Is it wrong to whistle "singing in the rain" when you are actually just walking in it?
— Ron Collins (@roncollins13) July 10, 2015
Yes, I took a walk in the rain yesterday.
Yes, in the rain. A walk. Totally. By this I mean that it was raining when I left the house and rained for pretty much the entire two hours I was walking around in it. I got soaked. Water ran down my face and into my eyes. Water seeped through the jacket I wore. I walked along a road where cars drove by, splashing, tires hissing against the wet pavement.
When she heard I had done that, Lisa asked “Why would you do that?”
But I have to admit I had a good time.
It was a nice summer rain, after all. No thunder. No lightning. Just water against a gray skyline. It was warm enough to walk in shorts, warm enough that the dampness built a thermal barrier between my shirt and jacket that kept me comfortable. I took a path away from the roads, and strolled along the “quiet” of a woodsy area and some farmland.
Things smell different when it’s raining. Heavier, and thicker. The taste of the rain is colored by the taint of your sweat in a different way. The sound of your footsteps are softer, the calls of birds are sharper, and the color of the grass is a deeper green.
Sometimes people driving by in cars would give me a bit of a skewed glance. There I was, after all, a thoroughly soaked oldish guy in soaked jacket and black athletic shorts. Probably looked a bit ragamuffinish, A bit strange. But what did I care? It was fun, it wasn’t hurting anyone, and it gave me a chance to look at things in a different way than I normally look at them.
With everything else going on in the world right now, I’m left thinking that maybe more people should take a break and go walk in the rain.