I am the murderer of a great many umbrellas. A great, great many.

Sometimes I leave one in a place. A restaurant, a bar, the gym. Once, the only time I ever took a bus in this city, I left my umbrella on it. A large quantity have been brutally ripped inside out by nasty Downtown crosswinds. I left them for dead in the trash. Well, most of them; once, in a fit of frustration, I threw one across the hedge onto a hotel lawn and walked home in the rain. The concierge was not amused. Once when I was walking home from Homer St it started to pelt so hard my head hurt. The only place I could get to was a florist whose only umbrella for sale was a striped candy number with a flashlight in the handle. Gay, in every sense. It was doomed before I made it as far as Pacific. I threw it under a bridge.

Thus I have recently determined my philosophy for umbrella purchase has been flawed these many years. I'd always go for convenience, a collapsible device which fits in a pocket or the bottle mesh on a pack. This is ideal until one actually has to use it. Then the metal arms wearily unfold with a wet sigh, assuming a half-assed umbrella shape where one or more of the supports is usually broken and uncooperative. If a small wind comes up, the whole flimsy structure flips inside out. I swear under my breath and whack it against the ground until it turns right way in, like a limp and damaged bat. After a few repeats, it's done. Time for a new one.

I'm certain of it, disposable girlie umbrellas huddle together in the rack when they see me coming. I will reduce the life expectancy of one of those useless little bastards from three years to about ten minutes of moderately poor weather and bad language.

So this time, I thought, to hell with convenience. I have kissed the ass of the disposable umbrella god for the last time. I bought an industrial strength golf umbrella from the drug store. I'm fairly confident it was designed and built to military spec. It's about four times the size of its predecessor and I tell you, and it makes the weather its bitch. When you press the deploy button, the sound of the thing expanding is like when they open the pod bay door on the Enterprise. Dogs everywhere sit up and pay attention. It springs open with that satisfying canvas thud of a boat sail filling with wind - you can feel it in your rotator cuff. People have to get off the sidewalk to avoid being poked in the eye by its sweeping truss architecture. And it has all these clever mechanical self-supporting metal struts so clever, Buckminster Fuller is probably giving me a thumbs up from his grave. Nice work there, son. Geodesic genius.

I hope to the gods, by whom I mostly mean that asshole Zeus, that (a) it's not a lightning rod, and (b) it's the last umbrella I ever have need of. Because if it's not I'm going to go buy an even bigger one. And that is not going to make the other pedestrians happy.

Posted by: Haze at November 7, 2005 09:26 PM

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