A Rainy Day

Tonight as I was driving home from work in the pouring rain, tires splashing through overflowing gutters, slowing to a stop for two rain soaked girls to run barefoot across the street, I was reminded of something that a friend and I did years ago……

Back when I lived in Ft. Collins, CO, on another rain filled afternoon, my best friend Halley and I were playing at my house. (My guess is we were in kindergarten, but even if we had only been in preschool, we were only in school in the mornings.) As it was nearing the time for my older sister to get out of school, my mom decided to let Halley and I walk the two blocks to school to meet her. Because it was so rainy, we decided we should wear boots lest our feet get soaked. However, we did have any rain boots, so we decided to wear my parents’ moon boots.

Off we set. Instead of walking on the sidewalk where our feet would have been sure to stay dry, we found it more adventurous to slog through the overflowing gutters. It was probably an accident at first that some water got into our boots. They were too big after all, and we were splashing through the gutters, but after the little bit first got in, we began to plot. We decided it would be funny to fill our boots with water, so that when we took them off when we got home, water would spill all over the floor. Of course, we would pretend that we had no idea there was even any water in our boots! We started doing knee bends, dragging our boot tops through the water to fill them up. I pictured little worms being swept up inside the dark corners of my boots. I could feel the water squishing around my toes.

We met my sister and walked properly home with her.

Then the moment arrived - the moment when we would execute the final piece of our scheme. Off we pulled our boots. Out poured the water…all over the linoleum of the entryway floor, into a puddle between the long, pseudo stained glass window and our hall tree. My mom’s surprise and dismay, our shoulder shrug and “We don’t know how that happened! It was really wet outside.” Mom grabbed some towels to begin mopping up the mess. I don’t think we were punished for it. Perhaps Mom really did think it an accident, after all, why would we intentionally fill our boots with water?

Several years later when Halley and I were reminiscing about this incident, Mom said she had absolutely no memory of this ever taking place. Nothing we said could even jog the slightest hint of this memory in her mind. If it happened, she must have blocked it from her memory. Were we sure we really did that? But if Halley and I both remember it, it must have happened, right?