Last week for seven days, it’s poured at our house, and the more it’s rained, the more rules I’ve issued. Nothing out of the ordinary, mind you. They’re the same rules from my childhood – with two exceptions. To get to those, we must first get to this: a story that has its start inside a rain-soaked house located on that old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo. Let’s take a quick looksee whether any of our rules are like those in place at your house.

You say you don’t have rainy day rules for inside your house? Well, Dear Reader, we sure do now and did back then. In defense of my parents, I should share that every rule that they enacted during those rainy days were warranted and sprung forth from something that either one of my brothers or The Sister had already done or were about to do. 

No playing tag.

Back on Flamingo if you asked any of us kids, we’d say playing tag is an outside game unless it rains. Then, naturally, it becomes an inside game. If you asked our parents, they would say inside tag was against the rules…and they did. Unfortunately for me, they made that rule after we got back from the hospital. Here’s how that rule became the first of many rainy-day house rules.

 In between rainstorms, Dad was cleaning out the gutters and Mom was in the basement fighting her never-ending battle with the laundry monster. Thinking that this was the perfect time for a game of tag, we all chose Older Brother Richard to be “it.” The chase started harmlessly enough and lasted for about ten minutes. That’s when I got the great idea to hide behind the swinging door that led from the kitchen to the dining room. Turns out, this wasn’t a good idea.

Richard heard a noise, ran as fast as he could through the kitchen, pushed through the swinging door, and burst into the dining room. I screamed as the door slammed up against me or, I should say, slammed up against my feet. During the drive to the hospital, Dad asked if I had learned anything. Holding the blood-soaked towels on my toes, I replied, “Yes, don’t play tag inside the house barefooted.”

No water balloon battles.

The water balloons were tiny, and the floors were all wood so we thought an indoor water balloon fight was a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon. Unfortunately for us kids, Mom and Dad did not. Dad had gone to work, and Mom had gone to the grocery store, leaving us at home with Older Brother Richard in charge of watching us. When she got back and started to yell about all the water on the floor, I was the first to say, “It’s Richard’s fault. He was in charge.” After we cleaned up the water, Mom sent him to his room to think about what he had done. I never asked him, but I think Richard thought about something else while sitting in his room – how proud he was of me for being so honest that day.

 Absolutely no wall climbing.

Back on Flamingo, our hallways were narrow, and it didn’t take long for us to realize we could climb up, hang above a doorway, and then drop on top of an unsuspecting person below – like a person who was distracted while playing tag or someone sneaking around with tiny water balloons. When Twin Brother Mark’s arm got broken, it put an end to the hallway wall climbing game. 

No wall climbing was actually a rule for the mall before becoming an inside rule at our house. But the story of how my three brothers and I scaled the two-story wall inside the lobby of Greenbrier Mall without anyone seeing us is a double-dog-dare of a story for another day. (Perhaps even next week.)

No bike riding inside the house.

If asked, most parents would probably say they don’t see a reason for having a “no bike riding inside the house” rule. After all, who would do such a thing? Well, I have an answer for those parents – the kids who grew up living on Flamingo. Did we do it at our house, was it fun, and did we get into a whole bunch of trouble? The answer to all three is a resounding yes. But we weren’t the first. 

Note to my young readers out there: when your dad comes home and catches you riding bikes down the main hallway stairs and notices a body-sized hole in the sheetrock wall at the bottom, I know exactly what not to say. 

Do not say it’s the fault of the goofy kid who lives two doors down from you. (In our case, that kid was Goofy Steve.) And, trust me, saying that you got the idea from him doing the same thing at his house the previous weekend will not get you out of the trouble you are currently in. 

When that excuse fails, blaming one of your brothers because they pushed you too fast at the top of the steps so you couldn’t make the turn at the bottom won’t work either.  He may believe you, but it’s not something he’ll really care about as he looks over at the enormous hole in the wall.

Finally, blaming the bike’s faulty brakes won’t convince your dad, but trying to convince him it’s just a small hole might…if your objective is spending the rest of your weekend working fixing the “small” hole alongside him. On a good note, I learned how to repair sheetrock that weekend, a skill I have used my entire adult life. And all because I rode a bike inside the house.

No basketballs inside.

To end this story on a good bounce, one rule that was broken more than any other on a rainy day was “No balls inside the house.” We first started off with a basketball in the basement and made a makeshift hoop out of a milk carton. That was okay for two days until somehow the basement walls started to get body-sized holes in the sheetrock. That caused the no basketball rule inside the house to go into effect.

No tennis balls.

This one was really Dad’s fault. After the basketball incident he said, “Find something else to play with.” And then he went to work. We found something: a shoebox full of Mom’s old tennis balls, and we started playing with them. By the end of the day, it was quite plain to us that a shoebox full of tennis balls will get you into a bunch of trouble and cause a whole lot more destruction than just a basketball or even riding your bikes down the stairwell and crashing into the sheetrock wall.

No Superballs or balls of any kind.

Superballs thrown down a narrow hallway will bounce crazily off floor, walls, and ceiling. They won’t even stop when they bounce off the head of one of your brothers. Unfortunately, after Twin Brother Mark came back from the hospital with a patch on his eye, Dad issued a new rainy-day rule: No super balls or balls of any kind are allowed in the house on rainy days (or sunny days, for that matter.) 

No cell phones.

And this brings us, Dear Reader, to one of the two new rules enacted at our house on the seventh day of rain: no cell phones. Our two granddaughters complained long and loudly about this new rule.

“That’s not fair.”

“I’m not the one on it all the time, she is.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Yes, you are!”

I told them, “Stop arguing. Find something else to do. Besides we didn’t have cell phones back when I was your age. We never got bored on rainy days. Always found something to do inside the house.”

They exchanged a curious look and asked, “Like what?” 

And that’s when I made my mistake and gave them this story to read, which quickly led to our second rainy day rule.

Don’t do anything your Papa did when he was a boy growing up on that old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo…especially inside the house on a rainy day.