j.a.marohn
sprinkler
It is a tradition of the American suburbs. The warm days of summer slide in and out comes the garden hose—at one end, a sprinkler. A sprinkler, perhaps the most wonderfully-named work of engineering ever devised. I suspect children would still perform their pagan free dance through the bright scattering of water even if the apparatus had a less delightful name, but surely the name itself adds something to the joy of the dance.
And do not be mistaken, it is a dance. Half galliard, half fandango, completely improvised. A dance of faun-like leaps and high steps, a gamboling graceful dance of pirouettes, an untutored dance that exists independent of thought; the body moves of its own accord. It is, of course, a dance only children can perform.
After the dance, wrapped in a towel, the dancers sit back and wait for evening and the coming of fireflies. Fireflies, a word as delicious as sprinkler. Later, in the dark and armed with a glass jar, the child will engage in another dance, ancient and more primitive, just as joyful.
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