I thought it time I give my take on another of the elements. Today it’s raining here in sunny South Florida. This meteorological event serves as my inspiration to what will undoubtedly be another exercise in writing futility.
I am from New Jersey. There the rain is completely different than the rain in my adopted home of Pembroke Pines, Florida. I don’t think the New Jersey rain is even related to the South Florida rain. Maybe illegitimately, but I’m quite sure the New Jersey rain never even mentions the South Florida rain when conversing with the New York or Pennsylvania rain. It’s the rain no one talks about. Here are what I’m guessing are some of the reasons why.
The South Florida rain is lazy. All summer long it rains periodically though the weather people call for rain everyday. It’s like the unemployed guy who sleeps all day, goes out to the driveway to pick up his paper while scratching his balls located somewhere under his billowy tattered robe. The South Florida rain never finishes what it starts. Frequently it will rain on the eastbound side of the street but not on the westbound sound. It’s like a half-finished home where the builder ran out of money.
The South Florida rain is always threatening but winds up being full of shit. Kinda like that drunk on the bar stool that never shuts up about how great the world would be if everyone would just listen to him. There’s plenty of thunder, and plenty of lightening, but in the end it just passes out after a few drops.
The South Florida rain, when it decides to do so, is messy. It almost always causes flooding. And when it’s accompanied by wind, shit blows over and someone has to clean up the mess. It reminds me of that freeloading loud-mouthed relative that visits unannounced, eats all your stuff, leaves their shit all over the place, doesn’t flush after their morning constitutional, and doesn’t offer to pay for anything while they’re staying. And in the summer when it’s hotter than magma, it rains just enough to make everything even more uncomfortable, like the ninety-five percent humidity is bad enough. Akin to if one of those good-for-nothing relatives was a drug addict withdrawing from their latest escapade. Their breath smells like an elephant’s ass, and they’ve got the whole sweat package working. That’s what it’s like outdoors after one of those faux rains.
The South Florida rain is sadistic. Invariably when you spend hours painstakingly detailing your car, you can be guaranteed it will rain within minutes after you’ve finished. If you want it to rain wash your car. It reminds me of when my wife and I order food to be delivered. If we want it to show up, we go outside and smoke. Immediately after we light up the food arrives. I should quit smoking, but then the food would never get here.
The South Florida rain can be expensive. I spent six hundred dollars five years ago on a generator for when we lose power during a bad storm or hurricane. The fucker has never been started. I’m thinking of making a lawn ornament out of it. I have enough gas cans in my shed I have little room for much else. I’ve filled them after the weather alert of impending doom, and I wind up putting the gas in our cars, which a huge pain the ass, and it makes a mess down the side, prompting me to wash the car, and then it starts fucking raining in the biblical sense.
The South Florida rain can also make me feel good believe it or not. When it’s blistering hot, sometimes the rain cools things off. And I mean really cools things off. The temperature can drop twenty degrees in about ten minutes. It reminds me of those brutally hot days up north when a couple of minutes in the walk in cooler just made the afternoon bearable.
I love the sound of the South Florida rain when it beats on the roof. Sometimes it’s melodic, lulling you to sleep at night. Other times it sound like Wagner or The 1812 Overture. I like watching South Florida rain. Sometimes it comes down in sheets so thick you’d swear it was a thousand thread count Egyptian cotton. Then there are times when the rain comes down horizontally wishing I did acid just one more time. I love watching the rain on the lake by my house, it’s quite soothing. And every once in awhile it will hail. I never saw it hail when I lived in New Jersey.
The South Florida rain makes everything look beautiful once the skies clear…about fifteen minutes after the deluge. The golf course across the street from my house looks magnificent after a downpour. The green grass is so vibrant looking, it looks almost artificial. My lawn looks great after it’s been newly mowed, and then it rains. The rain seems to bring out the color. If your plants start looking a little sad, the rain makes them look happy again.
The South Florida rain seems to know when you need a break. Everything that’s worth doing in South Florida is done outdoors. When it rains you’re stuck inside. If it rains all day long –a rarity- they interview people on the news to find out how they coped. News reporters hang out at malls and movie theaters to see if everyone came through being cooped up all day. You’d think we were quarantined.
The rain in New Jersey was non-descript, devoid of personality, bland, dull, and predictable. The rain in South Florida has a personality, not a good one most times, but it has one none the less. It’s raining today. And I am doing something worth doing indoors; I’m writing this. If it was sunny and I went to write outdoors to enjoy the weather, it would probably start raining. The South Florida rain even has a sense of humor.
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