Noticing Things

I am always amazed how people can be so busy that they either don't notice things, or don't stop to do the right thing. I can be guilty of it, too, but today, for whatever reason, I was living in the moment, and aware of all that was around me. The frogs, the rain, the birds, the blackberries blooming their purple-pinkness.

And the water pouring out of the ground by the school gate.

Now, it was impossible to not notice that all this water was pouring onto the walkway. You had to walk through it to get to the gate. About a hundred people did so this morning, and apparently I was the only one to either think "why?" or to do something about it.

Right next to the walkway, water was bubbling up out of the ground, forming the stream that you had to walk through by the gate. It was coming out about as fast as a garden hose turned on three-fourths of the whole way, so not an insignificant amount of water.

Two possible scenarios cropped up in my mind: either this could be a spring, which is kinda cool, or there was a water main break, which is decidedly not cool. Either way, it would need to be dealt with - if a spring, they would need to reroute the water so it would stop washing away the walkway. The reasons for dealing with a water main break are obvious.

I told the office staff, who told the custodian, who called maintenance. They told me I was the only one to mention it, and were puzzled why nobody had mentioned it before. I left the custodian and the maintenance worker to their devices. I'm betting on the water company being there right now.