There’s just something about a flood that brings kids out of the woodwork.
Not the kind of flood that has houses tumbling down the river, but the kind of flood every kid dreams about. The kind where they have to take off their shoes to walk to the car because the water is ankle-deep. The kind where the intersections fill up with water. The kind where it’s bad enough where there’s hope that school will be cancelled tomorrow, but not so bad that they can’t go out and play in it.
On a hot summer day, a parent might get a phone call from little Johnny, who is playing with little Joey down the street. “PUL-LEASE come pick me up … it’s SOOO hot, I CAN’T walk home,” he’ll beg.
No matter how old we parents are, we will tell little Johnny how far we had to walk when we were kids, in the heat, rain, and snow, and how our parents never took us anywhere.
On an overcast day, these same kids will tell Mom they can’t possibly walk home from Joey’s house because there’s a light mist. There’s nothing more annoying than a light mist, so we haul out the vehicle and drive the hundred or so yards to retrieve our child.
But open up the floodgates, and it’s a whole different story. Suddenly wet is not annoying … it is FUN. The more the merrier, the deeper the roads, the more exciting it is.
We had a real gullywasher earlier this week. When my son got home from school, he stood on the front porch watching the torrential downpour for quite a while. He watched the intersection nearby slowly disappear beneath the growing pond of water.
Then, it happened. The shoes came off. First he grabbed an umbrella and ran out into the water streaming down the street in front of our house. But he’s a boy, it was raining really hard, and he was getting wet anyway, so of course the umbrella didn’t last long.
That’s when the real fun begins. After you’re completely soaking wet, it doesn’t matter if you get even more wet. You can stand in the rain, you can ride your bicycle through the puddles, you can walk instead of run because you’re suddenly not worried about getting your hair or clothes wet. You can stand beside the road and hope that cars coming by will splash more water on you. Everything is an adventure.
My son did all these things and more. I don’t think he had played outside for this long all summer. And he wasn’t alone. There were kids everywhere … on foot, on scooters, on bicycles, all reveling in being completely drenched.
And hoping. Hoping that it would keep raining. Hoping that the streets would fill up so that the teachers wouldn’t be able to get to work in the morning. Hoping for one of those unexpected holidays where nobody can work, but everybody can play.
But then it stopped raining. Usually the long faces come when it begins to rain, but not on this day. It stopped raining, the waters began to recede, and my son was heartbroken. He looked up to the heavens for signs of more rain. A dark cloud in the distance looked promising, but didn’t produce.
The mother in me was glad the rain had stopped, that I could get to the places I needed to go tomorrow.
But there’s a kid in all of us. I almost took off my shoes to run in the streets with those kids, and I was sorta hoping it would keep raining, too.
Like I said, there’s something about a flood that brings kids out of the woodwork.
