My Cousin Sarah and I got to stay at our Great Grandma's house together, and it was raining, and she told us we didn't have to be cooped up, we could go play in the rain. This was very exciting, because it's not something our parents would have gone for. So we twirled around and leapt in puddles and licked raindrops off rose petals. When we were done our Gran put us in a hot bath, and made us hot tea and treats. She brought out a big bag of costume jewelry and let us go through it, we tried everything on, and thought we were very fancy, and she let us keep our favorite ones.
@RickiTarr Coming out of a movie theater with a high school friend in summer time, only to discover that it was pouring rain. We ran laughing through the rain and stomped in puddles. I don’t remember the movie and I don’t remember where we were going next; just existing in the downpour was the good part.
@RickiTarr sitting on the screened in front porch of our house during a brilliant thunder storm, hearing the thunder and watching the rain and lightning flashes with my father. He loved thunderstorms, and so do I !
August morning in the late 80s. I was a guest at a cabin on Lake Winnipesaukee (NH), and rose before dawn, made coffee and sat on the porch, feet up on the railing and watched the rain pour in sheets off the roof and a billion little drops hit the lake. Finished my coffee, still the only one up, then went inside and upstairs to bed and listened to the downpour on the roof as I fell back asleep.
@RickiTarr When I was in the scouts, we camped out in a torrential rainstorm. I had a brand new tube tent that I was itching to use, but the rain dripped in along the rope holding the tent up. I kept waking up and finding the water was soaking my bag from the outer edge in. There was nothing I could do that wouldn't just make things worse. So for a long while I lay there in my ever tinier dry spot listening to my transistor radio. I remember it was like 3AM and the DJ was reading these weird "words of wisdom". I thought it was hilarious. Eventually I fell back asleep, and the storm broke. Made an early morning of it. My friend Bob and I were good at starting campfires, so by 6AM we had one going.
An example of using that effect for a good purpose! Years ago my wife and I were living in and building a house. We had a wood stove and I had screwed up the flashing. When it rained there was a steady leak into our living room. I had to wait for spring to fix it. In the meantime I got a long cord, nailed it in right where the leak was dripping, routed it over to the side of the room where it ended in a bucket and the drips followed the cord right into the bucket!
@RickiTarr We were camping out at the Montreal Expo (I think? It was in the 60’s and I was a tyke.) There was a torrential downpour and wind storm and most of the tents were flattened and people were hiding in their cars, but my parents had brought a teepee. So in the midst of the gale we were happily sitting around the fire toasting marshmallows.
@RickiTarr My husband and I were staying in San Francisco and had just seen a musical we loved. We were in a great mood and decided to walk to our hotel.
It started to pour like nothing I had ever experienced before. Like the skies had opened. We had umbrellas that were completely useless and not an inch of us escaped being drenched.
It was somehow utterly awesome. We just surrendered to it and laughed and laughed.
@RickiTarr When we would get warm spring/summer storms, my sisters and I would run around outside in our bathing suits. We'd make canals out of sticks and rocks next to the curb and stand under the streams coming off the roof gutters.
Once, when my Grandparents were visiting, my Nana, aged 70, decided to come out with us. Her in her little floral dress, she came and stood in the driveway and watched while we played. It was raining so hard she was soaked through in 5min. Very much got 'cool cred'
@RickiTarr
My grandma was a terrible babysitter. I didn’t quite understand why my mother said this. Now I don’t understand why she let grandma watch me …. 😂
I was a couple blocks down where there’s a dip, standing on the curb waving at cars and screaming SPLASH ME SPLASH ME!! Many of them did. I was 8, at best.
I was always wandering off …
Cut to 20+ years later and I see 2 little girls, waving at cars and screaming SPLASH US!! You betcha I went around the block to splash them a second time, just in time to see mom rushing across the lawn to call them away from the street 🤣
@RickiTarr I love the big plumes of water caused by driving close to the curb. I usually try not to splash people though. I also used to watch out the kitchen window and tell cars “no. Don’t attempt to drive through the temporary lake at the bottom of the hill 🤦🏼♀️ “ it does as much good as telling the woman in the horror movie not to go upstairs.
PSA: do not drive into water if you can’t clearly see the roadway. On my street it would just stall you out and cost you a call for a tow truck. In some places it can wash you away.
@RickiTarr Summer of ‘69, working in the bush for Northwood Pulp (Prince George). So wet and cold that we didn’t sit down for lunch- ate our sandwiches and kept moving. Got back to the truck and fresh dry socks. Aaahhhh.
Gen. Patton used to order “a hot meal and dry socks” for his troops. They loved him.
@SonofaGeorge@RickiTarr Dry socks are everything. First time I went wilderness canoe camping, fresh from having bought our gear, it began to rain before we got to our campsite. We didn’t know that the sleeping bags cases and backpacks weren’t waterproof. Fortunately things didn’t get too wet. :)
@RickiTarr Laying on the back seat looking up at the lights while my parents took a nighttime drive through LA in the sixties, very peaceful and noir. I think I fell asleep and they carried me inside.
@RickiTarr camping with our three young kids in a tent in the Sierra Nevadas. That evening we played games and had a great time listening to the rain against the tent walls.
That night it turned into a fierce storm with pouring rain, high winds, and lots of lightning. That was a different kind of fun! We stayed dry and the kids had some memories.
@chontorres@RickiTarr OMG I had a very similar experience with my oldest in late October in Yosemite Valley when they were maybe 6 or 7. The best part was having the entire (mostly flooded!) campground to ourselves!
@RickiTarr camping in The whiteshell. Blue skies. 20 minutes later, black sky then torrential downpour. Thunder felt like it was coming from just across the tent. Most awesome and terrifying .
@RickiTarr Just me and my 8 year old at home in a vicious thunderstorm. There was a flash of lightning and then for about 30 seconds everything outside was a vivid bright electric blue.. My son is in his 40s now and still remembers this electric moment.
@RickiTarr
Wouldn’t have thought it was the best rainy day, but it has stuck in my memory so maybe it was.
In 70 or 71, tripping in the Arboretum in AnnArbor, MI, on a bright sunny summer day, and out of nowhere a deluge of warm rain drenches me and everything around me, lasting maybe 10 minutes (impossible to know now, of course) or so and then the sun bursts out again and now everything around me is sparkling and dripping and I remember just standing there, in awe, for a very long time.
@RickiTarr well, a good one is the time when I was a street facer for Greenpeace, working the main drag in Copenhagen in the middle of warm summer when suddenly a friggin' deluge came out of nowhere - the crowded walking street emptied in seconds as everyone ran under the shops' awnings & inside & me & my facer team started running up & down through the downpour, soaked, screaming WHO WANTS TO JOIN GREENPEACE!? Alas, our signup forms were wet...
@RickiTarr
I grew up out in the country with English mastiffs. Sometimes when it rained my family would all sit out in the garage with the door open to watch the storm and smell the incredibly clean air. Such a simple pleasure, but so enchanting.
Then the mastiff would start snapping at the drops as they fell off the roof. It was so funny that we tried to take pictures, but since the raindrops didn't show up it just made our sweet female mastiff look like Cujo.
@RickiTarr Being born and bred on the high (and very very dry) plains of New Mexico, pretty much ANY rainy day was a major treat! So I don't really have one specific rainy day memory but I do recall on more than one occasion sitting on the front steps watching it rain and soaking up the sharp, clean smell of thirsty dirt going damp. I'd glance up and pretty much every person along the street would be sitting on their front steps doing the same thing, in silence and mutual pleasure. Very Zen.
One-in-a-hundred-years flood hit our area the year we moved into the house I grew up in. I was Far Too Interested in the river that formed of the (fairly steep) street we lived on, & was terribly disappointed when the sand-bag crew rerouted the outwash back into its creek bed.
Add comment