I went out for a walk at lunch and got caught in the rain. Rain doesn’t just come down on me out of the clear sky. I’m not Douglas Adams’s Rain God who was followed everywhere by rain. That would be crazy. Hilarious, but crazy.
But if there’s a chance of rain I’m going to get caught in it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone out for a walk on my lunch break and it’s started raining and I have to run back or take a slightly longer lunch than I planned because I’m waiting for it to pass. I’ve lost count mostly because I never bothered to count but it’s also happened to me a lot of times.
And every time I remember an old joke: a minister is standing outside the church after services and a man comes up to him and says, “Your sermon on the Ten Commandments was very inspiring. I lost my umbrella and I was going to take someone else’s.”
The minister says, “And it was ‘Thou shalt not steal’ that stopped you?”
The man replies, “No, it was ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ that reminded me where I left my umbrella.”
The joke doesn’t keep me dry but it does make getting caught in the rain a little more bearable.
There’s a lesson in that and that lesson is that if you want to have your cake in sheep’s clothing you can pick your friends and you can pick a guitar but it never hurts to carry an umbrella.
The lesson for me, every time, is that it never hurts to read your posts.
I’m glad to hear that. I’d like my work to be beneficial but at the very least it should do no harm.
That made me LOL (never been sure about what that means but I’m pretty sure it’s a positive thing:-) No seriously, it made me laugh quite heartily which is a great start to the day. Wish you had share buttons so I could put you on my Pinterest blogger boards and my writer page on Facebook. Is it ok if I share by pasting your URL in and seeing what happens?
Please feel free to share in any way you can think of, or try to anyway. I’m technologically inept but surely pasting the URL should work.
By the way “LOL” stands for Laugh Out Loud, so, yes, it is a positive thing. The ever-helpful David Mitchell has some clever thoughts on LOL.
Ah, church jokes….and a funny one at that. Allow me to add, “Thou shalt not cease blogging”
What a wonderful commandment–one I shall endeavor to live up to.
Umbrellas seem to cause a lot of grief around my house. Can’t find one, they’re all in the car, this one’s broken, this one is too small, this one is too big, they’re all at work, etc. etc. But I sure like it when I have one ready to go when needed.
It’s always nice to have one handy and I kind of like broken ones because they look a little different but still get the job done as long as they’re not so broken that there’s nothing to cover you. But it also annoys me to have to carry one around. It’s nice to have one when I need it but if I’m out long enough that it stops raining, well, I’ve got this umbrella to lug around.
I have to admit that’s the reason I often get stuck without one. I’d rather have to dash through the rain and keep my hands free than keep carrying an umbrella after it’s stopped raining. Pretty stupid of me really.
Pretty sure the Rain God lives in my city. I used to think umbrellas were fun as a kid, but now I’m old and jaded and just find they get in the way too much to be worth it. Waterproof hooded jackets are where it’s at.
Plus at 5’3″, me carrying an umbrella is mostly just a really convenient way to try and put someone’s eye out.
I’m just three inches taller than you. It never occurred to be before but since I look up to most people (only in the literal sense of course) I’m probably dangerous with an umbrella. Then again the top hat and monocle seem to keep people away.
It would be cool if we could use the “take a penny, leave a penny” system with umbrellas. For example, it’s raining when you arrive at your doctor’s office so you’ve brought an umbrella. By the time you’ve finished your appointment it’s no longer raining, so you leave it in the communal umbrella receptacle. I’m sure we’d all end up with large stashes of umbrella’s in our homes and empty receptacles all around town, but it’s a nice idea. I’ve written umbrella way too many times and seem to just be babbling now….
After I read your comment I went to a nearby coffee shop and noticed they have a lost and found box filled with umbrellas. You’ve got a really good idea and it occurred to me that if it had started raining while I was there–fortunately it didn’t–I could take one of the umbrellas from the box and then return it later. Some places would end up with empty umbrella receptacles but if you borrow an umbrella from a place you go to regularly it’s not hard to return it. And I’d want to return it because who wants to hoard umbrellas?
Okay, I’m sure there are some people…
A) That joke was hilarious! and
B) I’m pretty sure the skies wait for you to appear before parting and rain down.
I think the skies have an even more wicked sense of humor. They like to wait until I’ve gone out for my lunch break. I frequently go to a library which is about a quarter of a mile away from where I work. Then while I’m in there they decide to start raining so I have no choice but to get soaked on my trek back to my office.
I try to appease them by singing “Big Sky” by The Kinks as I walk. Sometimes it works.