The Rain

I'd always loved the rain growing up. In California it was always soothing. We'd know about the weather two or three days before it got to us in the north end of the state. The same storm fronts would go through Alaska, Canada, Washington, Oregon, and then they'd finally get to us. The worst thing that could happen was it could become a thunder storm. As long as you weren't stupid and hung around tall metal poles or didn't try to find cover no one ever got hit.


The storms always started the same. We'd get a light sprinkling of rain for awhile, it could be a couple hours or a couple days, then it would gradually become a harder rain. It might fluctuate in the middle, but it would end the same way, going back eventually down to a light sprinkling of rain and then it was over. In the winter a lot of the time there were whole weeks and sometimes months of solid rain. Every seven years or so it would actually show where I lived and if we were lucky it might stick for a couple days, the most I remember it being around was a week.

Later on in my life I moved to North Carolina and I was blown away by how different storms out here were. Here it can pour down rain on one side of the road and not on the other. It can be sunny and pour down rain at the same time. To someone who's used to the weather of Northern California it's like being dropped on a foreign planet.

My introduction to the weather in the South was seeing a wall of water coming towards me out of no where. I thought that the world was going crazy. It took me completely aback. I was thinking that I was seeing things. There is nothing that can prepare you for that kind of a shift. To people around here it's completely normal, to them I was the one who was crazy.

It's amazing how different things can be in different parts of the world and even from different parts of the same country. How we view things depends on what we've been exposed to. How I view something as simple as the weather might be completely different than someone else. Perspective is vital to every part of our lives.