I was no more than ten or eleven years old one summer at camp. It had been raining for days on end. It was like something right out of the Noah's Ark story. We had been cooped up inside with various indoor activities for days and we were going stir crazy. The bell for lunch sounded and we all put on ponchos and boots and ran through the storm to the dining hall.
About halfway through the meal, a young girl named Miranda, got up and went to the front of the dining hall. She whispered something in our camp director's ear and after looking at her for a second he quieted us down and told us that Miranda was going to walk us through a rain dance. Without a hint of hesitation or nervousness, Miranda put her index finger to her mouth to make the sign for quiet. There were close to 600 people in that dining hall and at that moment all you heard was the beating of the rain on the rooftop.
She asked us to follow her lead as she slowly walked around the room rubbing her hands together. Table by table kids and counselors alike began to rub their hands until the entire dining hall was doing it. The sound of 1,200 hands being rubbed together in that room made the distinct sound of a light drizzle. Miranda then started to snap her fingers and as everyone in that dining hall did the same the sound of that drizzle soon gave way to the sound of a light summer rain. Miranda took center stage again and this time slapped her hands against her thighs as she walked around the room. By now we were all under her hypnotic spell and obediently we did the same. The acoustics in that dining hall took those pounding hands and turned the sound into a heavy rainfall inside that room. Miranda raced back to the front of the room and this time while still slapping her hands against her thighs she also pounded her feet against the room's wide plank wood floor. Her loyal followers all did the same and soon our manmade summer rain had graduated to a full-fledged thunderstorm. It was incredible.
Miranda raced back to the front and this time slowly reversed the process. She went from the feet pounding back to the hand slapping then to the finger snapping then back to just the hand rubbing and finally back to nothing but that eerie silence. Only this time, the silence was complete. The storm that had been raging outside just a few short moments ago had stopped, the clouds had begun to lift and in the distance you could just barely make out the sun trying to break through the cloud cover.
I will never forget that.