3WW #57

Welcome to Three Word Wednesday. Each week, I will post three (or more) words. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write something using all of those words. It can be a few lines, a story, a poem, anything.

Leave a comment if you participate. Many fun and interesting people might visit your blog.

This week’s words are:
Field
Hide
Second

To most, it’s a place that time forgot, with abandoned storefronts and old two story buildings.
To him, it’s a bustling town square where a man could take care of any and all business he might have to do in a single day.

To most, it’s an overgrown field on the corner, badly in need of mowing.
To him, it’s a neatly kept baseball diamond, alive with the sound of kids, including a scrawny but quick shortstop wearing an oversized jersey and a hand-me-down glove that belonged to his grandpa.

To most, it’s long overdue for demolition, an eyesore they wish they could hide.
To him, it’s the nickel matinee, with all the big stars on the marquee–Gable, Bogart, Hepburn, and Bacall–where he spent every Sunday afternoon for three years.

To most, he’s slow and sometimes gets in the way, and he’ll talk your head off for an hour if you ever let him get started.
To him, there’s no reason to be in a hurry, and the best part of life is the people.

To most, it seems like there will always be plenty of days and years and more time.
But he knows. One second you’re ten years old playing shortstop, then you turn around…

“So he walked downtown with his cane pole, looking through the window of what used to be the drugstore. Next to the cafe where he laughed away his life…”

Taste of rain

I was halfway thru my first lap on the three-quarter mile track when the first drops of rain hit my skin, one on my right arm and one on my face, right in the middle of “Brass Monkey,” jarring me from my iPod induced trance.

Within seconds, it was pouring. My first inclination was to throw myself into the fetal position, using every bit of clothing and body mass I had to protect Nan until the rain stopped. But she was in her iPod cover, and tucked underneath my shirt, so I thought she would be OK.

My next inclination was to throw up my hands and scream, “Why! Why does it wait to rain until the minute I start running?” But I refrained.

And then something happened.

I found myself enjoying the rain. I didn’t speed up. Instead I continued to run at my usual pace, listening to the quiet noise the rain made falling thru the trees, feeling its coolness hit my skin.

By the time I got back around to the parking lot, I was drenched. My clothes felt heavy. I wanted to laugh. Part of me wanted to keep running.

Slowing to a walk, I looked heavenward and opened my mouth, letting the raindrops hit my tongue. It reminded me of being a kid. It reminded me I was alive.

I don’t know when or where my sometimes frustration with rain began. But today I remembered something I knew all along. There are much worse things in life than getting caught in the rain.

Sometimes there’s nothing better.

“I hear it talking through the trees and on the window pane. When I hear it I just can’t believe I never liked the rain…”