Margot

I may have been in middle school?  Or a freshman in high school?  Maybe?  I’m not sure.  But after all these years, I still remember reading Ray Bradbury’s science fiction short story “All Summer in a Day”.  A futuristic story of nine year old classmates living on Venus, a planet where it rains pretty much constantly, the sun only appearing for a few hours every seven years.  One of the students, Margot, had moved there from Earth five years earlier and was the only one in her class who remembers what the sun looks and feels like.  Different from everyone else, she is constantly bullied and locked into a closet just before the sun comes out of its seven year hiding causing her to miss the whole thing.  The details of this story were very fuzzy in my mind after all these years.  But I clearly remember wondering what it would be like to live in such a wet world.  The intense feeling of euphoria during that brief period of sunshine.  The tragedy of how Margot was treated.  The devastation of missing that sunny interlude.  And the sheer agony of having to wait another seven long years.  Growing up, I remember literally sitting by the window waiting for the rain to stop.  Me and my friends in my dad’s garage, impatiently watching our BMX ramps dry so we could ride.  Even today, I still glance out the window every single morning as soon as I wake up to check the weather.  Rain for five days straight last week evoked memories of life on Venus and Margot’s story.  This week the weather changed.  Sun and clouds.  Drying gravel.  Close to 80k on Wednesday.  My longest ride of this year.  Just getting back home, it starts to rain again.  Not for 5 days this time.  Just a shower.  Poor Margot.