Corea was from the same housing project as Bradbury and I were. He was a different breed from us. He was strong, rough, and unforgiving. Corea was a bad-ass bully. He had a last name, but I never learned it.

How Bradbury had befriended him, I could never figure out. But Corea was protective of Bradbury, and through Bradbury, he was protective of me, which was all that mattered. When the three of us were out together, we were an unstoppable raw force of nature. Corea supplied the brawn, Bradbury provided the brains, and I lent us my odd world view.

One morning in the middle of January, when the wind was blowing cold and hard, the three of us met in the neighbourhood park. We played in the snow, which was heavy and packable. I remember that Bradbury and I spent some time building a snowman, only to have that "Hell Raiser" Corea decapitate it with a tree branch.

"So what are we going to do now?" asked Corea, branch in hand.

We stood around for a bit, thinking of what adventures we could get into. In the distance I saw a few younger kids digging a tunnel in the snow. I felt quite powerful and bold in the company of our enforcer, and I pointed at the kids, and said, "Let's get 'em."

Well we must have flown, because we were on top of the little victims before they knew what we were doing. Bradbury and I mostly supervised Corea's strategic destruction of the tunnel. First, he blocked the entrance with one of the kids caught off guard inside. Then he began to jump up and down on the top of the tunnel, collapsing its roof. We heard the cry of the trapped eight year old as Corea reached through the snow and pulled him up from below. Corea dropped the kid to the ground, and the tiny thing blubbered profusely.

The children all ran away, and we stood triumphant over the ruins of their abandoned construct. It was a satisfying feeling to be the master of the situation, to have such total control over those helpless kids. And the best part is that we didn't have to lift a finger to exert our power. A third party did it for us.

"That was cool," Bradbury said. "Now what?"

"Let's get out of here," Corea said. "Before they get their mommies."

And so we left hastily for our next conquest.

We walked up into the area called the "podium". It was essentially a large platform that connected three apartment buildings together. The reflecting pools on the podium had turned into ice rinks, and everything shimmered with winter effects.

We played on the rinks, using our heels to smash through the thin ice. We could see large air bubbles move around as we walked on the ice, but it was usually too thick to break through with a rubber boot. This type of activity occupied us for the better part of an hour, until a little rug rat came up to us.

"Can I play too?" he asked in a high, soft voice.

"You're too little to play," said Bradbury to the kid, who was dressed in a beat-up hand-me-down parka and puffy snow-pants.

"Aw c'mon!" the kid complained as he used his mittens to push up his floppy wool toque, which had slipped over his eyes.

Corea got a bright idea and grabbed the kid roughly. "Give me your hat," he said.

"No, it's mine!" yelled the scared seven-year old.

"Give it to me!" he persisted. He grabbed the kid's hat. It was a very funny thing to see Corea pulling up on the kid's hat, and the little kid holding the hat to his head with both his mittens. Corea continued with this comedy until the kid was being led around by his hat, sliding back and forth with his back on the ice.

The kid was screaming for help very loudly by then, and his cries were soon answered.

"Leave my brother alone!" came a voice that echoed across the sky. A menacing boy-tyrant appeared a small distance from us. It was the bully who we had hit with dirt bombs the previous summer!

Corea fearlessly countered with, "What are you gonna do about it?" Meanwhile Bradbury and I were backing away as unnoticeably as possible.

"I'll show you what I'm gonna do!" screamed the menacing bully. As he got closer we could see that he was slightly taller than Corea, and a good deal wider as well. Corea let the little boy go and prepared to meet his challenger.

The interloper grabbed Corea and pulled him to the ground. The two giants tossed each other about on the ice. The ice seemed to give way under their weight, and they pushed the ice so far down that it looked like they were rolling around on a soft down mattress.

When it looked like Corea might be losing the fight, the two of us ran away. We went to the donut shop, took off some of our wet clothes, and had donuts and hot chocolate. As we were finishing off the donuts, Corea came in. Blood was frozen on his face.

"Where were you?" he yelled.

"We got scared," Bradbury said plainly.

"Why didn't you back me up?" Corea asked as he got closer.

"But you're the fighter," explained Bradbury.

Corea's face turned red. He slapped Bradbury, who was knocked to the ground. He then pushed me, and I landed forcefully against the arcade machine behind me. Corea left the donut shop, and Bradbury had forever lost his enforcer.

I had bruises all over my back, and Bradbury had a bloody nose. The sight of his blood intrigued me. I would be lying if I said that I was not rather excited by the whole incident.

The team was once again reduced to two. With the loss of our muscle, the winter became hard and drawn out. We drifted aimlessly around, traveling upon the snow-fallen ground like lost deer. Not like the wolves which we had once thought ourselves to be. Children who had feared us now ignored us, or worse they taunted us, knowing that we were nothing without our Corea.

In time we got used to the idea of running away from bigger kids, where previously we would have resisted them. In time we almost forgot about Corea, except for when one of the bigger kids showed up. Then we wished for him like a guardian angel. But our guardian never came to our defense. Sometimes we would see him outside, but he just ignored us. Thankfully he didn't turn his aggression toward us, although I was interested in finding out what it would be like if he was really angry.

While the snow was cold back then, it didn't seem as cold as it does now. I remember one time when I got into a snowball fight without gloves. I put up a good fight, and afterward I went inside and wrapped my stiff hands around a mug of hot chocolate. I remember how red and raw my hands were, and how much they stung. They had such little feeling, and they were very immovable. It was an entertaining and enticing experience.

During that same winter I was walking alone at the back of my apartment building. There was a piece of paper sticking out of the snow, so I picked it up. It was an advertisement for a phone-sex company. There was a picture of a topless woman, with a phone number printed underneath the photo. I forget the number, or the name of the company.

I kept that picture for more than a year. It provided me with endless entertainment. Nobody else ever saw it, not even my cousin. I would spend a lot of time by myself, just staring at the picture. I was not old enough to fully feel adult feelings. But still, I would imagine grabbing her breasts, kneading them, jiggling them, and squeezing them. I might have been objectifying her. But in many ways I was still a child, and innocent, and I was just replacing one toy with another. And to be truthful I could barely tell the difference between "good" and "bad" thoughts, except for when a priest told me what was bad. The picture eventually got thrown out as I got older and graduated to the Sears Catalogue. I think throwing it away was a mistake, because she had perfect breasts.

When I think about winter I think about snow, cold, and the warm indoors. One particularly warm time that I recall was in grade five. There was a young girl with prematurely developing breasts who had a tendency to wear loose pullovers with no bra. So we would sit at the desk in front of her, and we'd draw a picture, and then ask her to add to it. She'd lean over her desk to draw on the picture, and her top would fall a little and reveal her small girlish breasts. We prided ourselves on our ingenious subtlety. I still wonder today if she was aware of what was happening, and if she was purposely exhibiting herself for our sake.

Those days in grade five were good ones. I was too young to be grown up, but too old to be unaware. It was that middle time of development between childhood and maturity. It was that time when the mind could comprehend grownup things, but society made no demands on us.

Each morning during the winter the snowplows would come and clear out the schoolyard, and the result was mounds of snow six feet high. These piles were the closest thing we had to the fantasy fortress from The Dog Who Stopped The War. The mounds ringed the schoolyard like a circle of frozen campfire logs. We would run up the vertical sides of the snow walls and jump on each other and push each other off. From time to time our celebration was interrupted by a twisted arm or an ice chip in the eye. At these moments the children would be banned from playing on the mounds. But over the period of a day or two, the prohibition would gradually wear off and we would return to rough-housing in the snow.

While other children played in the schoolyard, I would walk about with my friends looking for exciting things to do. Sometimes this meant teasing the girls, especially those girls with straggly hair and unfashionable glasses. Other times this meant picking on the slow children, who despite our harassment actually looked forward to seeing us. At least we had enough respect to acknowledge their presence, even if such acknowledgment came as an elbow to the solar plexus.

I remember one particular midwinter day when I was sliding around on a patch of ice. A robust older bully-child came up to me and gave me a shove. I managed to grab his arm and prevent myself from landing with full force, but I still hit the ground. Nobody did anything to help me, and my best friend was otherwise occupied vomiting up his sandwich. Too much mustard. Recess had ended at just this time, and my teacher came out to find me lying on the ground. She accused me of skipping class, despite my protestations to the contrary.

It is difficult to describe the loneliness that I sometimes felt during winter, especially when it was too cold to go outside. Around Christmas season it was easy to feel loved and wanted. There were lots of events and parties to go to. But after this, in January and February – the true dead of winter – a feeling of uneasy solitude set in.

To help fend off this feeling, I once made a habit of following a girl home every day after school. I would run ahead of her and cut her off at the pass. Or I would hide away somewhere and throw snowballs at her. It must have irritated her, because she eventually resorted to having her older sister pick her up from school. At home I would stare out of my window, looking out at the snowy ground where she had passed, and fantasize about her. I'd think about how fun it would be to pull her hair and to pinch her. I'd imagine the feeling of punching her breasts, which I thought she would enjoy tremendously. I would even fantasize about kissing her, or some other equally disgusting thing, which was an idea that upset me a little. Mostly I just imagined punishing her for ignoring me, as if it was her fault that she wasn't interested in me.

Nothing came of my teasing of that girl. I bored of her quickly, as children tend to do, and moved on to other things. Like my infatuation with the real women on television. I think the girl was greatly relieved that I stopped directing so much of my attention toward her. Her older sister soon stopped accompanying her home from school and she returned to her own childhood ways.

How much more can I talk about winter? Being such an indoor time of the year, I do not have too many memories worth remembering. The summer was much more exciting for me.