Rain Dancing

What can I say about rain? I’m not a fan. The whole experience of a rainy day is sensory overload. I don’t like how it sticks to my hair. How it lands on the lenses of my glasses and causes an impossible blur. I can’t see out my rearview mirror because back window doesn’t have a wiper. The roads are slick. If I don’t have an umbrella my clothes become soaking wet and heavy. If I do have an umbrella, it gets all wet and I don’t know where to put it when I walk into say, a restaurant or a library. Put it on the floor, now that’s soaked too. Can’t put it on a chair. Don’t want to hold it. And umbrellas are such awkward items, they don’t quite fit in a bag, and if they do, they’re not big enough to stop the rain from coating you. And I hate stepping in wet mud or puddles, it dirties my shoes (my lovely velvet docs don’t deserve such treatment) and if I’m really unlucky, my socks get wet, and there is nothing worse than the feeling of wet socks.

If you wanted to torture me in way that’s completely harmless yet excruciatingly uncomfortable: Force me to walk a long, but not too long, distance without an umbrella, in the pouring rain, and my socks are wet, and my hair is wet, and my bra is so tight the underwire is creating an imprint in my chest, and my glasses are smudged, and my pants are too short, and it’s just a little too hot, and surely too humid, and my phone keeps ringing, and I can’t find my keys, and my backpack is too heavy, etc, etc, etc.

Contrast this with snow: Snow moves slowly through the air in a way that is not overwhelming. There is no pitter-patter nor splashing. Only simple motions of tiny iced flakes coating the land in off-white. Or think of hail, little missiles of ice. At least it’s an interesting weather phenomena. Rain ruins the day. Rain ruins the days.

It’s been raining terribly in Illinois. Once, my dad took my brother’s car for a spin, got caught in a flood. The car stopped and it was left there on the road. The sheriff came to the house and demanded to speak to my brother. Look at the chaos the rain causes!

When it rains in this desert, the reactions are strange. The people celebrate, while I lament the gray skies and wet pavement. The next day, I can admit it does feel nicer outside, cooler. Another thing I can admit, is the smell of rain is soothing, familiar.

In the Grand Canyon, a flash flood ripped through the cliffs, trapping many, and ultimately causes multiple fatalities. Proof that as much as we build dams and place bags of sand, we have no control over this world. One day, sunny skies, another, rapid waters overtaking bodies. It is terrifying to think of how easily water can entrap. Does the rain repulse me, or is it just fear?

According to Joyce: As the clouds release their rain, in parallel the body releases its negative emotions. We need these days of rain and gloom, to slow down the world’s motion, and release tension. Maybe this is true. Still, I know I could never live in Seattle!

As a child, I was a Pokémon aficionado. I started getting semi-involved in the competitive scene, constructing teams and battling opponents on Pokémon Showdown. One such strategy I’d read about on Smogon: rain dance teams. One Pokémon would have a move or ability to trigger rainy weather. All the Pokémon on the team could benefit from the rain dance - water-type moves were boosted in strength, and some Pokémon had abilities that allowed them to heal during rainy weather. The rain could only last 5 turns, so you’d have to move fast to “Sweep” the other team’s Pokémon and win the match. I had a rain dance team copied from Smogon. I wasn’t any good though and lost most of my matches. Eventually my interest in weather-based teams faded, along with my interest in competitive battled as a whole.

I didn’t recall any of this until I began to write about the rain. So maybe, water holds memory?

Rain evaporates just as fast as it falls in the desert. There are moments where I’m incredulous at the fact that I am an adult. I’ve played through Pokémon games as a “grown-up,” but nothing can quite capture those hazy days trapped inside playing video games while the rain pounds down on the windowpanes. In that sense, when it rains, I do feel these memories revived in my heart, and I think about the past and let nostalgia hold me.