The Rain Will Make The Flowers Grow

It wasn't all that ominous. A lady called to ask me a question she admittedly knew the answer to, and that I did not know the answer to. Then, as she was hanging up the phone, she said, "Is it raining down there yet?"
"No," I said, "But it looks dark."
"Ok," she said. "We just had a really hard rain pass over us. It should be headed your way."

I looked down at the clock. It was 4:45. I looked out the window and saw a tiny ray of sunlight. Then that anemic ray of hope vanished and it began to rain.

15 minutes later work was over; it was 5:00pm. Yay. In retrospect I should have found other work to do and just stayed busy. But I wasn't feeling good, on account of my allergy flare up, so I really wanted to get home to rest.

I exited my building and saw that this was not an ordinary rain. A typical rain will fall straight down and make everything wet, et cetera. A really hard rain will do the same, but harder. And sometimes the wind will pick up and blow the rain so that it falls at an angle. If you are clever you can always hold your umbrella just right to protect yourself and stay relatively dry.

This rain was messy. You know the kind. The rain drops were not terribly large, but there were billions and billions of them; like the wet mist at a self service car wash, the air was saturated with them. And they didn't seem to fall in a uniform direction. They came from everywhere.

"Well," I thought to myself, "At least it will wash the pollen away." Then I reached into my bag and pulled out my umbrella. This umbrella was given to me by my father because he had never had a chance to use it, and because it folded up pretty small and fit in my briefcase. When I opened it up I knew I was doomed.

In college I had a good umbrella. I used it to walk to classes in the rain. I'd walk miles in the rain some days, and usually only my feet got wet. This was the Hercules of umbrellas. It was blue and white, it's canopy was four feet in diameter, and it's metal rods were thick. This was an umbrella a person could feel safe under. It was stolen.

The umbrella my father gave me had about a two foot spread. I think the metal rods were made of tin foil. If the other umbrella was Hercules then this umbrella was just some guy; some skinny armed, flat chested, run away when the dragons come, by-stander victem. And it turned inside out with the first gust of wind.

After walking ten feet with this wimpy parasol I was soaked from my belly button down. But I can hardly blame the umbrella for all of it. It was a pretty hard rain.

I stuck to the sidewalk as best I could, but I had to cross a few intersections. The roads were so washed out you couldn't see the street at the bottom of the water. One lady stepped out onto the street, faithfully assuming she would touch the bottom, and I never saw her again.

A pirate ship sailed up Andrew Young International. It was crewed by bankers mostly. They were singing Yo Ho Blow the Man Down. I laughed to myself when they got caught in an eddy and were stuck up against the Peachtree Plaza. But my laughter was short lived. Some guy in an Excursion drove up and pulled them free. The pirate-bankers thanked him then repossesed his truck. I let him share my umbrella as we waited for the bus.

By the time the bus arrived I was drenched from my neck down. My hair was only damp. And oh was I cold.

Just about every seat was taken on the bus, so I had to walk to the back. Before I sat down the man in the seat next to mine said, "You may not want to sit there. There is a leak."

I made a gesture that said, 'Look at me. I'm already soaked,' and we both laughed. Then, about a mile down the road, the bus had to stop suddenly and a full quart of dirty water poured out onto my head. Where had the bus been storing this water? No one knows. The guy next to me said, "No way." But I knew better. It had indeed happened. I could still feel the cold dirty water making it's way down my back and into my shorts. And by shorts I mean underwear.

On my way home I started to sniffle again. Where does an allergy attack end and a cold begin? On the Gwinnett Transit, that's where. And I comforted my cinical self with the knowledge that the rain would make the flowers grow. And those flowers would f*** me up with more pollen next week.