What we focus on

Memories are fickle, and the details of the setting may be wrong, but the core I think is true.

When the Del Santos arrived in the port of Monrovia, it was too late for immigration procedures, so we spent the night aboard. It rained.

There were a few rickety wooden chairs on the deck under the overhang, and I tried to collar one, but there were more important people visiting us. I didn’t care so much about the VIPs—the rain pouring off the edge of the awning was more interesting.

Truly! The edge of the awning was straight, but the water poured down in individual equally-spaced streams. I was puzzled and pointed this out, and one of the VIPs replied that though the edge was straight and flat, the roof itself was corrugated, and so the water came in channels.

Aha! Maybe these VIPs are going to be interesting after all!

They were answering lots of questions, mostly about dull stuff—I was more curious about whether it was going to rain like this all the time. But by the time they got around to my question, the answer was obvious—the rain was tapering off. In fact, the runoff was down to the rate of drops instead of streams.

Drops didn’t come uniformly, and I tried to find the pattern—but there wasn’t one. It was a pleasant display of randomness, until it tapered off to nothing.

I’ve always been interested in the patterns and the why behind the scenes. Even at 8 ½ years old.