Rainy Shoes

Class 5A, the first week of July.

There is a rule in our house that you do not wear school shoes in the rain, and so from June the black leather ones go into the cupboard and the rainy shoes come out — grey plastic, ventilated with little holes, which is a design decision I will not understand for another thirty years, because water goes in through those holes just as happily as it comes out.

By the time I reach the bus stop, both shoes are full.

It is quarter to seven and the sky has not properly opened yet, only settled into that grey that means it has no intention of stopping. My umbrella is doing its best. The rain is not falling so much as arriving sideways, and the umbrella takes it on the left shoulder and pushes back, and every so often the wind gets underneath and tries to turn the whole thing inside out, and I hold on with both hands and my bag slides down my arm. My socks have gone the colour of the road. I can feel the water move between my toes when I shift my weight, and I shift my weight quite often, just to feel it.

The school bus comes late, and it comes full.

Inside is its own weather. Thirty of us in raincoats, that stiff blue PVC that smells the way a new ball smells, only wetter, and the windows are fogged from the inside so that nobody can see out and nobody minds. Somebody draws a face on the glass. Somebody rubs it out. The bus goes into a pothole and we all go up together and come down together, elbow into rib, wet sleeve against wet sleeve, and the whole bus says ooooh in one voice, half complaint and half applause. Under everything there is the smell of soaked feet, warm and slightly sweet and entirely ours, which we have not yet learned to be embarrassed about.

At school the line dissolves the moment it forms. Up three floors, and the staircase sounds like an animal — squelch, squelch, the gumboot kids squeaking, someone's shoe coming off on the second landing. Umbrellas go into the corridor, half open, dripping in a row, and the floor behind us keeps a record of exactly who walked where.

Then the classroom, and the strangeness of it: the tube light on at seven-thirty in the morning, and the windows full of nothing but grey. It makes the room feel like evening. The benches are wet where the raincoats have swung against them, so we wipe them with our handkerchiefs and the handkerchiefs are wet too. Our notebooks have gone soft at the corners. The chalk drags on the damp board. Outside, the rain hits the awning over the corridor like applause that will not stop, and somebody at the back says that if it keeps up they will send us home by ten.

Nobody is dry. Nobody has been dry since half past six. We are all exactly as wet as each other, and that, I think, is the best part — though I don't have those words yet, and only notice that I am extremely happy.

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My son checks an app. It tells him the rain will start at 8:40 and stop by noon, with a number attached, and he plans his day around a probability. The school van comes to the porch. The school sends a message the night before if the water is rising. His shoes stay dry, and his bag is waterproof, and he will get to the classroom without a single drop touching him.

He'll be fine, of course. He just won't be wet with anybody.

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Editor's Note: The author conceived this article from her lived experiences and drafted it with assistance from Claude, using her own inputs and reflections.

(Kanchan Shine is a daydreamer with a notebook. She reads more than is sensible, watches people slightly longer than is polite, and has never lost the habit of asking how a thing works — or when it quietly stopped working that way. She's an author and former entrepreneur, now serving as Chief Learning and Innovation Officer for Hurix Digital, where her weekdays go to learning design and artificial intelligence. She's also the author of Sticky Learning: From A to Z. Here, she's off duty — writing about whatever she's noticing at the moment.)