Rainy Day Memories
As Peter and I huddled under my big blue and white umbrella on our way through the pouring rain to school this morning, a long suppressed memory surfaced in my mind.
Thirty years or so ago, when I was a little girl growing up in Goleta, California, it seemed like when it rained, it really poured. I remembered my mom dropping my older sister and me off at school on rainy days. (Most days, we walked to school.) We rushed through the crowded parking lot, dodging cars, people, and raindrops as we hurried to the entrance to the multipurpose room (Cafeteria/ Gym/ Auditorium) where we were to wait until school would begin.
The multipurpose room was always crowded and humid. The hard floor would be wet, slippery and often muddy. The room would be packed with hundreds of children of all ages clustered together, talking and laughing, playing games, sometimes throwing balls or paper airplanes. It was incredibly loud and chaotic. With so many people, the room soon became sweltering hot and smelled of sweat and mildew. Usually feeling overwhelmed, I would try to find a corner somewhere with space enough to breathe. Finally a bell would ring and we would line up and follow our teachers back out into the cool, clean rain on our way to our classrooms.
Unlike here in Colorado, where schools are all enclosed in one large building, my elementary school was laid out in groups of smaller hexagonal shaped buildings linked by covered walkways. Each building was called a pod, and was specified by a letter. (You can imagine the jokes about having to go to Pod E.) Each pod contained three classrooms, usually all of one grade. The younger grades, 1st through 3rd, were grouped together with covered walkways between them, and the older grades, 4th through 6th, were grouped together. But it was impossible to get from the lower grade group of buildings to the upper grade buildings, or to any of the classroom buildings from the administration building - where the multipurpose room was, without dashing through open space unprotected from the pouring rain.
After school when it was raining, there was always the concern: would Mom come pick us up? Or should we start walking home in the rain? I remember sometimes going to the office and waiting in the long line for the single public phone there to call home and ask for a ride. Other times I would bundle in my jacket and start home, and would occasionally be pleasantly surprised to find our family car parked at the end of a cul-de-sac that abutted the bike path that I followed home. I imagine picking us up at the path was a lot easier than trying to battle the crowds of cars that would have been tying to get in and out of the school parking lot.
As a little child, rainy days at school meant noise and crowds. Rainy days at home meant playing in the huge puddle that accumulated in the curve of our driveway. It meant splashing and fun. Now, I much prefer staying indoors, curled up with a good book while listening to the patter of rain on the patio roof.
Thirty years or so ago, when I was a little girl growing up in Goleta, California, it seemed like when it rained, it really poured. I remembered my mom dropping my older sister and me off at school on rainy days. (Most days, we walked to school.) We rushed through the crowded parking lot, dodging cars, people, and raindrops as we hurried to the entrance to the multipurpose room (Cafeteria/ Gym/ Auditorium) where we were to wait until school would begin.
The multipurpose room was always crowded and humid. The hard floor would be wet, slippery and often muddy. The room would be packed with hundreds of children of all ages clustered together, talking and laughing, playing games, sometimes throwing balls or paper airplanes. It was incredibly loud and chaotic. With so many people, the room soon became sweltering hot and smelled of sweat and mildew. Usually feeling overwhelmed, I would try to find a corner somewhere with space enough to breathe. Finally a bell would ring and we would line up and follow our teachers back out into the cool, clean rain on our way to our classrooms.
Unlike here in Colorado, where schools are all enclosed in one large building, my elementary school was laid out in groups of smaller hexagonal shaped buildings linked by covered walkways. Each building was called a pod, and was specified by a letter. (You can imagine the jokes about having to go to Pod E.) Each pod contained three classrooms, usually all of one grade. The younger grades, 1st through 3rd, were grouped together with covered walkways between them, and the older grades, 4th through 6th, were grouped together. But it was impossible to get from the lower grade group of buildings to the upper grade buildings, or to any of the classroom buildings from the administration building - where the multipurpose room was, without dashing through open space unprotected from the pouring rain.
After school when it was raining, there was always the concern: would Mom come pick us up? Or should we start walking home in the rain? I remember sometimes going to the office and waiting in the long line for the single public phone there to call home and ask for a ride. Other times I would bundle in my jacket and start home, and would occasionally be pleasantly surprised to find our family car parked at the end of a cul-de-sac that abutted the bike path that I followed home. I imagine picking us up at the path was a lot easier than trying to battle the crowds of cars that would have been tying to get in and out of the school parking lot.
As a little child, rainy days at school meant noise and crowds. Rainy days at home meant playing in the huge puddle that accumulated in the curve of our driveway. It meant splashing and fun. Now, I much prefer staying indoors, curled up with a good book while listening to the patter of rain on the patio roof.
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