One time, we were in the middle of a softball game at camp and I felt something hit me in the eye. I dropped to the ground and looked around (with my one good eye) to see what hit me. Suddenly, I realized it was hailing. Pieces of ice the size of golf balls were falling out of the sky. One minute we’re playing softball and its a beautiful sunny day with not a cloud in the sky and the next minute its hailing on us. And it hurt. These were big chunks of solid ice and they were falling fast. We ran for cover. Every kid took off in a different direction. We were tripping over each other in a frantic search for shelter from the storm. The nearest roof was the boat shack by the lake and we barricaded ourselves inside. We waited in there amongst the life preservers and paddles and oars waiting for the storm to pass. Suddenly, we realized one of the camp’s boats was still out on the lake. We could just barely make out that two girls were in a paddle boat and the boat was going down in the storm. A bunch of us bolted out of the shack and raced through the gauntlet of hail to help the girls. We jumped into a rowboat and raced out onto the lake. It took a few minutes before we reached them and rescued them into our boat. They were wet and scared and very grateful.

I never did forget that summer hailstorm and I’m sure those two girls, wherever they are, didn’t either.