Yesterday evening there was a downpour right when I was leaving the grocery store. It was bad enough that I decided to wait under the store's veranda until it let up.
"Let up" was sort of a joke. I waited about 25 minutes, and when the rain could no longer quite be defined as
torrential, I resigned myself and my cereal boxes to getting wet and escaped to the car.
The 25-minute wait wasn't without interest. I snacked on a box of Crispix while watching people's methods for dealing with the rain.
#1: Don't worry, this 8.5x11 sheet of paper will protect me!
Several people came running into the store with a news ad or a random piece of paper found beneath their car seat carefully positioned over the crown of their heads. They dripped with rain from the tips of their noses, down their shoulders and back to the tips of their shoes. Fortunately, their coiffure was mostly in tact. Unfortunately, many were so anxious to get to dry ground that they pulled away their paper covering just as they were running under the veranda. You know, right where the rain runs off of the roof in big, splattering plops - right onto the noggin.
#2: Oh you silly newspaper-covered people - it's called an umbrella, duh.
These dignified people walked with confidence from their cars, protected by their stiff, black umbrellas. But if you looked down, you could see their shoes drenched and their pants darkened with water around the cuffs, and quickly spreading up to mid-calf range. The best were men wearing suits, with the fabric dripping and clinging around the ankles. But they kept their chins up.
#3: Moon bounce!
Okay, I only saw one person do this one. He was going out to his car with his grocery cart. He didn't care how wet he got, but clearly wanted to protect his shoes. So he pranced out, taking big toe leaps and letting the cart pull him along mid-stride as long as possible before touch ground again. A few times he mixed this strategy with trying to ride the cart with his feet up on the bottom bar, but it lost speed quickly in the 2 inches of standing water on the parking lot, so he usually switched back to the moon bounce.
#4: Please acknowledge the agony of my situation.
There was another woman waiting with her cart of groceries nearby. About every 2 minutes she would wail out "Oh, my gosh!" and sort of clench her hair in distress. She would give a few sidelong glances to other people in the vicinity, receive no response, and then repeat 2 minutes later.
I wonder what people thought of me taking my turn, 9 months pregnant and wearing a white shirt. My only thought was that I was glad to be wearing my soft pink bra rather than the black one. Dignity, always dignity!
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