It is late afternoon and the rain has yet to stop falling. Rainfall in Los Angeles is good for the plants, the lawns and the trees, but terrible for traffic. We're in the middle of a drought so I ought to be happy for days like this when the skies open up and share a little H2O.
But I am not.
I am a shorts and a t-shirt man. The endless blue skies that I often write about make me happy. The warmth of the sun on my back makes me feel alive.
The rain reminds me of being a child. Memories of rainy day schedules in school in which we were forced to stay in the classroom permeate my mind. Indoor games like Heads Up- Seven Up, Hangman and other odds and ends were how we passed the time. I didn't like them much. They were ok, but I had too much energy.
I was like bottled lightning. If you stared hard enough you could see little bolts of energy flying back and forth. The playground called out to me. It needed me and I needed it. There were kickball games to play in, handball courts to conquer and monkeybars to be climbed.
My little desk didn't really need me to spend recess and lunch inside.
Times were different then. Unlike my children, I walked to and from school. By the end of a rainy day I would have been bursting at the seams with endless amounts of energy.On a rainy day like today I would have run out the classroom door. Teachers and parents would have shouted warnings, asked me to slow down and I would have pretended to be deaf.
Sometimes the rain would be nothing more than a drizzle. Parents who had grown up walking through snowstorms to school didn't care about a drizzle so I'd walk home. And sometimes during that walk the drizzle would turn into a downpour.
I loved it.
Loved to walk in that. Loved to watch for lightning to go streaking across the sky and then count the seconds until the thunder hit.
I still like it. Though I much prefer that warm weather I mentioned earlier, I kind of enjoy the downpour. Kind of enjoy walking through it. That is when I have no where to go and no one to see. Business meetings during inclement weather irritate me. They make people irritable or maybe it is just me. ;)
Still, I'd gladly give up this rain for some 90 degree weather again. My barbecue is lonely. I can hear it calling out to me. My patio misses my presence. Rain rain go away, come back another day. We're done with you for now.
4 comments:
When I lived in LA, it didn't rain for so long that when it finally did I was so excited that I ran around in the rain and jumped in the puddles like a little kid, much to the hilarity of my friends. Who knew you could miss the rain?
I have heard others say similar things about it. I don't mind it in small and infrequent doses.
You should try living in Ireland - it never stops raining here! If we get a week or two in the summer WITHOUT rain and temps of maybe 20 degrees we think we're having the best summer ever! YOu get used to it when you live in it all the time - our saying here about the weather is, doesn't matter if its not sunny as long as its not raining!!!
I have Irish relatives, or at least I did at one time. Been planning on heading over to find them. How many Jews can there be there, have to imagine that it shouldn't be too hard to locate them.
As for the rain, well I imagine that if I lived in it year round I'd either start drinking or develop gills like a fish. ;)
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