It was a grayscale kinda day today. Leaves a dying green, fluttering lazily in a listless breeze. The kind of morning where everything just smells wet, where pebbles drown and bicyclists are consumed by curbside tidal waves sent spraying sideways by the hideous squeak of someone’s spinning tires.
In other words, it rained. A lot. Cats and dogs, one might say. One unoriginal bastard, anyway.
Thankfully, I had my umbrella handy though. So I popped that bad boy out (in any other context, that phrase might be an admission of guilt read back in a court of law) and began my sidewalk scamper to class.
Turns out, I wasn’t the only soul on campus with the brilliant idea of arming himself with an umbrella. There were tons of them out, shielding the drooping faces of folks with no ambition to rise prior to noon. Pink umbrellas. Black umbrellas. Transparent umbrellas. Flat umbrellas. Bowed umbrellas. Umbrella-ella-ellas. Ay ay ay.
Now, I’ve already discussed walking, so umbrellas just add a new element to this entirely. Not only do you still have to deal with all the maladies of the socially maladjusted masses, but now everyone takes up 1.5 times more room than they did before (if they’re of the binge-and-purge persuasion, maybe two times more.) So now not only does everyone have to navigate the sidewalks with the usually litany of challenges, but they add a large plastic/polyester/kevlar accessory to the mix. And it’s even more complicated!
Umbrella etiquette is really tricky. If someone is walking the opposite direction, you feel the obligation to make room for them to pass. But do you just switch hands with your umbrella? Do you tilt it sideways? Veer out of your umbrella collision course? Or just raise it so that they may cross paths without touching? If so, who raises first? And if they raise too, is there that awkward battle to see who ends up on top out of deference?
Beyond that, there’s the matter of exactly how much precipation justifies the use of an umbrella. If it’s just sprinkling, you look really wimpy for breaking it out. But at what point shy of pouring does it not longer become a matter of pride? My standard is when my shirt or pants start becoming noticeably more soaked, but that’s just mine.
Also I wonder – what kinds of precipitation allow for umbrellas? Are you allowed to use an umbrella for snow, too? Or is that just weird? Does anyone still use an umbrella as protection from the sun, or did that go out with the Victorian era? I imagine some fair-skinned daughter or British loyalty still roams seaside hills with an ornate umbrella, marveling at the horses and enjoying public health care. But that’s just this image I get. It’s hard to imagine the same in, say, Seattle.
Because those damn hippies don’t believe in umbrellas.
Posted by Collin 
