Writing the Self Four: Rain and Rubber Boots

I zip up my pink raincoat with the butterfly pattern and slip on my blue and pink rubber boots. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, and I am itching to get outside. I open the door and breathe in the fresh earthy smell that comes with rain. I close the door and make a beeline for the big puddle that always collects in the street. I look around the block, hoping my friends will see me outside and join me. I splash around for a few minutes while waiting for my friends, but I have no such luck. I leave the puddle carefully, aware of the last time it betrayed me. I didn’t want to fall in and be soaked again.

I go to my favourite big rock that sits under the tree in my front yard. My family knows that this is my rock. It is not too wet from the rain, and my coat is long, so I sit down. I look at the flowerbed around the tree and the rock. My mom made this flowerbed in the shape of a heart, and I admire it. I look around the plants, and I spy a worm. Well if my friends are not coming to join me, I will have to make my own friends. I pick up the worm and bring it close to my face to examine. It is pink and sort of slimy. I watch the way it moves, and how it can stretch its body out and compress it right back. I give my worm friend a tour of the front yard and then move to the backyard.

If my worm and I are going to be friends, then we need to play together. I go to my plastic slide and climb a few of its blue steps to set the worm on the slide. I get disappointed because the worm doesn’t go down the slide. In protest, I go to my sandbox and grab a plastic shovel. I hustle back to the slide, and my worm friend hasn’t moved at all. I put it in the shovel and send it down the slide, myself quickly in pursuit. We do this a few times before I take my worm on a tour of the backyard. I show it my dad’s old blue step side truck and his garage. I don’t open the door to the garage because if I wreck any of the cars in there, my dad would be mad. I take the worm to the flowerbeds and show him where the neighbours’ raspberry bush grows through the fence. I see a few more worm friends and hold them in my hand. As I introduce them to each other, my mom calls me from the door. She says it is time to come inside for lunch. I put my new friends back into the flowerbed, say goodbye, and run inside. I have managed to get myself soaked from head to toe, and when I tell my mom about my worm friends, she insists I wash my hands!