We have been having a wet spring in our area, and today it is raining again. It is a beautiful rain, actually, and is falling straight down, so I am able to keep the windows open and listen to it. I just love the sound of the rain, and it smells so nice and fresh. There is some thunder in the distance, but I am still able to hear the birds around here, and it feels nice and cool and refreshing.
As I was sitting listening to it, I was thinking about other rainy days over the years, and since I don't have anything adoption-related to blog about (still waiting on that wait list number update), I thought I would share some funny and hopefully interesting rain stories.
I was trying to see if I could recall my first rain memory, but I haven't been able to come up with anything from when I was very little. I'm absolutely positive it rained when I was a kid, but I am drawing a blank on any early rain memories other than pulling on my big red rain boots and splashing in puddles. Don't all kids love to splash in puddles? The earliest actual rain story I can think of was when I was probably in third grade. Not so young, but it is probably the first rain story in which I got in trouble. My mom was working outside the home at this point, so when we got off the bus after school, we would go to our babysitter Mrs. Farrah's house until Mom picked us up after work. Mrs. Farrah lived about a block from our house, and the bus stop was just across the street from her place. My sister and I got off the bus along with another boy that Mrs. Farrah watched. Brian Hastle (like castle) was his name. I can't believe that I can remember his name, and that he had red hair and freckles, but can't remember a thing I learned in organic chemistry. There were a few other kids that also stayed at Mrs. Farrah's, but I don't remember them exactly. Anyway, it was raining pretty hard this particular day, and Brian and I were convinced, you know how convinced you can be of things when you are a kid, that it was raining so hard that Barney the bus driver was going to get in trouble on the rest of his route through our development. There's another name I can't believe I can recall: Barney the bus driver. And it's not like I can even use that bit of information in a trivia contest. "Name your bus driver when you were in third grade." Unlikely. So like I said, Brian and I were convinced that Barney was going to get into an accident or something. The development was shaped like a pot with a handle, so all he had to do was drive up the handle, go around the pot, and come back down the handle going the other direction, but we were sure something was going to go wrong, so we stood out on the sidewalk in the pouring rain waiting for him to pass by Mrs. Farrah's house. Here's another logic breakdown: that a couple third graders are going to be able to somehow help out a grown man driving a bus by standing out in the rain. Maybe it was our way of showing solidarity, I don't know. In our favor, we did have umbrellas, so I wasn't like we were getting soaking wet or anything, but looking back, it might have been a tad smarter if we had just waited on her front porch. Or if we had looked out the window from the inside of her house. Anyway, there we were, standing in the rain, for about three or four minutes. Barney comes back, we wave a "Great job Barney!" at him, and head inside, applauding him that he could manage the treacherous job, and applauding ourselves that we were the only ones to witness it. We didn't count on the fact that we were leading ourselves right into a punishment. Remember my sister and the other kids, all younger than us, had also got off the bus and had dutifully walked into Mrs. Farrah's house. So Mrs. Farrah knows exactly how long we were standing out in the rain, and the rule was that we were supposed to walk straight to her house after getting off the bus. She didn't think much of our argument of protecting the bus driver. We probably wrote a lot of sentences that day. So that is my "being silly in the rain can get you in trouble" story.
Freshman year of high school, my family went on vacation to Florida over Christmas break. We drove down; my mom and her brother Uncle Joe were the only two drivers, and my two sisters and I are in the backseat. It's a long drive even to get to Florida, and then to get all the way to Key West, our ultimate destination, takes a very long time, so we stopped at Disney for a couple days, and also went to Cape Canaveral (my uncle is big into space; it was cool though). We were going to camp at Key West, and my mom had borrowed a big tent from someone she worked with. Big old canvas six or eight person tent. We arrive in Key West and are so excited because it is even warmer than in Orlando, and the ocean is right there near the camp ground, and everything is beautiful, and everyone is laid-back and friendly. Then we start to put together the tent. Keep in mind, this was a borrowed tent. We had never put it up before; we had never actually seen it put up before, but my mom's colleague had insisted that it was easy, and that we would be able to do it no problem. Granted, none of us are extremely mechanically-inclined, but we really struggled for quite a while on how to put up the tent. Finally, a man and his wife approach us. The wife tells us that her husband had been a Seabee in World War II. He could probably make us a tent out of loose leaf paper. We're all much happier. He rummages through the canvas and the poles for a while, and then asks where the rest of the poles are: where is the top piece that is shaped like a cross. Yeah. We did not have the most important piece of the tent. The one that would hold everything together. Whoops. Luckily, like I said, he was a Seabee, so he ends up fashioning something out of materials he has in his car. A part from his jack and something else. Truly amazing because that tent stayed up for five days with no problems at all. He told us no problem, we could use it the whole time we were there, but he would sure like to have the parts back when he left, which was going to be the same morning we left. Then in the middle of the night, a few hours before we are supposed to take down the tent and leave, it starts raining. Pouring. We wait until it gets slightly light out, and it is still coming down hard. We're not too excited about the prospect of loading up the car and having to take down the huge tent in the rain, but we knew we would have to so that we could give the man back his jack and other things. We climb out of the tent, only to discover that they had left already. I think they just didn't have the heart to ask us to take down the tent in that rain. Extremely kind of them. So that's my "rain can bring out the best in people" story.
Here's another rain story, this one from Botswana about two weeks after I had arrived (recall that I was in Peace Corps after I graduated from college). Back then, Botswana was experiencing a severe drought. For a country that is mostly agricultural, drought is a very serious situation. They didn't have equipment like here in the States, those big sprinklers that can water entire fields. They didn't have agricultural canals either. They just had rain, and if there isn't rain, you and your crops and your livestock are in trouble. They did have wells too, which helps with watering livestock, but regardless, drought in a developing country is serious business. Anyway, we are there one day in a village called Kanye, which was one of our training locations, just sort of hanging out. Our trainers are all Batswana and a few Americans who were on staff at the Peace Corps office. And we're talking about the drought. The Batwana are saying that it hadn't rained in years, and that the drought was very terrible. After a little while, what do you think: it starts raining! And not just a little sprinkle; it starts pouring! It is coming down in buckets! Several of us just start dancing and jumping in the rain. It was so beautiful. I can remember thinking: yippee! The drought is over!!! We didn't understand at the time that they were speaking with some hyperbole. It did rain sometimes, just not so much, and not nearly enough for crops or livestock, and the country was truly hurting, but to say that it hadn't rained in years was not exactly factual. Just a cultural difference really. Regardless, the rain was beautiful. The rain was generally like that there: just these big dumps of rain. Where we were stationed in the Kgalagadi, flowers would just spring up out of nowhere whenever it would rain. Just all over the sand. They must have had some sort of hibernation stage and would wake up at the first sign of rain. And the salt pans would fill with water. From a bit of a distance, they would look like deep lakes, but the water was probably only about an inch or so deep. Still, it was quite a transformation to go from bare sand with only a few acacia trees, to all of a sudden having clumps of grasses and flowers everywhere and even a "lake" or two. That's my "desert and wasteland will bloom" story.
After I finished my Peace Corps stint, I travelled quite a bit through parts of Africa and Asia. The travelling was absolutely wonderful, but I did get rather rained on in places because I was there during the rainy season. Take Nepal, for instance. I sure knew I wasn't going to climb Everest or anything remotely like that, but I was hoping for some hiking in the Himalayas. I inquired at several trekking companies, and they said they didn't organize hikes during the rainy season. I was somewhat ticked off, thinking I don't mind if I get a little wet. I'll wear a big rain poncho; no big deal. I'm in Nepal, and it would be a shame not to do some hiking in the Himalayas. Sounded kind of wimpy to me to not go trekking just because of rain. I asked a number of other travellers that were staying at the rest house where I was, and they all said the same. Trekking companies stop trekking during the rainy season. Then one guy suggested maybe I could find a guide and hire him on the side to lead me on a trek. That sounded like a good answer to me! I would just go back to one of the companies and see if I could organize that. Great idea. Then the guy said to me, "You understand why they don't trek in the rainy season don't you?" Honestly, I hadn't given it much thought. I just assumed there were less travellers then because of the rainy weather so it wouldn't be as cost-effective to lead hikes, and the views wouldn't be as good, and besides it would not be as much fun in all the rain. He says, well yeah, but also, keep in mind the topography. The trails are very rough and narrow in some places, and with all the extra rain there could be mudslides. Hmmm, that sounds a little bit dangerous. But there must be some way to get around that. Just be careful and whatever. Avoid really bad areas. But I really really wanted to go hiking in the Himalayas. I was willing to take that risk. Then he says, "And also, there will be leeches. In the mud, and falling from the trees." Oh. my. goodness. gracious. That was the grossest thing imaginable. I shiver now just thinking about it. I could do rain. I could do mud. Wet feet, wet tent, not a problem. I could even consider mudslides. But ain't no way I am having leeches fall on me from the trees! That was the end of that, and I did not go hiking in the Himalayas! So that is my "rain can bring out the grossest things" story.
How about our wedding? It sure rained then! The second half of the wedding and the first part of the reception it was pouring and thundering and lightning like wild. Really it was not a problem at all because the reception hall was literally right next to the church, and even people that didn't have umbrellas could just make a dash for it. My hair was not so great though, and yeah it would have been nice to have great hair on my wedding day of all days, but it just didn't happen that way. The stylist had made all sorts of long flowing curls all over my head, and in the salon it looked beautiful, but as soon as I stepped outside, the humidity just made them droop. My sisters did an awesome repair job with a curling iron in the church basement a few minutes before the wedding started, as awesome a job as can be done in a few minutes with a curling iron in a church basement. That sounds complainy, but really I don't mean to be. It really didn't matter that much. The part I prefer to remember was hearing the rain from inside the church during Mass, and our priest remarking that in Ireland, rain is considered blessings falling from heaven. "With that in mind," he said, "Heaven is sure blessing us today." I definitely felt that way. So that is my "rain is a blessing" story.
So those are some hopefully entertaining rain stories from yesteryear. I'm sure you have some fun rain stories too. Enjoy the day and your blessings from heaven!