It took the guts and the gumption of a 9-year-old boy to get one Colorado town to overturn its legal ban on snowball fights.
That’s right – snowball fights.
According to this, the 3,000-person town of Severance, Colorado had in place a 98-year-old ordinance against throwing rocks and other “missiles,” which apparently included playfully lobbing harmless chunks of snow.
“All of the kids always get blown away that it’s illegal to have snowball fights in Severance,” Kyle Rietkerk, the town administrator’s assistant, told the Tribune.“So, what ends up happening is [town leaders] always encourage the kids with, ‘You have the power you can change the law.’ No one has.“
Enter 9-year-old Dane Best, who took it upon himself to research the issue and argue against the ban before the city council in a speech Monday bolstered by letters of support from his third-grade classmates.
“The children of Severance want the opportunity to have a snowball fight like the rest of the world,” Dane told town leaders during a meeting on Monday.
“The law was created many years ago. Today’s kids need a reason to play outside,” he added.
Dane’s speech in defense of snowballs persuaded the town to unanimously overturn their bizarre restriction. Afterward the council, including the mayor, and all the attendees went out for a ceremonial first snowball throwing – conducted, of course, by Dane himself. If that weren’t enough, the kid’s already on to his next target: another ridiculous city ordinance that defines “pets” as cats and dogs only, and restricts each household to having a maximum of three.
Good on this kid for recognizing an injustice and stepping up to correct it. But then again, one can only wonder why a town ever had such a ridiculous law in the first place.