The flying 5th graders of Mt. St. Helens

Back in 5th grade, I went to a week-long summer camp all about geology.  The real draw of the camp was that there was a Thursday to Friday overnight where we would road trip out to Mt. St. Helens, spend the night there, and then road-trip back on Friday.  We did some really cool things on the trip, like exploring lava flow caverns and climbing through holes where trees had been during lava flows, but the most memorable part of the trip was actually the part I have almost no memory of at all.

For the overnight part of the trip, we were all put into rooms with several beds.  I shared my room with five other girls.



All that I remember about that room is what I have drawn: I shared the largest bed with girls who will be known as Blue and Red next to a full or queen bed containing Green and Pink.  There was an table between our beds, I believe, and the gap between the beds was quite skinny - maybe only a foot or a foot-and-a-half.  Orange, the lucky girl, got a twin to herself.

Before we went to sleep, Blue told Red and me that she had a weird habit of kicking things in her sleep.  I wasn't worried - I had a whole human cushion in between me and her.

Now I have no memory of what happened in between going to sleep that night and waking up the next morning.  All I know is that the next morning I woke up on the floor in the narrow gap between the two beds with no idea of how I got there.  The answer I got was much more interesting than I had expected.

According to the other girls, at some point during the night I had fallen between the beds.



I don't know if we know why it happened - either I'm just clumsy and not used to sharing a bed or if, in a human version of a Newton's cradle (those little things people have on their desks with the swinging silver spheres), Blue kicked Red and somehow I was the one who carried all the momentum.  Either way, I didn't wake up - at least not long enough to form memories.

What happened next was the strangest part.  Apparently, through some weird twist of physics, Blue kicked Red hard enough that she actually flew over me and landed on the other bed.




I'm pretty sure Red and Pink weren't too happy about this.

The weird thing is that even though people were flying over my head, I was the only person in the room not to wake up or have any memory of the thing.  Could they all have been lying?  Maybe.  But I don't see why.  My hypothesis is that I hit my head hard enough when I fell to the floor that I was actually knocked out for a little while.  Anyway, it's one of the most interesting things that happened to me as a child, and I missed the whole thing.

P.S.  Is it just me, or does Blue look like Gir from Invader Zim in that last drawing?