REMINDER THAT RAINY DAYS AREN'T SOMETHING TO DREAD

Something that's always fascinated me is the way certain subtle experiences will trigger a flood of nostalgic musing.

It might only be my aberrant thought processes, but I suspect in many people something as simple as the intoxicating scent of flowering dogwoods carried by a warm, gentle breeze can prompt a reminiscent spell filled with images of spring days long past.

But it was an experience amidst a recent afternoon downpour that elicited one of the sweetest memories I've had in a long time.

Spring has always been my least favorite season. Although it brings the budding radiance of new life, in the northwestern Illinois and southern Wisconsin hills where I grew up, spring too often also brought winter's last-gasp effort at torment. April and May blizzards were something we had to deal with ... and hated.

After a drawn-out, torturous winter, the last thing I wanted to see was a foot of snow during spring break.

When my favorite season, fall, rolls around with its cool, biting northern winds and earthy, smoke-filled scents it never fails to stir a flood of fond memories of Friday nights on the gridiron and the subsequent Saturday hikes through the woods to "work the kinks out."

My buddy and I used to carry along .22-caliber weapons with the delusion we were actually hunting squirrel. But, aside from an occasional chipmunk, the only thing we ever shot at, let alone hit, were Old Style cans.

The first snow in winter also invariably triggers pleasant memories of adolescent December nights when the falling snow and bitter cold were only minor distractions from the blissful experience of walking a girl home from a basketball game, clutching her mitten-clad hand.

Even on oppressively humid Southeast Missouri July and August days, I fondly recall the days of my first motorcycle, which could carry me into an unceasing breeze en route to a nearby creek or Apple Canyon Lake's sandy beach.

But spring seems to arouse mostly grim memories of final exams, painful shin splints (anyone who has ever run track can relate), and dirty, cold, wet, nasty rain.

I certainly can appreciate a warm spring shower and the way it seems to breathe life into a dormant creation. But when rain is forecast day after day and the forecasters are right spring can get really old, really fast.

That's why I was surprised Monday when during a drenching my sour mood was brightened by three young men making the most of nature's complimentary cleansing.

As I plowed through nearly a foot of water running on Broadway's curbside, there stood the three auspicious gentlemen urging me to steer toward, not away, from the huge pool directly in front of them.

At 25 mph, my pickup truck sent a cascading rush of rain water that must have soaked them to the bone. In my rear-view mirror I saw that, undaunted, they were directing the next motorist to the same pool, now nearly half emptied.

Immediately, my mind raced back to one of my earliest memories of a rainy spring afternoon sometime prior to 1970. It was then that a curly-headed, mischievous four-year-old and his three older siblings were urged (by a dad usually too serious and conservative to allow such things) to romp in the deluge.

As the youngest, I was the only child not required to first don some type of swim wear. Off we ran, me in my birthday best, in an innocently hedonistic frenzy. Around and around the house we sprinted looking for the deepest puddles to run and slide through, until finally Dad hustled us, mud-caked and soaked, into the basement for showers as he made hot chocolate.

How I miss those benign pleasures of youth. Deadlines and commitments, bills and financial planning, relationships and politics, and countless other responsibilities too often blind us from the simple, immediate joys that are accessible daily. I'm glad those three crazy fools who "didn't know enough to stay out of the rain" reminded me that rainy days aren't necessarily something to dread.

Maybe spring isn't such a bad season after all.