This is the first of three posts where I will take a particular National Day and spin an extended Throwback Thursday based on memories of that topic…

Not sure which interest this National Day serves but it prompts a memory of a rainy day when I was probably in about second grade. We lived in a part of Cincinnati named Mount Airy which featured a prominent water tower on a hill. We lived down the hill from that water tower, not too far from the school house, also on that hill. Don’t judge my mom – in those days there was a more general feeling of safety in towns in Ohio and besides I have already explained in a post earlier this year that I was very independent very young. So I walked to and from school and was always punctual, coming and going.

On that particular day she dressed me up in a yellow raincoat and galoshes and sent me off to class with a reminder to be careful. At the end of the school day I was late coming home and as time stretched on she began to panic. She quickly made arrangements for a neighbor to watch my younger siblings, neither had started school. She was a stay at home mother and so bundled herself up to walk up to the school. About halfway to the school house she came across a scene much like this…

No, that is not me. Mom did not have and did not bring a high resolution camera to ‘catch the moment.’ It is a many decades later representation from a stock photo site that may or may not uncannily resemble the second grade me. Best I could do.

Back to the story. She found me pretty quickly as I was coming back the exact correct route like a good boy. However, I had dawdled mightily observing and playing in the rainwater. When she found me I was intently walking down the gutter deliberately placing one foot sideways in front of the other to watch the water cascade over the galoshes and then doing it over again.

She was relieved and angry and frightened and happy to have found me. She grabbed me by the hand to drag me home and I said something like “but mommy I have more water to watch.” She liked to tell me that story to illustrate how once I focused on something I can seldom be distracted. Or perhaps she liked to tell that story to remind me what a pain in the keister I could sometimes be. Either way it is a good memory and I hope you have the chance to splash a friend in a puddle today!