The Umbrellas

If you live in New York City you will need to have an umbrella.  We didn’t have one when we got here.  We now have 4.  The important thing to remember about umbrellas is you have to have them with you when it starts raining.  They do no good if they are at home in a closet.  New Yorkers know this.  That’s why they carry the umbrellas with them when rain is in the forecast.  We didn’t know this.  That’s why we have 4.

The weather forecast was for severe thunderstorms and flash flood warnings.  Although it was supposed to rain hard all day long, the forecast was a little off.  It was overcast and dreary all day but it only sprinkled and drizzled.   But it sprinkled and drizzled all day long.  Enough to make everything wet.

And when the rain comes, out comes the umbrellas.  And umbrellas come in all colors and patterns and prints.  Some are clear, some are designer, and some have advertising on them.  Some look like the Sunday Comics, or a newspaper’s famous front page.  Some hotels provide them for their customers.  Salesmen sell them on the sidewalks, merchants sell them in the stores on Broadway and 7^th Avenue.

There are umbrellas everywhere.  It makes for a surreal scene.  The sidewalks are covered with multi colored discs instead of people, bouncing along, going their way.

Sometimes during a rain, we duck into Gotham Pizza, get a couple of slices of Margherita pizza and sit at the counter at the front window.  As people pass by on the sidewalk while we eat our pizza, we pick out the umbrellas of the day, best pattern, best color, most gaudy, etc.  If an umbrella really catches our attention, we make a new category for it and award it a title.

When we get bored we head for the casa.   When we get home, we are usually soaked in our jeans and shoes.  But that’s OK.  We love it.