I work with a youth group of teenaged girls in my spare time (ha! spare time, ha ha ha!) and we try to have a big, combined activity once a month with the equivalent boys' group.  For this month's event, we purchased a large roll of contractors' plastic, tent stakes, several bottles of dish washing soap and went outside with a hose to a hill to set up a godzilla-sized slip 'n slide. Then we had to pretty much push most of the kids down it because as cool and fearless as they all think they are, when it comes to trying something new, they are WUSSIES.

 The Dormouse happened to be there with me and was not a wussie.  She wanted desperately to go on the slide and had zero reservations about trying it.  But man, for a kid who does as many things as she does well, this was not her forte.  

 Her basic modus operandi for approaching the slip 'n slide was to run, hell-bent for election, right up to the edge of the plastic, stop, jump straight up in the air and then land straight down on her belly, arms and legs spread eagle - basically the on-the-grass equivalent of a belly flop.  This gave her the momentum of a large jagged rock and she'd move about six inches down the slide, coming to a slow rest in the top one-eighth of the run. Over and over, she did this, despite the best coaching from some slip 'n sliders who'd managed to make it all the way down the hill and off the twenty feet or so of plastic we'd installed and at least one physicist's explanation of forward momentum. It was hilarious and I think I deserve a medal for making fun of her as little as I did.

Until now.