Umbrellas

Today I am grateful for umbrellas.  Lately they have become as important an accessory as my purse or lipstick.

Yesterday afternoon, since it was pouring rain and miserable out anyway, I went to the play, Beauty & the Beast at the high school.  They hold a matinee dress rehearsal for senior citizens and I qualify.  Dammit.  It’s free.  Great.  I figured I might as well be inside where I didn’t have to look at the monsoon, rather than sitting at home growling at the window.

The audience was full of Q-tip-topped seniors, mostly women, bused from retirement centers nearby and from miles away.  Hundreds and hundreds of them.  With walkers.  And wheel chairs.  And canes.  And raincoats.  And umbrellas.  Hundreds of umbrellas.

At intermission, in the usual restroom line, the titter was, “Is it still raining? Did it stop yet?  Couldn’t the bus drop us where we wouldn’t get soaked?  I don’t run so good anymore.  I can’t see if it’s raining, can you?  No the windows are fogged.  Is the line moving?  I don’t see the line moving.  Did she jump ahead of you?  No budging!  Is it still raining?  I can’t tell.”  FYI-It was still raining.  In biblical proportions.  And yes, she did jump ahead of me, but she looked panicked so I let it go.  Been there.

When the play was over, the throng of red lips, white heads and walking appliances headed en mass to the door, past the cast who had done a great job.  It’s a pretty long walk, especially if you’re dragging a bum leg or trying to maneuver a walker.  When the ladies got to the door, each and every one of them stopped dead in their tracks.  Time to get out the rain hats, button up the raincoats and pull up the hoods against the downpour.

The high school ROTC opened doors for everyone, letting in a wind that shouted February, not April almost May.  Ladies filed into the deluge clutching rain bonnets, canes, each other.  I popped open my huge golf umbrella, hoping I might be able to shelter a few of them.  No luck.  The wind and rain shot towards us with a mighty FWOOOOSHHHH, tearing off rain hats and filling up hoods like soup bowls.  Gnarled fingers scrambled to protect drenched perms, kinking up tightly like poodles-in-a-pool.

I don’t carry a pipsy little, put-it-in-a-tropical-cocktail-umbrella, because I don’t have a tropical kind of body.  I have a German body.  Do the math!  My umbrella is substantial.  But not yesterday.  Protect the ladies?  It couldn’t even protect me!  It was every geriatric for themselves.  One petite, bejeweled, respectable woman, with a London Fog raincoat, clutching into the rain and wind with red enameled nails, for her Gucci scarf and her dignity, shouted a string of expletives I can’t even print here.  I was a little shocked, but also impressed. She really summed it up.

By the time I got to my car, my feet, jeans, jacket and purse were drenched. The rain whipped from all directions, following me sideways into the car until I slammed the door on it, repeating the obscenities of my well-appointed, stylish new BFF of blue language.  Gotta love umbrellas.  Even if they are useless.