Things I like about umbrellas

I mean, there's not a whole lot about umbrellas to dislike, in my opinion, though I often don't use them when moving from car to building and building to car, because it seems like more effort than it's worth to open them and fold them up again just going from a building to a car. Today is rainy, and I have my nice new red-and-black umbrella, and as a result I have decided to make this blog post. Also I have a break before class so I am in the library, and I do not want to study for my daily art quiz for Christian and Byzantine art, because I am still displeased with my professor for patronizing me about the crucifixion when I was quite right and he was quite wrong.

1) They keep the rain off.

2) Sometimes, if you are very lucky indeed, they have maps of the Tube on them. I wish I had an umbrella with a map of the Tube on it. I love the Tube in my heart, and I love umbrellas, and it almost (but not quite) seems like too much joy to combine umbrellas and the Tube.

3) They are a pleasing shape, and very often a pleasing color and pattern. Furthermore you can twirl them between your fingers if you are resting them against your shoulder, and this is very fun to do and inspires you to hum songs, which puts you in an even better mood than you were in to start off with.

4) They are called "umbrellas", which is an excellent name for something, besides which I guessed the etymology of the name and checked it on the OED website and turned out to be perfectly correct, and it is exciting to be a Latin-remembering genius person. It comes from the Latin word "umbra", which means "shadow" or "shade", so basically "umbrella" means "little shadow", and that is cute.

5) When you are not using them in their capacity as protection against the rain, you can use them as friendly walking sticks. What I really want is an umbrella that is a map of the Tube and is full-sized and not fold-up or miniature, because then it would be an umbrella, and it would be a map of the Tube, and it would be a walking stick. Your umbrella also serves as a dangerous weapon that is pointed and can be wielded fiercely in defense of yourself if you are attacked by a dog or other ferocious but gunless assailant.

6) I am extremely painstaking about rolling up my umbrellas in a tidy fashion when I am not using them (thus preventing the collected rain from all falling willy-nilly onto the floors of whatever building I am entering), and then I enjoy sneering inwardly at people who have rolled their umbrellas up sloppily, so that the folds of the umbrella are all bunching around the snap, and I am sure that this gives me serotonin. Hahahaha, I can see a girl rolling up her umbrella at this very moment! What a poor job she is making of it! Oh, God, it's too good!

I am in the best mood ever. In spite of the fact that there's all this rain and I have lots of work to do and not that much free time and there's earthquakes in Indonesia and Bush is an idiot and I have about twenty books lying around my room that I'm dying to read but I haven't got time for and I miss my sister who is away and I haven't been to London in, my God, like three months, and I miss England and the easy access to the Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A and my flat and my flatmates and British cheese, and Heinz stopped making the delicious chili ketchup that made my taste buds sing. And whatnot. But I am anyway exceptionally cheerful. God is smiling upon me. It is consolations city over here, man. (Little bit of Catholic humor there.)

Anyway, everyone have a pleasant day, and enjoy your umbrellas. Not everyone in the world is lucky enough to have one.