“The problem is not scientifically illiterate kids; it is scientifically illiterate adults. Kids are born curious about the natural world. They are always turning over rocks, jumping with two feet into mud puddles and playing with the tablecloth and fine china.”—Neil deGrasse Tyson

Our children spill from the elementary in T-shirts indifferent to the rain dropping onto us. Parents ask their kids, “Where’s your jacket? Don’t you want your jacket on?”

I have stopped asking this question. They do not want their jackets.

After school we skirt the outside of the cafeteria. December rain overflows clogged gutters, falls in sheets, and pools on the sidewalk below. It makes mud of the grass slope where many of us walk to avoid the deluge.

The puddles are many.

Often at least one kid seeks these puddles out. Just released from the halls of academia, they swerve around us giddy with backpack jostling and leap to land two-footed in each puddle.

Satisfied laughter and search for the next puddle.

I pause or sidestep to avoid the splash. I know it is coming because a part of me is that kid.

It is what I did as a child in our waterlogged back yard when winter rain filled the creek and it brimmed over to saturate the fields. And it’s a thing we did in high school cross country practice to douse our teammates, our best friends. Strategic stomps. But, this child leaps and lands unaware of anyone else. There is no ill intent. Just puddle, just splash.

And joy.

The sneakered foot striking water is an experiment in cause an effect.

Kids remind us what is simple and captivating. In their fascination with the everyday they light our way back to a distant past. Our own youth. Our own willingness to play with a stick, a broken squirt gun, a broad green leaf like a parasol plucked from its branch in our back yard.

My son went from cradling spiders in his bare hands a few years ago to avoiding them altogether. I admired that younger child for what, it seems, was not actually bravery, but curiosity. And in the slightly older child I recognize myself. The point at which the harmless becomes scary when fed by expanding knowledge and movies. By uncertainty and possibility. Some spiders, some creatures pose a danger. Avoid.

My daughter likes to lift the edge of the tablecloth to tilt items on her placemat. A cup canted a few dozen degrees with its liquid rising toward one lip, a plate sliding away from her. Just to see what happens.

Until we ask her to stop.

“Why?” she asks us.

Well.

She is curious. She meets our world hands on, direct.

That I may know a cause and effect will not help her learn them. Kombucha spilled across the tablecloth and dripping between table leaves to the floor will not help the parents’ emotional state. Physics and psychology lessons everywhere.

The price of science. Perhaps not so high.

Maybe the goal is not teaching them. Maybe it is preserving the place where children begin.

Born curious.

As we walk along the soaked sidewalk and I sidestep the spray from that kid’s sneakers I am the adult and I am the kid. When those feet hit water I see the spray through both sets of eyes. I feel the gratifying splat against my soles.

Just puddle, just splash.