International Pillow Fight Day

When my sister in Florida who I visited last week for my birthday (an annual tradition), asked if I wanted to participate in a giant public pillow fight at Riverside Park in Jacksonville April 3, I hesitated.

It was the second celebration of its kind - at that location anyway - to commemorate International Pillow Fight Day held every year on the above date all over the country and in other countries. Sizes range from small to full-scale blow-outs and most of the participants are twentysomething or younger with a few older ones who are young at heart thrown in for good measure.

My sister asked me about it a few weeks before my trip and we managed to fit it in between a spinning class and an arts festival, then we grabbed lunch afterwards.

It had been 15 years since I'd been to the Riverside area where I used to live and a lot had changed.

The rules of the fight were to bring a soft pillow, not to hit anyone with glasses or anyone who was holding something, no one standing off to the side, or any people not holding a pillow.

Two local news crews were there and as my sister and I arrived, two participants were leaving, having been winded from the fight.

"Was it fun?" my sister asked and they enthusiastically said "Yes."

The first year of the Jacksonville celebration last year the event got started late and there weren't as many participants as had been hoped for by Christian, one of the twentysomething organizers.

I saw a couple of little kids and there was one older guy who had folded his pillow in a bag and wound his arm around every time he got ready to swing. Someone even brought a body pillow.

The WFAA news video captured my sister running around and as I dodged in and out of pillow fights, I heard a couple of girls yell out, "Green shirt," "Striped shirt," "Get the blue one" as to who to hit.

I was "green shirt" while some other people wore their pajamas and slippers.

I counted this free activity which takes most of us back to our childhood as another one of my exercises for the day.

"When people are barely swinging their pillows, than it's time to take a break," Christian told a reporter.

Long Branch, New Jersey's pillow fight started at 11:45 p.m. and no feathered pillows were allowed at some of the events. Two five-year-olds even took part at such a fight in Edinburgh.

Flash mobs of pillow fighters gathered in 150 cities where some young people took out their frustrations by way of the light-hearted "sport."

It all started in New York City in 2007 and has grown from there with participants as far away as Brussels, Paris, Germany, Switzerland, and several other areas.

One group touted it as an "urban playground movement," a playful part of the larger, public space movement. (Source: Village Voice).

Any city worth living in has an annual pillow fight day, says pillowfightday.com.

The activity is more exhausting than you would think, as one older woman attested.

And popular.

International Pillow Fight Day's Facebook Page based in Perth, Australia, has 245 fans.