Puddle Jumpers

This is a non-fiction essay I wrote. I revisted the first post I made for this blog. I hope you like it! Let me know what you think in comparison to the first post, or what you generally think!

Thanks! Hope you enjoy!

Puddle Jumpers

As I looked down at my feet, to keep the rain from hitting my face, I read the rubber tip of my left Converse shoe, watching it move front to back, front to back, in a mechanical motion. “Where are you walking today?”, my left shoe asked. “To the other side of campus for photography class,” I answered as another pair of feet approached mine.

I slowed my pace and looked around. Everyone is walking so fast, hoods up, looking down, trying to get out of the rain as quickly as possible, I thought. Like if they don’t get out of the rain, their fate will be similar to the Wicked Witch of the West that Dorothy threw water on. ‘I’m melting, I’m melting.’ I laughed a little as I imagined the tiny woman who just sped past me on the sidewalk as the Wicked Witch of the West. She clung to her black umbrella, with her oversized black rain coat, hiding from the heavy drops of water, the same way, I imagined, the Wicked Witch of the West did if she ever got caught in the rain.

I reached the open quad between University Hall and the biology building and saw the skyline for the first time since I left the dorm. Although filled with dark, heavy clouds, the skyline, was breathtakingly calm and captivating. On sunny days, the quad is filled with people playing Frisbee, and enjoying the weather.

Since elementary school we have been taught to avoid rainy days. Instead of getting to play outside, the whole school was forced to endure the humid, stuffy classroom, fighting for the best games, but, usually ending up with a purple, broken crayon and a coloring page of an angry dinosaur. Roar.

“Tabatha!”, my friend yelled across the quad. I looked over, waved, and watched my friend retreat back under his hood and into the library.

Rain. People act so differently in the rain.

Watching the people walk across the quad I noticed the almost robotic shifts in their path. Following the same footsteps as the person in front of them. No one ever straying off course to take a shortcut through the swampy grass. Everyone embarking on the same task: trying to keep the big, wet rain drops from drenching their clothes.

I wondered if the way people walk in the rain is how people wish they could walk everyday–avoiding the puddles. Avoiding jumping into something that might make us a little wet, but in the end give us a good laugh. What has happened to my simple enjoyment of playing in the rain?

When I was five years old, my favorite activity was running through sprinklers with my Little Red Riding-hood cape firmly tied around my neck. My neighbors and I could spend a whole day in our little swimsuit, on the front lawn, running back and forth through the sprinkler system. It never occurred to me that my parents used the sprinkler to water the grass, to me it was a game.

During the same summer of my Little Red Riding hood obsession, my neighborhood was flooded by a huge rain storm. The way I remember it, the water engulfed the entire street. Reaching half way up the tires of cars, which, to a short five year old, was to my knees. At our first chance, my friends and I played in this large, natural swimming pool. I imagine my parents, like the other adults on the street, were not as thrilled with the flood; mainly because it took over the basements. But, my friends and I were too young to understand or even care about the basement floods–we never wanted to go downstairs anyway, too scary. So, while the parents salvaged the storage in the basement, my friends and I danced, laughed, and splashed in the rain.

As children we understand the simplicity of happiness and joy; but, somewhere in between responsibility and adulthood, that understanding is lost. As adults, we begin to think too much about the tasks we need complete, too much about what other people think, too much to live the simple life of a child. Despite the limits of adulthood, play is not lost in adults, it merely becomes dormant. It becomes a matter of finding it inside yourself and releasing the mental constraints, even if it is only for a moment.

On my walk to my photography class, I began to appreciate spring rain because of the puddles it created. When I widened my perspective of the rainy day, I regained a sense of youth and freedom from thinking, I re-found simplistic joy: Puddle Jumping.

I became fascinated with everyone, including myself, zig-zagging across the side-walk to avoid the puddles. However, when I reached the old side of campus, I could no longer resist the urge to jump in.

The summer before freshman year of high school, my best friend Shannon and I were constantly walking into town to go to the dollar store. On the way back from one of our dollar store adventures, we found a very large puddle. Trying to splash Shannon, I jumped as high as I could with both feet hitting the puddle at the same time, creating an enormous splash. The rain water only misted Shannon; but, from the knees down, I was completely drenched.

I would have never guessed that almost five years later, the memory of jumping into a puddle to get my friend wet would have been useful. When confronted with a puddle that flooded an entire section of the sidewalk, I decided to figure out the specific science involved in puddle jumping. I found there are different techniques for bigger splashes, other techniques for controlling the direction of the splash, etc. The trick is, jumping in that puddle with one foot after the other, giving each foot enough room to cause a splash, the splash will be smaller, but it moves outwards instead of all over you. Depending on what part of your foot hits the ground first determines which way the splash will go–if your toe hits first, the splash will go forward; if the side of your left foot hits first, it will go to the left . . .

Thankfully, I have almost mastered this puddle jumping art. My jeans rarely get soaked to the knees anymore, but I can’t say the same for my blue converse shoes.

Now that I am reaching college graduation and the end of my dependance on my family, in order to create my own, I am afraid that one day I will completely forget about puddle jumping. I’m afraid to become an adult: to be responsible for not only my life but also the life of another, to pay attention to detail, to act first and play later. I’m afraid that when I reach adulthood I will lose myself as a sacrifice for a husband and child. I don’t want to lose the simplicity and spontaneity of thinking.

Since I moved away from Springfield, I have only gone puddle jumping once.

“Tabatha?” my friend Via asked, “What was your favorite moment of being 19?”

“Hmmm . . . that’s a hard one . . . well, I have a lot favorite moments. Like the time my roommate, Christie, and I rolled around in hampers together and created Hamper Olympics. Or playing intense games of Monopoly until three in the morning.” I lingered in these memories for a moment, reliving the happiness. Christie and I rolling around on the floor of our room in our mesh hampers, hers red, mine blue, seeing how many rolls we could make before getting dizzy. Playing Monopoly in TwoSouth with Kevin, Sarah, Matt, Aaron, and Colin, instead of doing our BioChem lab for the next day. After those few seconds, I continued,“But, I think my favorite memory was when I created Puddle Jumping.”

Via and I sat for a few moments, watching the rain fall outside.

“Wanna go puddle jumping?” I asked.

Via looked outside again, then looked back at me, “Well, it’s your birthday....”

So Via and I ran to the porch, and after a moment of hesitation, grabbed hands and ran into the torrential downpour. In seconds we were soaked.

We played in the rain: screaming, running, jumping, dancing, laughing, and spinning. We laid down on the wet cement and watched the rain drops fall, occasionally, getting a drop in the eye. Eventually, we got up again and started jumping in the puddles. Via and I were true puddle jumpers in those twenty minutes, we ran without thinking, or planning. We channeled a child’s spontaneous play. As we laid on the cement looking towards the sky, no one spoke. We breathed in the moment. The cars passing us by probably thought we were nuts, but I didn’t notice.

After about twenty minutes, the rain started to calm and we ran back to the porch and into the light. Via looked like she had just taken a shower with her clothes on, hair plastered to her face, mascara smearing around her eyes, clothes darkened and heavy, face dripping with water; I’m sure I looked the same. As we walked into the doorway, the simple joy we got from running in the rain ended as we hit the sixty-five degree air-conditioning. We were immediately brought back to reality and started to shiver. We realized we had nothing to change into, we didn’t even have a towel to dry off with.

When I finally arrived at the photography building, I didn’t even know who Via was, I didn’t even know I was going to leave Springfield, I didn’t know I would be continuing Puddle Jumping beyond that walk to class. The only things I knew was the rain has slowed, the Wicked Witch of the West was an older women in my photography class, she was in no danger of melting in the rain, my shoes and the bottom of my pants were soaked, my class was three and a half hours long, and I was smiling.