102 days without rain

So Phoenix has been setting a record lately. 102 days without rain. A relative asked me what that’s like.

When I first moved into my new apartment in Lubbock, I used to get shocked every time I touched anything metal (a fresh shampoo of the carpets will do that, something weird with static). Over time I started to get shocked less and less, and after 2 years it doesn’t happen at all. It was only after getting to my new job in Phoenix and again getting shocked by every metal object there that I realized “Hey my old apartment doesn’t shock me anymore”.

I’m trying to draw a parallel here. When I was in Lubbock, and it rained, it was only an inconvenience to me. I’m no longer in the farming business, so I don’t need the water, I don’t have a lawn because I’m in an apartment so I don’t get to save money by having to water it less. The only thing the rain did for me was cause me to get wet, my car windows to get dirty (because the rain would turn the dust on the car to mud), the alley between me and the dumpster to be impassable for days, and having to drive slowly on the roads and avoid the big puddles. –I should note for those unfamiliar to Lubbock: Lubbock has a drainage problem in that it’s mainly the same elevation all around the county, so the rain doesn’t have much anywhere to go. This often results in a brief rain storm leaving rain in on the sides of the road for hours after it’s passed, and an extended rain storm to have foot deep puddles on the sides of the road that make the right hand lane unusable.

I had a running joke going with this guy who worked at a convenience store on my way to work that I was “the man who hates rain” after I told him that as a non-farmer rain was just an inconvenience.

What I’m trying to say here is that I regarded both the rain and the static shocks as just inconveniences, and when inconveniences that seem to just happen at random intervals occur less frequently, or stop all together, you don’t notice it until someone says “Hey it hasn’t rained in over 100 days!”

Now if it turned into “it hasn’t rained in 120 days and when you step in the shower it only comes out as a trickle because we are running out of water”, I would be very concerned that we hadn’t gotten any rainfall. Much like “Meatless Mondays” or “Wheatless Wednesdays” made every citizen realize that we were at war, the lack of them allows me to hurtle through life blissfully unaware.