Happy Again

Ya’ll get in here ur’re gonna catch your death a cold or worse ya gonna get hit by lite’en. Now you git ur’re skinny lil buts inside and I mean, I mean now for I come out and git ya’ll. I can still here my mama calling out to us from my aunt Liz’s porch in Alexandria Louisiana we would visit there in the summer time when I was a young boy my mama growing up in Crowley an all; her sisters all settling points nearby. My aunt Liz’s was my favorite as my cousin Tommy was almost my same age and Peter and Johnny one year older and one year younger from Bay City Texas would almost always tag along, the four of us makin quite a team. We would never pay heed to her calls acting like we didn’t hear her at all cause when the rain would come on them hot summer Louisiana nights when the air was so hot and thick you could hardly breath the only relief other that that oscillating fan that would hum us to sleep along with the crickets and the frogs was when the rain came. And come it would down in buckets as mama would say rainin cats and dogs. We would strip off our clothes and of we’d go running and skippin paying hide and seek, tag and just running and sliding on the grass like a super slide. The rain coolin our hot skin, just slightly cooler than the air, it would sting for just a little while til you gits used to it then it was like swimming in air. We would squeal and laugh chasin each other for no reason at all. Just to be defying nature an Mama and to be playin in the rain.
As I sit here in Phuket the rain has been threatening all day clouds lightly dotting the sky the moisture so thick you can feel it like a light sprinkle but no rain. I am sitting on the porch and scratching out a tune or two on Rhonda’s Guitar when in a flash the clouds come like a herd over the ridge just behind me. I see them coming and I know without question that this is just like Dylan says “ A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall.” Sure enough sooner than I can get inside and put away the guitar, the clouds give away to a Thailand downpour. Mama it don’t rain cats and dogs here it rains lions and tigers big un’s. I strip out of my clothes and put on a pair of swimming trunks and run outside leaving my flip flops behind I cannot not wait to feel that South East Asian Rain on my body. It’s different than Louisiana the Louisiana rain was always slightly cooler than the air you could feel every drop as it stung your body, here the rain is the same temperature as the air if not warmer the only stinging I feel is the sweat running off my forehead into my eyes. I go walking through the neighborhood in seconds I am one with the atmosphere my body is not wet it is immersed this is serious rain the visibility is next to zero if for no other reason than I cannot open my eyes to see without them being filled with the rain. No playmates to romp with and no grass to slide on I just walk. The neighbors are all sitting inside or on their covered front yards some are caught in the rain as they rush home on their motor scooters some walking with umbrellas.
Cars driving by splashing even more water upon me, but I don’t care. My neighbors all waving at me the children yelling out to me. I am beginning to be recognized and I think accepted I think they think I am just a little crazy walking in my shorts with bare feet in the pouring rain but I think they see the fun in it and they share in my delight. I am filled with every romantic notion and memory I have of surrendering to nature in a flash flood of a rain storm. Me and my cousins, South Florida Midnight swims, Venice as we ran huddled together looking for cover three to an umbrella our clothes entirely soaked to the skin, and Gene Kelly swinging on a lamp post singing in the rain. Then I hear my friend the neighborhood cantor as he sings singing out to God, my heart sings along, “I’m singing in the rain just singing in the rain what a glorious feeling I’m Hap, Hap, Happy again.” Let’s just hope I don’t catch my death or git hit by lite’en. I think I’ll pass swimming in the ocean this time the lighting is intense and I just might have run out my lite’en luck Swimming in the South Florida Rains. For now it does not get any better than this, and it does not need to. Cept for that oscillating fan that is waiting for me back at the Bungalow.