the daily grind. We’ll see our friends, but only in the hallways or before and after class. There will be some grand adventures, but mostly, we will lie in wait, working, as the song says, for the weekend (and eventually Spring Break).