Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always loved the rain. The pitter-patter of the water on the ground. The smell of it in the summer just as it starts to thunder. I’m in awe to think after all this time the rain still excites me. That’s why I’d like to dedicate this Freedom Friday post to my favorite weather—the rain.
One of my fondest memories of the rain takes me back to when I was fourteen. As a teenager growing up in the late seventies, early eighties, I enjoyed my place in high school as a student council representative, a wresting athlete, and a music fan. In my world, the biggest band on the face of the earth was Led Zeppelin. They were gods to me. The album Led Zeppelin III featured a song called Gallows Pole. Every time I hear it today, it brings me back to the instant I sat in my room for the first time listening to it. How can I forget that hot summer afternoon? The rain began to pound outside my windowsill. The thunder rumbled the sky. And here I was, listening to this song that starts off quiet but ends in a good ol’ fashioned, down home, country jamboree. I still get shivers whenever I listen to it today.
At that age, I also had my first job working at the city library. They hired me as a page. I never really knew what that meant. It wasn’t until I got older that someone told me a page is a gofer. Go for the books. Go for the librarian. Well, you get the picture. I spent most of the time putting books away. I digress. Late one fall evening, as I sat in my usual spot near the window sorting my books, the rain began. I stopped my sorting and just sat there watching. The traffic lights made a reflection on the street as they changed from green to yellow to red. People scattered to the nearest store looking for shelter. Where I sat, it was a carpeted bay window. I remember how peaceful it was to look at the water coming down in the middle of the street.
Seems I’m remembering a lot from those days. The major movies to hit the theaters were Rocky II, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Saturday Night Fever. Not necessarily in that order. Saturday Night Fever especially gives me pause. When it came out, the guys who I’ve known most of my junior high year, the cool guys, all of a sudden liked disco. I almost choked on my saliva writing that. Yeah, it devastated me. Hard core Zeppelin followers turned from the fold to worship a dance craze where guys pointed their fingers in the air like they just didn’t care. Someone turn me into a zombie so I can go back in time and eat their brains.
You know what, though? The rain is good.
One fateful afternoon, when I worked for the school newspaper, I covered our junior high dance. The disco traitors, I mean kids, came in full force. They sported their polyester shirts and slacks, pointed black shoes, and their array of gold jewelry, enough to weigh down and beach a whale. You know what’s coming. As the kids trickled in, the sky turned angry and the water began to fall. Hard. Those kids arriving, being cool and all, dashed from their parents’ car thinking, it’s only a little rain. A few seconds is all it took. The finely greased hair turned to mush. The polyester shirts and slacks retained every ounce of water drank. And the kids? The kids were dancing to Disco Inferno, tossing water everywhere doing the John Travolta moves.
I love the rain.
What about you? Do you like the rain? Do you enjoy listening to the wonderful sound of water hitting the rooftop on a cold, blustery night?
Looking to God 
I love rain, especially the heavy stuff. You can’t beat a good storm (from the safety of your own home or café window). I find the pitter patter on the windows and roof comforting. I think that’s why I like the film Bladerunner so much.
i’ve been meaning to comment on this since you posted this and havent had time. thank you for writing about the rain! even though people cant drive in it to save their life and it can cause serious chaos when flooding happens – but it also has a very quiet and peaceful quality about it. right after high school i went to San Diego for the summer. IT. NEVER. RAINED. dont get me wrong, i love the sunshine and warm weather… but a summer thunderstorm with torrential rain and the sound of it hitting the roof makes my heart flutter.
I love the rain. I love sleeping when it’s raining or pulling up a chair and sitting in my garage with a cocktail when it’s raining. Although it has rained for just about 2 weeks straight here in SE Wisconsin so we are kind of sick of it. If I hear it raining when I go to bed I make sure to open the window so I can hear it better since I live on the first floor of my apartment. Speaking of rain, we are supposed to get more tonight and the rest of this week about 3 more inches which our lakes around here CANNOT handle right now.
From one fellow Led Zeppelin fan to another; the scene where greased hair turns into a mush, polyester shirts and slacks get ruined, sent a tear to my eye 😉
One of my fondest memory of rain is when I was a junior escort at high school graduation (selected students from the junior class helped escort guests in and out of the ceremony). That year, girl escorts wore long tiered polyester dresses in possibly the ugliest shade of seafoam green known to the planet. The ceremony was at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, since I grew up in Denver. Just as the ceremony was about to conclude, the skies opened up, and I mean opened – one of those torrential storms where you are soaked to the bone in seconds. So in the general melee of people fleeing, as we escorted people’s grandmothers up the now-slippery steps, we got ourselves well coated in the red mud of those famous rock formations as well.
After all was done, I remember turning to a fellow escort and seeing that she was in the same state as me. All we could do was laugh until we cried at the sight of how bedraggled we were – hair askew, makeup in rivers, in our now translucent, red mud-stained slime green dresses dragging on the ground, We looked like something that had been dragged out of a kelp bed.
Due to the rainstorm, I think that graduation ceremony was more memorable than my own a year later.
I always loved playing in the rain with my nieces when they were younger, we still get together and have a game of volleyball in the rain sometimes. Or watching a thunderstorm from a darkened room on a summer night, window open, listening to the sound drown out everything else… 🙂
I’m with you on rain and disco. I don’t like the violent thunderstorms that we tend to get where I live. They’re beautiful to watch, but dangerous nonetheless. A nice, gentle rain, though, is like hitting the Reset button on the world.
I do love the smell of rain on freshly cut grass and I find the sound of rain after a nice summers day, quite therapeutic, but Im not that good if I am out in the rain! My hair frizzes up like a wire wool! Worse than this, the rain seeps into my shoes and I get soggy feet! EEK! 😉 xxx
I can completely relate to this relationship with the rain.
One thing which I used to do, when I was young and significantly smaller, was to wrap my duvet around myself and lie on the windowsill with the window slightly open. Odd I know, but the slight gap in the window allowed a little refreshing spray through whilst allowing me to listen to the rain hitting the conservatory roof below. To this day I still sleep better when it’s raining and have even, at times, become dependent on it to reach a comfortable slumber. Thankfully I have a few long audio tracks to get me through.
Rain is a beautiful thing. You nailed the feeling, the smell, the sound. when i was a teen i used to run out to the end of the dock when it rained and play my accoustic guitar.
i remember the disco days. i never was much of a disco dance fan. I had to laugh because i always think about the show “freaks and geeks”. it covered that era pretty damn good.
I love the smell of rain and the sound of rain and took the dog for a walk in it this morning, but I draw the line at downpours which it looks like outside now. The traffic light reflection must have been cool. Nice memories.
We re-roofed our old house last summer in the midst of the drought, and this week’s gully-washers gave us a good concert of Rain on A Metal Roof. It’s the first good rain we’ve had. Maybe the drought is over.
I love Spring thunderstorms, especially at night while gusts of wind blow through my bedroom window. And for some reason, I’ve always loved rain on a Saturday.
How neat to read of another person who worked as a page in a library. I did that for three years and it was my first job.
Rain is wonderful. I always sleep best when it’s raining. Growing up, we lived in the desert so rain was a rare treat. Now that I live in the Midwest, I get to enjoy massive thunderstorms quite often–however, they are also sometimes accompanied by tornadoes. Although they can be scary, those storms are some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
That’s quite a contrast to go from desert to thunderstorms. I can’t really say I experienced anything like that in my lifetime. Although when I was younger our winters were brutal testaments of nature. I remember temperatures dropping to -30°C (not sure what that is in Fahrenheit). Somehow, that doesn’t happen anymore. Anyway, my favorite season is fall, particularly because of the rain, the fall colors and Happy Turkey Day. But that’s another story for another time!
Brr!! That is so cold!
I love fall as well. Bonfires, corn mazes, s’mores, gorgeous colors. I’ll admit I’ve always been a bit of a spring/summer girl myself. But as you said, that’s another story for another time!
yes. rains to me means a gift from the sky to earth. The sound and the smell both are great. I actually want to get soaked in rains, its like ,wash away all strains and pains..come and wah me rains..I want to be fresh again.
Yes, do add me to the rain’s fan club.
I love that it’s used in fiction to increase the dramatic tension (and it works too!) but in real life rain has always been good to me.
I was born in a thunderstorm and every birthday, it rains! I was wondering, the pic you posted, the water pic, where is this place?
I took the photo two years ago in Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada. Just like the caption says 😉
No wonder it looked so much like Newfoundland. Sorry, I’m ADHD. Captions are often overlooked.
I love the rain! I especially love it at night – it is so relaxing to hear the dripping on the roof; as it runs along the windows; as it pounds and bounces off every surface, ah! I have always felt that rain is like this purifier which comes and washes away all the evils of the world. I do have a question though, and I wonder if you’ve ever thought about this too…I assume when people have showers and baths they get wet, right? So why is it that when people get caught in the rain they start running for their lives trying desperately hard not to let a single drop touch their skin?
I’m assuming this as a rhetorical question so I’ll answer it with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek: I guess folks need to have soap around to calm them from the waves of rain.
I find it relaxing to listen to the rain, but only when I’m inside. I don’t like being drenched.