It's Raining Rats and Dogs

Around 4:30 today I heard skates on the sidewalk and decided to take a break. Two Brady girls and a little Brady brother were out there. The girls had roller blades and the little boy had a Big Wheel-style trike.

Despite the slight drizzle, I was ready for some exercise. They wanted to play tag. We played something sort of between tag and cops and robbers. When you got tagged, you had to go to jail. Little Brady Boy grabbed my arm tight and kept a strong hold on it while pedaling his Big Wheel up to my house, which had been declared the jail. Once whoever was It had captured the other three of us, we were all released and the first one captured took over as It.

Eventually older Brady girl wore out. "I'm tired," she said. (Yay, I thought. I had been checking my watch. I don't run much any more.) We pooped out on my front steps, then I realized I probably had a tennis ball left in the closet with which to play two-square. So I went in the house and dug the last tennis ball out of the can in the bottom of the utility closet.

When I came back out, nobody was there. "Oh, where did everybody go?" I yelled, playing along. I went out back and Little Brady's trike was there. At first I thought maybe they had faked me out and gone down the block, but of course they were all crouched under the stairs, against the basement door.

So then we went back out front and played two-square. Brady Boy found a stick and wanted to try to hit the ball, so we switched over to baseball. I thought that would be a better game to play in the vacant lot at the south end of the block, so we all went down there. Now I know who fixed up the lot, thanks to older Brady girl--her family, Peter Pan's family and a third family down there went in and cleaned it up. They put some old carpets down to make goals for soccer. People still keep dumping trash in there, though. There's a little cluster of dumpsters up by the sidewalk, and further back somebody left their Christmas tree on the ground. But there was plenty of unobstructed room for batting practice.

We all batted and pitched. Little Brady Boy was the best batter. I was the best pitcher. Some of the pitches were pretty wild. Younger Brady girl almost hit me in the head! It landed on my shoulder instead.

Suddenly the rain started coming more heavily. "Let's get you guys under your porch," I suggested. We were about to cross the street and go back to their house when older Brady girl spotted a dead rat in the gutter. "Eeeuw!"

Of course her little brother went right for it with his stick. "No, let's not do that," I said, laughing.

He laughed, too, and stopped. Whew.

"You know when it's raining really hard, my teacher told us they say it's raining cats and dogs," his sister commented.

"I guess it's raining rats and dogs now."