splash.

Have you ever had something so unbelievably shitty happen to you, the extent of its cruelty was actually funny?  At least in retrospect?

So yesterday, I’m walking to class.  I’d decided to ditch both morning classes to study for a midterm, so I’d been in bed all day with my laptop.  No Bruno.  Hadn’t been outside, hadn’t really even looked out a window (my shades are always drawn like my room is some sort of opium den…it’s only a coke den, thank you.)  Point being, it was my first encounter with the day’s elements.

And they were sufficiently shitty.  Indiana style.

It’s raining moderately hard.  Not pouring, not sprinkling.  Definitely occasion for an umbrella.  So I have an umbrella, and I’m doing my best to avoid puddles and decomposing leaf fragments.  As I’m walking, I’m fairly lost in thought.  I’ve got a midterm review session to attend, and I have some very specific questions I need answered.  Consequentially, I’m doing my best to think of how best to ask them, when suddenly…

A blue blob floats out in front of me.  I stop, jump back.  It connects with my knee and explodes.  I look up in time to see a dark minivan drive past and make a left at the four-way stop.  It doesn’t occur to me until it’s leaving what has happened.

Somebody threw a water balloon at me.  On a rainy October afternoon.

At first, I’m understandably pissed.  I’m cold, it’s see-your-breath weather.  And it’s already raining.  Yet some douche is going around tagging people with water balloons?  I immediately search out a decent sized rock and grab it, cradling it to my side.  If the bastard makes another round down the block, I fully intend on shattering his windshield.  Hopefully his jaw as well.

A water balloon.  Seriously.  Who throws a water balloon on a rainy day?

The van never shows again, and I get to class eventually.  Cold and wet.  Shivering.  But as the class goes on, I can’t help but find the whole thing funny.  I mean, yeah, I’m pissed.  But it’s so…redundant.  So unnecessarily mean.  So overly shitty that it’s actually funny.  Douchiness for the sake of it.  I don’t know why, but in retrospect, it’s funny.

That said, if I see a Florida-plated minivan coming towards me at any point in the near future, I’m still going to destroy its windshield.

umbrellas.

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.