Ben Robinson

All About Ben

By Ben Robinson

I realize that for the past several summers, we have been sitting around, worrying because we did not ever have any rain to speak of.

The television weather girl would give us some unreasonable number on how much rain we were missing out on.

“We’re around 49 inches below our normal rainfall for the year,” she would say on the nightly broadcast.

Which was a lie. Sure, we’ve had some rainy seasons, but the figures quoted on the news must go back to that year when an old fellow named Noah gathered a few pets together on a big boat.

But we were down on our rainfall. I noticed the lake levels in the Upstate were starting to be ridiculously low. It was getting dangerous for people to take their boats out on the lake.

Worse yet, with the lake levels so low, there were fewer females enjoying sunbathing by the lake. And I am for anything that promotes the natural beauty of the Upstate.

Of course, many of us went to God in prayer. I’m sure God finds us challenging most times. I would guess He hears plenty of prayers for sunshine on summer weekends, but when He gives us some, we start complaining, asking for more rain. We are just not that easy to please.

So after so many dry years we have seemed to have hit a spell of rain.

But it’s just a little too much.

For the past several years, when we talked about when we expected it to rain, we answered by months.

“I look for it to rain in late August,” we would say. “It might cause a delay in some high school football games.”

Now we guess at when the next rainfall will come using the time of day.

“I’m glad that rain held off until lunchtime,” we might say. “I just hate having to use my wipers when I’m in line in the drive-thru.”

So whereas before we were not getting enough rain, we are now getting too much. We need some kind of compromise. Enough rain for our farming friends to grow crops, but not so much that we make our umbrellas our official hats.

Maybe I am just sensitive because I never learned how to swim. One good thing about it not raining is that it seems to cut down on drowning accidents. Nobody can drown crossing a big sandpit.

So here’s my deal with God: Let it rain some, but not continuously, and I promise to learn how to swim.

Or at least wear those little floatie things on my arms.