Adelaide's a funny place. A nice place. But it's dry as hell in the summer months and averages about half the annual rainfall of say, Sydney or Auckland. It's a running joke that one should never drive in the rain in Adelaide, as every other driver on the road is freaking out. Adelaideans aren't mentally equipped to deal with the unfamiliar phenomenon of precipitation. It's like they don't have a mental framework into which water falling from the sky can tidily fit. Safer to stay home.

Anyway, lot of rain today. Around 3pm the skies opened up and it started raining pretty hard. It was still about 22deg C, nice and warm, so a perfectly pleasant day to walk to the boy's primary school to pick him up from class. I grabbed a big plastic bag on the way out the door to pull over his schoolbag (can't have books getting wet) and walked down to the school. The boy met me at the classroom door and I packed all his stuff into his schoolbag.

Hey Dad are we going in the car?

No mate, we're going to walk home.

But it's raining.

Yeah, I like the rain.

Me too.

Choice.

Choice.

So we set off, revelling in the feeling of getting rained on. Trust me, when you know that in 6 weeks it'll be hitting 46deg C and 0% humidity, atmospheric moisture is nice. It started really bucketing down, and the gutters turned into rivers. We took our time walking the kilometre or so home, racing bits of bark down the kerbside torrents, jumping in puddles, basically just being dorks and getting soaked to the skin, and a funny thing began happening.

People started pulling over in their cars, winding down their windows, and asking with some concern "Is everything OK? Do you two need a lift?"

I mean, it was nice and all - strangers making sure things are OK is all good by me - but kinda weird. The look on these people's faces was "OMG IT'S RAINING WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUTSIDE IT'S RAIIIIIIINIIIIIIING". This happened three times in about 150 metres of road. Car pulls up, everything OK need a lift?, yeah we're fine thanks, are you sure, yep it's all good thanks again, confused look, car drives off.

Don't get me wrong, I like living in a neighbourhood where people pull over to check that everything's OK. I think that's cool. But… guys, it's just rain.