In the house at the breakfast table, my dad suggested, “We need to figure out a way to collect some water.”
I replied, “Yeah,” knowing we needed a way to water our garden. It had been about a month without rain, like the Sahara desert. If we had water, the plants wouldn’t wither. We were watering our plants twice a day with five gallon buckets of water from the house spigot. Late that same evening, the whole sky had been getting coal dark. It was supposed to rain during the night, and I had thought of an idea to get the huge faded green water tank on the edge of the woods that held up to a thousand gallons of water. If I had it, then during the hot, dry summer, I could water the tropical green garden with it when it did rain. It hadn’t been used for a couple of years, and the aged bumpy tank was rolled over next to two huge, tall brown, rough hickory trees.

At about eleven o’clock at night, I left the house by myself, not telling anyone about my plan. Later, I reached the faded green tank. It wasn’t hard to move in the colorful, crunchy leaves with the brittle brown branches produced by the two hickory trees. After I moved the tank where I wanted it, which was by the house under the ancient white leaky gutters, I had to get a flashlight from the blinding darkness. I heard thunder in the distance, knowing that the storm was going to be here soon. In the night sky, I needed to work quickly. I thought of a way: I needed to create a drainage exit for the water to go into the tank. Then, I had a brilliant idea to just use a seven-foot piece of a gutter. After I hustled and retrieved the piece of gutter, I forgot duct tape to tape the gutter into place.
Like a lightning bolt striking a tree, I scrambled back as fast as I could. At the top of the faded tank, there is a fifty-inch hole in diameter. Then, I sat the gutter piece on the hole, so it wouldn’t fall in. When I finally rocketed myself up to the top of the tank, I started working as fast as I could like a worker bee. Thunder started roaring behind me in the midnight sky. I tore off about a foot of duct tape and taped the left side of the gutter. Then, I tore off another foot piece of tape and taped it on the right side. The gutter seemed to stay in place. It wasn’t, however, positioned right where the water should be going to go into the tank. Lastly, I moved the gutter down a little bit more. When I released the gutter, the duct tape on the top of the gutter that looked connected to the gutter on the house let free and fell in the hole clear to the dirty bottom.
Then, I tried to see if I could reach it, but it was too far down. Next, I took my socks off because there had seemed a little bit of muddy mushy water with mud settled at the bottom, and I didn’t care about getting my feet all mud, just my socks. I then thought, Mom would scream bloody murder at me if she had to put my muddy gross socks in her washer. I slowly lowered myself into the musty tank until I touched the gooey gunk on the bottom. I grabbed the gutter and threw it out of the hole. When I grabbed ahold of the top of the ridged hole, I tried to pull myself up but couldn’t. I just kept trying over and over and over again. I almost made it. Once, I grabbed ahold of the top, pulled myself up, then did a flip until I made my feet stick out of the hole and clamped my legs down. Then I rocketed my back up until my head stayed out a little ways, but my back sticked out too much. I tried and tried but couldn’t get out of the hole. At that point I was fiercely getting angry. My fist tightened up, and I just wanted to beat the tank up. I started to lose all hope.
Then I could hear the storm cranking up like a boom box because of the thunder and lightning. I hate lighting; I hate it. I started yelling as loudly as I could to see if someone could hear me, so I could be helped out of the tank. My vocal cords started aching. “Help me, anyone, help,” I yelled. My yelling was so loud that people could have thought it was the thunder. I grew tired of yelling because apparently no one heard me. No help was coming. My body started to get tired like when a bear is ready for hibernation. I started getting tired, and at this point I didn’t care if I became dirty. I sat down on the dirty water to think of another plan to get out of the tank. I figured I should to just stay calm. I figured someone would need me for something and would come scrambling for me. I started to get cold and tired.
I sat there for close to an hour as I thought of an escape plan. Then I heard a noise, so I pounced up to see where it was coming from. It was my brother. He asked, “What are you doing in that tank?”
“I’m stuck in here and can’t get out,” I yelled.
My brother quickly explained, “Hold on. I will be out to help you.” He had appeared out there like a cheetah. He moved up on the tank and reached down to pull me out, but it wouldn’t work. “I’m going down, too,” he explained. “That will help.”
“I don’t know how it will help,” I explained. Well, it did. He lowered himself down in the cold, damp tank with me. He devised a plan to give me a boost and push me up. We worked fast, and he had a hold of me. I was half way out, and he let go. I leaped myself up and out like a big bullfrog. Then I reached down to help him but couldn’t lift him up. Now, instead of me being stuck in the tank, my brother was also stuck in the tank. He grabbed ahold of the outside and pulled himself up until he was sitting on top of the tank. My brother asked me, “What were you doing in that tank?”
I told him, “I was trying to collect water when the seven-foot piece of gutter fell in, and I went in to get it but couldn’t get back out.”
I still wasn’t timid on giving up. I grabbed my seven-foot piece of gutter, retrieved some duct tape, and taped it up with more duct tape, and used two pieces of duct tape. It stayed, and I wasn’t about to move it. That night no one knew except for my brother that I was trapped in the tank, not even my parents. My parents were watching TV peacefully in the cozy house.
The next day came. Later that day I ran outside to see how much water I collected, and the thousand-gallon tank was filled to about five hundred gallons-half way full. I was proud of myself what I accomplished even if I had a situation that I couldn’t get myself out of. With a little bit of help at the end, I accomplished my mission.