It’s funny, in romantic comedies, couples always seem to be breaking up in the rain and bad things are happening around them, but I have so many cool romantic comedy girl memories in the rain. Most of them took place at sleep away camp.

There was the time that it poured so hard that my three girlfriends and I went outside in bathing suits and washed our hair. I have put that scene in a script I wrote. It was so refreshing to have the cool rainwater pouring down as hard as a shower… actually harder since at the time we had a shower house where you had to hold a string and a trickling stream of warmish water came down. How are you supposed to wash yourself and hold a string at the same time? I always seemed to need two hands… Anyway, so there we were sudsing up out hair with our Finesse, cause “sometimes you need a little and sometimes you need a lot”. We were only eleven so we had no idea that this was like porn to the bunk of 11-year-old boys who were watching us through their moth infested screened windows.

And then there were movies in the rec hall. The entire camp could fit in there, and it didn’t matter how old you were, you were watching Pink Floyd’s THE WALL. I think it was the only movie my camp owned. You’d sit with your ‘boyfriend of the week’, and watch something that only made sense to the counselors who’d smoked pot before arrival. And then the bats would start flying around. Literally bats with wings that got stuck in your hair if you didn’t duck. The counselors were too high to care about our terrified screams, but some of us, were lucky enough to have boyfriends who not only cared, but came prepared. So instead of watching the nonsensical WALL, we would be entertained by the 6 coolest guys under 13 who brought their tennis rackets and were swatting the bats.

As I got older, hitting bats with tennis rackets got less romantic, but the rain didn’t. At 13 I was still a camper, but a CIT (Counselor in training) who I’d had a crush on for at least 3 summers, took me out on the lake in a row boat. Everyone else was inside because it was raining, so it was like there was no one in the world but us. He put blankets down on the bottom of the metal row boat. He sat up. I was curled up with my head in his lap and an oar sticking in my back, but I didn’t say anything for fear this moment of perfection, with him lightly stroking my hair and the rain misting on my face, and the warmth of the day…

And the warmth of the day. Yeah, something about the warmth mixed with the rain and I don’t know how weather works, but all of a sudden I heard him say “Shit!” As he jumped up jabbing my my back deeper into the oar. When I heard the sudden clash of thunder, I realized while my eyes were closed, he had seen the sky light up with… yup, lightning. Sitting in a metal row boat in the middle of a lake in a lightning storm… not ideal. Watching his shirtless body row as fast as he could… priceless! I didn’t know which muscle group to stare at… arms, chest, abs… perfection!

And when I became a CIT, rain brought skinny dipping, because all of the campers were inside with their counselors, so the CITs had no responsibilities. We would get gallon jugs of Riunite wine, drink on dock 2 which was hidden by the woods, shed our clothes and jump in the lake. (note: there were no cell phones then, let alone phones with cameras in them) We would all pair up and make out with our ‘boyfriend of the week’ until one of the girls would think she felt a snapping turtle brush her leg. Coulda been.. or it could’ve been her boyfriend’s hand and she needed an excuse to get out, either way, all of the girls got freaked out and jumped back on the dock, wrapping ourselves in towels, as our still naked boyfriends would try to see who was the most macho by allowing their precious jewels to become turtle bait.

And now that I’m older, as long as I don’t have some place to be, rainy days are great for wrapping up in a blanket, watching a romantic comedy, and reflecting.

Good times!

© 2010