Dancin' In The Drain

When the Rain Forgot How to Quit

By the fourth day, the rain had stopped being weather and started acting like a member of the family who had shown up uninvited and refused to leave. It drummed on the roof, ran off the porch, filled every low spot in the yard, and turned the driveway into something that looked less like a driveway and more like a questionable boat ramp.

At first, everybody did what sensible people do when it rains. We stayed under cover, watched the puddles grow, and said things like, “It ought to let up here in a little while.” That was on day one. By day four, nobody was saying that anymore. We were starting to wonder whether we should be gathering animals two by two.

The yard had developed its own waterways. Little streams appeared where no stream had ever been invited. Water curled around chairs, slipped under tables, and found every dip in the ground. A cooler that had been sitting perfectly still decided it had seen enough of this place and began floating toward freedom.

The Great Cooler Escape

There is something especially insulting about watching your own cooler float away from you. It was not moving fast. That somehow made it worse. It just drifted along with the confidence of something that had made a decision about its future.

Somebody yelled that the cooler was getting away, which was technically true but also sounded ridiculous. We were not on a river. We were standing where the yard was supposed to be.

Retrieving it meant stepping into water deep enough to make every step a negotiation. The cooler was eventually rescued, but by then everybody was laughing hard enough that the rescue operation had lost whatever dignity it might once have had.

Where Did the Flip-Flops Go?

The flip-flops were another matter. Rainwater has no respect for personal property, and loose footwear apparently ranks somewhere below leaves and sticks in the natural order of things.

One minute a pair was beside the porch. The next minute one flip-flop was headed one direction and its partner had vanished completely. People started scanning puddles as though we were searching for evidence at a crime scene.

Every few minutes somebody would spot one. “There’s a flip-flop!” became a legitimate announcement. Nobody seemed completely certain whose flip-flop it was, but possession was becoming a flexible concept anyway.

The Dogs Had Opinions

The dogs, naturally, considered the whole situation our fault. They would stand at the edge of the porch, look at the rain, look back at us, and bark as though we had personally ordered four straight days of it.

One would venture out, hit a puddle, and immediately reconsider every life choice that had led to that moment. Another seemed convinced that barking at the water might make it retreat.

Of course, the rain did not care. It kept falling, the dogs kept complaining, and we kept opening the door as though the weather might somehow be different on the next attempt.

A Fishing Boat Would Have Been Handy

Eventually there were enough puddles that somebody made the obvious observation: we could probably launch a fishing boat in the yard. It was an exaggeration, but not by enough to be comforting.

That was about the point when frustration gave way to comedy. There was nothing left to do but watch the water, rescue whatever started floating, keep the dogs from losing their minds, and laugh at the absurdity of it.

Rain has a way of rearranging plans. Four days of it can rearrange the furniture too.

Sometimes You Just Dance in the Drain

The funny thing about miserable weather is that the stories often get better after everybody dries out. Nobody remembers an ordinary dry afternoon with quite the same enthusiasm as the day the cooler tried to escape and the flip-flops went missing.

By then, trying to stay perfectly dry was pointless. Shoes were wet. The ground was soaked. The dogs were offended. The yard had become a pond with landscaping.

So you laugh. You splash through it. Maybe you do a little dance where the water is rushing toward the drain, because at that point there is no sense pretending the day is going according to plan.

That is how some of the best porch stories happen. Not because everything went right, but because everything went sideways at once and everybody was there to laugh about it.