The greatest childhood friend I ever had was a real jerk when it came to foot chases.

I remember one snowy evening when a half-dozen of us were high-tailing it through a short patch of woods. A very angry man was running after us and we imagined he was 9 feet tall and snorting flames.

I was weaving my way along the snow-covered path, desperate to outrun the monster, when my greatest childhood friend gave me a shove from behind. It threw off my momentum and my boots tangled together. I made an “oomph” sound, stumbled and sailed through the air.

I came to rest in 4 feet of snow, effectively paralyzed by the weight of it. I struggled in a panic to free myself while my greatest childhood friend continued giggling into the night.

It was fortunate that the snarling beast man gave up before trying his luck at the snowy path we kids knew from long memory. Had the man persisted, he would have found me floundering in the snow and I’d probably still be locked in his basement somewhere.

My, how I long for the days of snowballing. On a night like this, with snow on the ground all wet and sticky, my neighborhood would be alive with the staccato drumbeat of tight-packed snowballs pounding against the side of a tractor-trailer.

Oh, the thrill of adrenaline at the sound of hissing brakes. The jackhammering heart when a burly driver stepped from his rig and gave chase. In my years on the snowballing circuit, only two or three from my group ever got caught. We were professionals. We had a code.

We never threw snowballs at emergency vehicles or pickup trucks. The latter we skipped because those pickup types tend to be fleet of foot and armed more often than not.

The evening would begin with two or three of us standing behind a house. We’d fire off a few easy shots at slow-moving cars just to get the blood moving and to gauge the effectiveness of the evening’s snow. Later, after our band of hooligans had grown to a half-dozen or more, we’d spread out and try more complex shots.

My greatest childhood friend packed his snowballs small and tight so they fit perfectly in the palm of his hand. His specialty was timing his shots so that he could fire an icy projectile high into the air and have it fall with a beautiful thud 10 seconds later on the roof of the car.

Another friend, klutzy for his age, specialized in oversized snowballs. They were like small cannonballs that took all his might to hurl, but which resulted in a thunderous sound when he hit his mark. The klutzy kid was also the slowest, so you never wanted to get behind him in a foot chase.

A typical early evening in the old neighborhood sounded like this:

“Mack truck … uck… uck..”

The whistle of hard-packed snow orbs flying through air.

A thud. Another thud. Four thuds in fast succession.

Hiss!

Door opening. Man shouting. Heavy boots on the pavement.

One of us would shriek “foot chase!” and it would be on. Along the dark path through the woods, through a neighboring back yard and into the labyrinth of houses on the other side. If we made it to that sector, there was little chance we’d be caught. There was a basement window somewhere to be used only for emergency.

Ah, memories. Do kids snowball anymore? I never hear squawking about it on the police airwaves. And anyway, I would never endorse participation in such reckless, childish activity. No, sir. Because I mentioned how two or three members of my group had been caught. I blush. I burn. I reluctantly admit that I was one of them.

I only got caught because the new boots I was wearing were far heavier than I’d anticipated. It was like running with anvils on my feet. And I remember the pain of it, the horror of it. And I’m not talking about the punishment that followed. There was no punishment.

I’m talking about the abuse and torment at the hands of my buddies who had gotten away. I’m talking about the taunts and doubled-over laughter. Because now that I think of it, just about all of my greatest childhood friends were real jerks when it came to foot chases.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. Visit his blog at www.sunjournal.com.