Chances and Changes: My Journey with Molly

Miss Butternut was right. All Wet Day is really fun. All of us in Tent Ten are a team in the bucket brigade. We line up next to the team from Tent Eleven, and every girl has a bucket. Each is empty except the first one. Molly’s first in line so when the whistle blows, she turns and pours the water from her bucket into Linda’s, who then pours it into Bobbie’s, who then pours and fills Nancy’s, and so on down the line. The team that passes the water to the end of the line first wins. There’s a lot of shrieking and spilling and splashing and laughing. Most of the water is sloshed out, so we’re all drenched. Although our team loses, it doesn’t matter. We’re all laughing so hard that we feel like winners.

For the water slide, the counselors have unrolled a long canvas tarp down the steep path to the baseball field and drenched it with water. We sit on trays from the Dining Hall and slide down one at a time, each after the other in a row, and Miss Archer times us with a stopwatch. Our tent wins the water slide race. Linda says that not only did we have the fastest time, but we’re also the only team whose members stayed on the trays without tumbling off.

The swim meet is more serious. Linda won second place in the freestyle and Bobbie won first in the breaststroke. And guess who wins the gold medal for excellence in the diving competition?