10 This Means War!

10 This Means war! Well, that was humiliating. On Thursday morning, it stopped raining finally. All the bunks gathered at the flagpole for assembly. Uncle Ahdoanwanna was waiting for us. He was wearing underwear over his pants. I had no idea why.

"Why are you wearing underwear on top of your clothes?" somebody asked. "Oh," he replied. "Today is Wear Your Underwear over Your Clothes Day. I probably should have told you before you got dressed." That was weird. Uncle Ahdoanwanna told us it was another big day too. It was Color War Day. He said we would have an all-out competition, like the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Olympics all rolled into one. "Who are we competing against?" somebody asked. "Camp Botshagotta," he replied. What?! Boys against girls? "We will crush them!" some guy yelled, and then everybody started chanting, "CRUSH THEM! CRUSH THEM! CRUSH THEM!" After we finished chanting, somebody hollered, "What does the winning camp get?" "Bragging rights," said Uncle Ahdoanwanna. Oh. In other words, you win nothing. Bragging rights is what you win when they don't want to give out a prize. It's not fair, but it's still fun to win.

We marched out to the big sports field that we never got to play on because it was always raining. It was pretty muddy. A few minutes later, the girls from Camp Botshagotta arrived. "You're going to lose, Arlo!" Andrea shouted as she walked past us. "Your face is gonna lose!" I shouted back at her. We glared at the girls across the field, and they glared back at us. It was a lot like last night's social. "Welcome to Color War Day!" Uncle Ahdoanwanna hollered into a bullhorn. "It will be the best of seven games, like the World Series. The first camp to win four will be the winner. Game One will be Tug-of-War." In the middle of the field was a long, thick rope. The Ahdoanwanna boys lined up on one side of the rope and the Botshagotta girls lined up on the other side. In a tug-of-war, each team pulls on the rope and tries to pull the other team toward them. We all picked up the rope. "This is gonna be a piece of cake," Ryan said to me.

Huh? What did cake have to do with anything? Why was everybody always talking about cake? "On your mark! Get set!" shouted Uncle Ahdoanwanna. "Pull!" We pulled. I thought it would be easy, but the girls pulled back hard. We pulled back harder. So did they. The rope wasn't moving one way or the other. It was hard to hold on. The girls were strong. "It's slipping!" Neil shouted. The rope was pulling me forward. It was hard to hold on. Finally, the girls pulled us over the line. Everybody was falling all over everybody else. We had mud all over us. It was gross. "Camp Botshagotta wins Game One!" shouted Uncle Ahdoanwanna. The girls went crazy, yelling

and screaming their heads off. "GIRLS RULE! BOYS DROOL!" they chanted. Okay, so they won Game 1. That only made us more determined to beat them. Game 2 was Hula- Hooping. The counselors passed out twenty Hula- Hoops randomly, ten to the girls and ten to the boys. Whichever team had the last hula hooper who was still hula-hooping would be the winner. "Oh, we got this!" shouted one of the girls from Camp Botshagotta. The only boy in my bunk to get a Hula-Hoop was Candyman, so all we could do was cheer him on. "On your mark! Get set!" shouted Uncle Ahdoanwanna. "Hula!" All twenty kids started hula-hooping. A few of them didn't know how to do it, and their hoops dropped to the ground right away. But most of the kids were pretty good. One by one, the hoops dropped to the ground. Finally, it was down to two kids, Candyman and a girl from Camp Botshagotta. They must have hula-hooped for ten minutes. You could tell they were both really tired.

And then, the girl looked like she was going to pass out. She dropped her hoop. "Camp Ahdoanwanna wins Game Two!" shouted Uncle Ahdoanwanna. "Go, Candyman!" I shouted. We all high-fived Candyman. He told us he is training to be a professional hula hooper when he grows up. That guy is weird. Now it was tied at one game each. The Color War went on all day, except for a break for lunch. We won Game 3, which was Capture the Flag. Camp Botshagotta won Game 4 —Squirt Blaster Battle. They also won Game 5— Relay Races. But we won Game 6—the Smelliest Shoe Contest. It was all tied up again. Camp Ahdoanwanna had won three games, and Camp Botshagotta had won three games. "This is it," announced Uncle Ahdoanwanna. "Game Seven is for all the marbles!" Huh? What do marbles have to do with anything? "Game Seven is the Bed Race," hollered Uncle Ahdoanwanna. "Each camp has to pick up a bed with one camper on it and carry it fifty yards.