Boom Boom FIREPOWER

On a Spring day in 2011, the lowest area of Happy Hollow (conveniently right where the Kessler's house is located) had completely turned into a flooded theme park. It had been raining for hours, and there was no breaks in the blanket of saturated clouds over Western Kentucky for miles. The Hollow was desolate; most of our neighbors were huddled inside watching the daily episode of "Lets Make a Deal" (at least I assume they were, because who doesn't love "Lets Make a Deal"?). If any of those families had peeked out the windows on that day though, they almost certainly would have seen three river rats, AKA Mia, Meredith, and I, soaking up every bit of the flowing water.

We started in the creek in the Kessler's yard, attire consisting of dingy t-shirts and soccer shorts. Creek was probably an understatement on this day, because at least to our little legs, it seemed like a swollen river. After leaping across our own little Nile, we decided to run and swim in the mini lake that had formed in the ditch across the street. We needed a running start, and for our running start we needed a cheer. Having recently watched "Night at the Museum", we decided on Boom Boom FIREPOWER! We did our cheer on our side of the road, sprinted to the other side of the road, and launched ourselves into the over-sized puddle.

However, all of this was child's play compared to the main event. The house across the street had a creek in there front yard that had some depth to it, probably two and a half feet. After all the rain, it was a raging current inviting us to dip our toes in. We knew it was dangerous; there was a wide culvert about 50 feet down from where we decided to get in. Therefore, we developed a system. There were three positions, one person occupying each position at any given time. There was the swimmer, the catcher, and the watcher. The swimmer was the person in the water. They would slide in, lift their feet up, and ride the current. The catcher would be about 20 feet down from the swimmer's starting point to give them a hand getting back out of the water. The watcher stood near the road and would yell if a car came so we could hide (all cars contained firing squads that would shoot us down for trespassing). If the swimmer couldn't get themselves out of water and the catcher missed them, then it was deemed an emergency situation and the watcher would run over and act as another catcher right before the culvert to ensure no one met their death in the raging tunnel. Thankfully, this never occurred. We had an absolute blast drifting down the flood waters, rotating positions after every two rides.

While everyone else was screaming at the TV because they KNEW that the Big Deal was behind Curtain 2 and the bozo in the gorilla mask picked Curtain 1, we were dancing in the rain.