Napping in the rain

I probably enjoyed naptime most of the time when I was in kindergarten, and I wish I recognized the glory of a midday nap—at school, nonetheless!—now that I am a high school student. Yet, my only memory of naptime is a suffocating uncomfortably-warm memory, of a squirming body against itchy cloth.

The rain drowned out my thoughts. A bolt of lightning sometimes flashed across the sky, its light piercing through the gaps between the plastic blinds, and I held my breath in anticipation for its crack. Boom! The noise shattered the very air around me. The impact of the thunderbolt shocked the air, rolling, like a leather bullwhip, straight into my ear. I didn’t mind it much, though. The thunder, I mean. It was soothing, in a way, like a big cosmic metronome, and it was suspenseful to wait for it to crack. I breathed out every time it did, and I saw my awed breath float up in the frigid air in front of me and dissipate.

What annoyed me—what suffocated me, what made me squirm—was seeing the water rush down the windowpane. It had been raining hard, such that the rain formed not gentle droplets on the surface of the window but a raging torrent. Sheets and sheets of water passed over the window. Each layer caught the light marvelously. The sun’s rays had been diffused by low-hanging clouds, but the little waterfall seemed to concentrate it somehow. Light entered the water soft and fuzzy and exited casting dancing webs of light on all the sleeping children, sometimes catching me in the eye. It was this tantalizing movement that enraptured me so…I cursed that I was confined to my bed—and indoors entirely—while the water was allowed to play and swirl and rush about. I swam my limbs about under my thin blue cover as if running with the rain. My skin was rubbed raw.

I grew hotter and itchier and more confined. I kicked my blanket entirely off my body. I sprawled on my mat as if I were a starfish. A deep frustration boiled inside of me.

The door was flung open. The lights turned on. I got to my feet and rushed out the door in a moment. At some point, one of my teachers draped my raincoat over my shoulders, but I was too elated to notice. I tilted my face towards the sky, stuck out my tongue, and let the sweet, fat raindrops run down my cheeks.

Then I became suddenly aware of the raincoat on my body. My own sweat steamed up inside its clear plastic layer, and I was a sauna rock under its jurisdiction. I hated it. No more! I cast it off triumphantly. I stood to the clouds again, arms outstretched, drinking in the rain.