Raquel Vaughn-

The April showers are here. It feels like every day now that there’s a thunderstorm on the forecast, or at the very least, rain. Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain. In fact, I look forward to the days that I get to wake up to thunder and a flash of lightning. I like to listen to its pitter-patter as I read my book. And sometimes, I’ll look up and watch the droplets race down the window pane. When I was little, I liked to fall asleep to the sound of thunder and imagine what was happening in heaven. When my brothers and I were still learning fractions and how to work the landline, my mom would tell us that when it rained, God was laughing so hard He was crying and that the boom of the thunder was just his voice. I would dream about what and who could make God laugh viciously and loudly.

I love the rain and everything about it: the sound, the smell, the way the dark clouds hover over the city, making it feel like the “end of the day” all day. I will continue embracing every feature of this natural phenomenon, even if it makes an enemy.

Let’s take it back to Raquel’s third-grade year when the school’s spring semester was inching closer to its end. In elementary school, this time of year was always the best because it was easier to twist your teacher’s arm. If the class spent the entirety of silent-reading time actually reading then—surprise—afternoon recess! If the class walked quietly from the lunch room to the classroom then—surprise again—afternoon recess! The months of April and May in elementary school meant that every opportunity was an afternoon recess opportunity. And for whatever reason, my class earned an afternoon recess on this particular day of the week.

As we shuffled from the classroom to the playground, we couldn’t contain our excitement. After all, it rained all morning and during lunch, so we never even got our normal recess that day. Who’s smart idea was it to stick a hundred nine-year-olds in a building for seven to eight hours straight?

The elementary school’s layout was interesting in that a hill ran from the parking lot to the playground. The hill wasn’t extremely big, but it was steep enough that recess monitors would hand out sleds during the winter so we could go sledding down it. There was also a hill that led from the playground to what we called our school’s forest. During recess, we weren’t allowed to go into the forest, but the monitors didn’t mind if we played with leaves and sticks on the outskirts. However, I was more of a monkey bars kind of girl, so I kept to myself on the playground while my friends poked at rocks with their sticks.

When we ran outside with our backpacks, I slipped on the first hill. It spooked and embarrassed me, but I realized that it was simply wet grass. I shrugged my shoulders and dropped my backpack at the bottom of the hill, where everybody else’s backpacks were also abandoned. Like I said, I spent every recess at the monkey bars. But the most-coveted playground equipment was up for grabs. What we called “The Glider” is what you would imagine a single bar on a metal zipline. We were the only class outside, and I figured that it was now or never. So I walked up to “The Glider” intending to spend all of our afternoon recess swinging from one side to the other.

I got one swing in before noticing most of my classmates were at the bottom of the other hill, right by the school forest. I wondered how they got down there so quickly without falling on their butts. Everything was wet—the grass, the playground—I nearly slipped off “The Glider” doing my one swing. I completely forgot this fact and what happened moments before when I began running down the hill, yelling at my friends to be careful because they could slip on the wet grass.

I couldn’t even get to the end of my warning before I slipped again. This time I braced both of my hands behind me to break my fall. As a third-grader a mere month or so away from experiencing summer, that was the worst mistake I could have made in that moment. As soon as I connected with the ground, a sharp pain went through my right arm. I began to cry, and two of my friends ran to help me up. My hands were muddy as well as my skirt, and all the boys in my class, except for Logan H, pointed and laughed at me. It wasn’t raining or thundering, but I could’ve sworn that even God was up in heaven laughing at me.

When I went to the nurse’s office, I was in there for so long getting my arm wrapped up that I missed my bus. Walking alone from the front doors to an unfamiliar bus while nursing your right arm with your left is a truly humbling experience. I had to switch off mid-route. It didn’t matter how many times during my hour-long bus ride I called my mom, she still did not answer. It wasn’t until thirty minutes after being dropped off that I learned my mom was grocery shopping. It wasn’t until the next day, when I skipped school to go to the hospital, that I learned that I dislocated and fractured my arm. I cycled through two different casts and had to learn cursive with my left hand. And it didn’t matter how much I loved the rain, I had to put a plastic bag on before going out in it.

Now, as a 21-year-old, I am still afraid of slipping and falling. The reason I walk twice as slowly on campus during the winter is for the same reason I hate wet grass.