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RAINY DAYS AND SUNDAYS NEVER GET ME DOWN
The cartoon strip character Ziggy once said something like, “When you’re down and out, lift up your head and shout, ‘It’s going to be another lousy rotten rainy day!’”
I get this cry of despair from people a lot, especially on rainy days. Don’t know why, since I have memories of many wonderful rainy days.
I’m a kid playing in the back yard with brother Ronny, when we see rain coming in. This could be an adventure! We decide to crawl under a big wooden table that has Mother’s plants and doodads on it, and pretend that it’s a shelter in the wilderness during a typhoon (we don’t know what a typhoon is, but it sounds dangerous). Sure enough, we ride out the storm, huddled against the imagined snakes and grizzlies lurking just a pebble’s throw away. The flash flood misses us, the wet grass captivates our sense of smell, the surrounding mud is great fun to stick our toes in. The nearby rusty oil drum awaits our next escapade and becomes a time machine to lurk inside.
Rainy days like this remain safely in memory dear, to issue forth at just the right time in order to conquer just the wrong mood.
Rainy days mean the making of gentle love, the launching of handmade sailboats, the re-booting of dusty landscapes, the abolition of dew, the cleansing of an attitude, the conquest of thirst, the revitalization of thirsty critters.
Rainy days remind me that, should I weather the outdoors sufficiently, I will know when safe haven arrives. There’s no guessing about the moment when the rain stops, there’s no guessing that that overhang at the shop signals the end of wetness, there’s nothing preventing me from running out into the drizzle, nothing stopping me from running for shelter. Rain lets me know my boundaries, lets me know that no amount of whining is worth missing the rain and the Sun.
I’m happy to see Sunny, happy to see Rain.
Besides, what would it be like to have no weather at all?
Kind of like hearing the sound of one hand clapping
© 2011 A.D. Jim Reed http://www.jimreedbooks.com