For Children

Avery M. Gallistel

Life of a Droplet

2016 3rd & 4th Grade Prose Winner

I am a droplet. I was born in a saltwater pond with many others. Unlike you, I have no parents, guardians or family. I can travel for free and have been on every continent. I’m older than 1,000 years and have touched almost everything. I’ve gone from a pond to a sewer, a cloud to a cave, a cactus to an ocean, and from inside your bathroom back to a pond. I’ve even been inside your mouth.

RAIN

One of my many stories ends when I found myself in an enormous cave. It all started in a clear mountain lake on a hot day when all of a sudden, I started flying. As I soared higher, I grew fatter. This was because as I flew, others started attaching, all of us growing into one big me. Soon I was ten times my original size! I then became part of… What do you call it? A cloud. I was bored to death sitting in that cloud. It was just foggy. After two weeks, I started plummeting toward the earth. The closer I got to the ground, the scarier it was. Then everything went black, and when I woke up again, I was in a cave with many minerals. The minerals were crystal clear and a breathtaking sight. I soon figured out I had hit my head on rock while going down a river, and then the ground soaked me up and turned me into groundwater.

HAIL

Another adventure of mine was when I almost knocked someone unconscious. I really didn’t mean to. I was just playing a game with my friends. The object of the game was to fall to the ground as quickly as possible. In other words, it was a race. I came in second place but was only 100,000th of a second away. That’s not that bad, is it? Anyway, before I landed on the ground, I was once again in a cloud. When I was there, the wind would blow me up to the top where I would gain an icy layer each time, then fall back to the bottom of the cloud just to have it happen again. When I finally grew too heavy for the wind to carry me up again, I fell to the ground narrowly, missing a girl named Pearl. Pearl, if you’re reading this: Sorry!

SLEET

I don’t quite remember the beginning of this tale, but I do remember the end. So the brief introduction is: I was asleep, and when I woke up, I was part of a colossal cloud! (The life cycle of a water droplet somehow always involves a cloud, one way or another.) The end of the story was when we started falling. I was sleet. Some of my friends were the same, others were snow, and a few were rain droplets. When we hit the ground we became something you call slush. Many cars ran over me, and I got flung into the air many times. Each time I went airborne I felt like I was on a roller coaster.

SNOW

A fourth amazing adventure of mine was when I went skiing. I know you don’t think it’s possible for me, a snowflake, a raindrop, a block of ice to ski, but it is very possible. And no, we don’t have a little snowflake ski resort. All I have to do is be evaporated, then condensed, and finally, precipitated as snow. When I am on the ground, all I have to do is wait for someone’s skis to go under, not over me, and I sit back and enjoy the ride.

BYE-BYE

So now you know four amazing adventures of mine, but not all. As I told you, I’ve been everywhere, I’m over 1,000 years old and one more thing I purposely left out until now… I don’t need to go to school take tests, or work to make money! Life is spectacular!