John Pepin

“And I’ll be certain she’s my girl by the things she’ll like to do – like walking in the rain.” – Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann and Phil Spector

I remember being a young kid at the age of probably 9, sitting at our kitchen table on a warm Saturday morning doing math problems.

I was horrible at math back then, and I can’t claim any meteoric ascent to higher knowledge of the subject has occurred since.

Statistics and geometry make more sense to me than trigonometry, algebra or, back then, dividing and multiplying fractions.

That Saturday morning was of particular importance because us neighborhood kids had been talking about playing a big backyard football game all week.

My mom had me all but tied to that kitchen table, not letting me go anywhere until I finished my homework and some additional practice exercises to help me get better at those equations.

It was horrible.

The kitchen window was open at the side of the house, and I could hear all the other kids out there in the yard whooping, laughing and hollering.

I felt so stupid, and I hated that feeling.

If everyone else could figure it out enough to be outside, why couldn’t I?

It felt like I was being punished or grounded or something, but I really wasn’t.

But was I stupid?

I don’t know, maybe I was.

Regardless, I knew I wasn’t getting outside until I got finished what I needed to do.

My mom figured out that the biggest threat she could hurl at my brother and me was to make us stay in the house instead of going out to ride bikes, go fishing, play football or baseball or just hang around.

That was far more effective than all the wooden-spoon or Hot Wheel track corporal punishment she could dish out.

Second worst for me was the back porch steps.

This was like a time-out, where you would have so many minutes you had to sit on the back steps before being able to return to play.

I felt like if anyone walked by on the sidewalk and saw me sitting there, they would not just see a kid sitting on the steps outside his house, but instead, a prisoner who had clearly earned his sentence.

Most likely, it was a crime of talking back or calling my brother or sisters names -deservedly or not. Sometimes, I think my crime was being the oldest, “the example.”

We were sent a mixed message about the back steps because it served as a detention center but also a place where we would sit to eat our lunches on warm summer days.

There was also a duplicitous policy on rain.

We were not allowed to go outside to play if it was going to rain.

I spent countless hours stuck inside the house, looking out the window hoping to be able to report the rain had stopped.

Even when that did occur, I was stunned to find out that I still couldn’t go outside to play because everything was wet and muddy – even if the sun came out.

I remember sitting on a glider we had on the enclosed front porch.

The windows had screens. With them open, I could coast back and forth on the glider and smell the fresh air, especially during and after a rainfall, but could not take one step outside that front door.

However, my brother and I used to sell nightcrawlers at my dad’s urging as a way for us to make money.

I wish we could have sold a dozen nightcrawlers back then for the incredible prices they cost today – we might have made enough money to quit school, even at the ages of 9 and 5.

The highest price I can recall us charging for a dozen was $1.25.

Anyway, to get nightcrawlers to sell and for our own supply for brook trout fishing, we were allowed to take a flashlight and a coffee can and go outside at night after it rained to pick nightcrawlers.

The worms would come out of their underground holes to lay themselves out on the grass to keep from drowning.

So allowable was picking worms that we were even able to use an old kitchen boiler pan my mom had to keep the worms in down in the basement, where it was nice and cool.

I still don’t know why we could go outside in the rain to pick worms but couldn’t go outside in the rain during the daytime.

I think it might have had something to do with the fact that my mom and dad both fished and understood the importance of having available bait, especially when it could be acquired through free labor.

I recall many days watching trains, cars, people and even dogs and cats outside going about their business in the rain while I was stuck inside.

We were like the kids in Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat,” looking outside.

“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So, we sat in the house all the cold, cold, wet day.”

The big difference for us was there was no cat in a hat showing up at our house to raise a bunch of hell. That would have been cool.

But even worse than the math detention, the back steps penalty box or being a prisoner of the rain, was being in the house when I was sick.

If I stayed home from school, there was no way I would be able to go outside, even if school was now over with. As we kids used to say in those days, “What a rip-off!”

I couldn’t just go out and play among the other kids, blending in.

It wasn’t like the school principal was going to come by and see I was outside playing, recall that I was absent that day and then drag me back to my mom by my ear or something.

Instead, if he did see me, I imagined he might think, “Oh, it’s good to see that you’re feeling better. See you at school tomorrow.”

Nope. No school. No play.

It was worse if I had gone to the doctor’s office because then I would have had to have been really sick to go to the clinic. I might have even gotten a shot.

That would certainly keep me out of circulation for a good week.

It’s funny, those things from childhood have stayed with me.

Even now, if I am unable to work because I am not feeling well, I do not go anywhere outside the house that day, even if I am feeling better.

No work, no play.

I don’t know if it actually works out this way, but it often seems to me that the days that I am sick and stuck inside are the days when it is the nicest outside.

This week, I have been under the weather and missed work Tuesday when I was supposed to travel downstate for an employee gathering.

The only time I went outside was to go to the walk-in clinic.

Wouldn’t you know it, it was bright and sunny, and the temperature was in the 60s.

I’m not feeling much better today but decided to do some work from home.

In this case, even if I did work, I won’t be going outside.

I want to recover as quickly as possible to get outside on the weekend.

It feels like things are shifting rapidly toward springtime, and I want to be out there to experience it.

I have been wearing my pajamas around the house for the past two days, which makes me feel like a bum.

I need to take a nice hot shower and put some comfortable clean clothes on to read a book, listen to some music or watch television.

Thinking back about all of this, I wish I could be sitting on the back steps at the old house right now either waiting for my time-out to tick down or eating a fresh peanut butter and jelly sandwich my mom made.

Either way, it wouldn’t be long before they’d have to let the dragonfly out of the Mason jar, and I would be flying and buzzing and leaping and looping in the air just like my old kid self from long ago.

We could play football until we were beat tired, or swing on the swing set smelling the late spring lilacs blooming or maybe even make one of our tents by pulling an old bedspread over one of the clotheslines and securing the corners with rocks.

I bet I’d ride my bike all over the neighborhood just feeling the freedom of going fast with the wind in my face.

I pull the curtain closed and walk upstairs as the long morning that became an afternoon stretches toward the end of the day.

The Cat in the Hat still hasn’t shown up.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.