Rain + The object of reading

Author

Martin Boehme
August 31, 2026

Cartoons were right.

I think about quitting the internet a lot. Generally, I decide against it, because the cost of withdrawing from society is to also withdraw any influence you could use to help it, but it's tempting.

One of the ideas you might find online is that it's funny that the cartoons of old made it seem like quicksand was a core thing we'd all need to know how to deal with in our daily lives.

I'm not usually around physical quicksand, but the internet is filled with it: keep calm, find something to grab onto or someone to help you out, and you can escape. Focus on the sand itself and sink further.

Having OCD doesn't help.

But as much as I'd like to avoid every little spot of mental quicksand and wash my hands of it, I still find it more or less irresponsible to cede the territory.

So, here's a story.

Rain

Rain-soaked Harry stepped backward off the bus' first step, retreated into the shelter, and pulled out his notepad to add 'wait for the bus' to his todo list for the third time that morning.

His rain-cloaked daughter, Nora, adjusted her hat with one hand and pulled on his increasingly immovable pant leg with the other.

"Will the next one have room, Dad?"

Harry looked down from his list and smiled. "I'm sure it will. It's just busy today, that's all. Maybe there's a game."

"Well, we need to get to the flower shop. I want to find an orange one this time."

"Orange? What makes you want to find an orange flower?"

Nora shrugged. "It's like pumpkins."

Harry nodded seriously, eyebrows showing a deep contemplation. "That's true. It is like pumpkins. Good point."

Nora nodded vigorously and jumped off to splash in a puddle forming over the sunken corner of one of the sidewalk squares.

Harry watched the rain fall around her as she played. He loved the rain: it was a quieting thing, one of the few things that could successfully lull his worries away, apart from Nora. When it was raining, other things would drift into the background, and he would let them.

Nora jumped and splashed and listened. Nora loved the rain, too: it was a loud thing, cherished because it couldn't be ignored. The constant sound of drops against the soil and pavement and leaves, the sound of splashes when she jumped, the sound of cars driving by and sending a tidal wave to shore, of pedestrians muttering afterward and moving a bit further inland. She loved sitting on the bench in the mudroom to put on what she liked to call her long shoes before splashing so high her socks would get wet anyway.

She sometimes wished it would never stop raining.

Sometimes, Harry wished the same thing.

The fourth bus finally had enough space to suit him, and they boarded. Nora swung her legs back and forth, until she saw a familiar sign on a street corner. "It's time?" she asked.

Harry nodded and picked her up so she could pull the cord. She liked to be good at buses.

He carried her off the bus and down the rest of the block until they reached Alm Street Flower Shop, a shop on Alm Street that sold flowers. The owner spent most of her naming budget, which would have been her own unpaid evening hours, watching old M*A*S*H episodes with a framed picture of her grandfather.

She was one of the happiest people Nora had ever met, and she smiled wide when she saw her come in. "What color flowers are you looking for today, Nora?"

"Orange ones!" she said, as she jumped off of the rug in the entryway.

"Good choice. We've got some fresh orange ones over there in the corner window," the owner replied.

Nora bounced around on the way over, splashing welcome raindrops all over the plants and less welcome raindrops onto the only other customer, an elderly woman who decided to look for a different color of flower after all and ambled off to another section.

Harry already had his flowers chosen, and his cluster of purple hyacinths was joined by an arrangement of orange geraniums wrapped around a single mum. Nora felt very clever for seeking out the latter on purpose.

They walked a block further to a park, thankful the skies still hadn't cleared.

It was a field of trees and stones and names and, often, a couple of bouquets with a ribbon that read Alm Street Flower Shop.

Nora was old enough to be clever about words, and she was also old enough to be clever about feelings, so after she placed her flowers down next to his, she asked one of Harry's favorite questions in the whole wide world.

"Dad, what was she like?"

I've been thinking about why one might read stories in the first place this month after reading Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children, by Mac Barnett, which came recommended by a local bookseller.

(Bookmongers in general, from sellers to librarians, are generally good at this sort of thing.)

My quickest takeaway is that ulterior motives are commonly bad at motivating.

The book as a whole was about the importance of writing good books for children, books that don't necessarily serve a purpose other than just being good stories. It calls into question the very adult idea that children's books are supposed to be for something.

There was also one exaggerative line about most children's books not being good enough that didn't land well with some people, but that's not really for me to comment on. I present no opinion on the line itself or those opinions. Quicksand.

What I will have an opinion on is that this book made me think back to how I ended up loving reading in the first place, and I think it might bear a useful lesson for learning in general.

Essentially, I never learned to read for the power and prestige of literacy; I did it because there were stories I wanted to know more about. I never once considered whether the hundreds of books I read as a child were making me any better at anything in any way.

If I were trying to read only to become a better reader, I may have counterintuitively burned out on reading before I ever could have gotten anywhere with it.

I wonder how many other things we might secretly poison with ulterior motives, and how many things we might accidentally unlock if we found and followed their inherent joys instead.

Oh, also: remember that mid-thirties cocoon I was talking about? It seems to have split open. And as predicted, it very much seems like the only possible path I could have taken, even more so than I intended to predict. But that's all on that for today.

Keep blooming,

Martin

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