It’s pouring outside.

I suspect that it is going to be a huge mail day….lots of mail…tons of packages.

Heavy mail and heavy rain are a bad combination.

I expect the worst.

I was thinking about tarps when I woke up early to the sound of pounding water on our metal roof.

I was thinking about all the trips I took with kids while I was working at camps….and all the nights we spent sleeping under tarps.

Whether it was wet or dry weather, we slept under tarps.

I woke up….and started thinking about how thankful I was that we had a good tarp back then to protect us when it was raining hard.

Then I started wondering about all the times it didn’t rain on those trips.

What did the sky look like on the nights that it didn’t rain?

What did I miss?

Those tarps…..a protection….and a barrier.

I guess that there’s lots of stuff that’s like that….protective barriers.

You can’t be selective about when the walls go up….or when you have a tarp overhead.

You need walls and a roof for when the weather turns bad.

Having them when the weather is beautiful is just an occupational hazard.

You need protection….even when it’s not necessary.

I wish I could pay for insurance only when I need it.

That would be a lot cheaper than paying all the time when things are rolling smoothly.

Back to this tarp thought, though.

I wonder how many stars I missed because I thought that I better get ready for something like a deluge….”just in case”?

How many times, to jump track a little….just a little….didn’t I open up to someone because I was afraid of possibilities that never left my head?

What stars did I miss because I was afraid of the rain that never came?

I am a self-styled and somewhat ineffectual “catcher in the rye”.

I head off disaster by limiting experience.

That’s a shabby thing to realize about yourself….that you “head off disaster by limiting experience“.

I better do something about that….like everything in this modern age….quick.

Getting wet every now and then isn’t going to kill me.