Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

You can't tell, but those rays are blazing with heat.

So, like clockwork, the beginning of November rolls around, and we get our first day where it’s 34 degrees in the morning so you have no choice but to bundle up because even though you only live something like seven minutes from the T that’s still a LONG way when it’s wicked cold out, so you throw on a hoody underneath your normal fall coat and put a winter hat on and everything is well and good but the problem is by noon the temperature is back up to the mid-50s so you’re ludicrously attired for your commute home but you still put your hoody and wool cap on anyway because you’re not going to carry that stuff around and it’s kind of bearable outside but then you get on the train and the heat is on and you start sweating a little bit and your glasses get all foggy so you take the jacket and hoody and hat off but then in the 45 minutes that you’ve been on the train the temperature has dropped to closer to 40-something so it really might be a good idea to put the hoody and hat back on especially if it’s windy which of course you won’t know until it’s too late so just be careful and put the stuff back on. Don’t you hate that?

You may or may not be aware, precious reader, that we’ve had a lil bit of weather up here in the Hub of the Universe. That’s fine, though, because rain has allowed me to become reacquainted with one of my all-time favorite humans, the Person Who Thinks It’s Acceptable to Walk Through an Urban Metropolis With a Beach Umbrella.

We’re dealing with history’s greatest hero, dearest reader. You see, here in Boston, during rush hour, in the rain, there are a lot of people traversing back and forth on the sidewalk. In a driving rainstorm, as truly biblical amounts of moisture are issuing forth from the heavens, why should everyone get wet? Surely, in this horrible, joyless, putrid existence, there are some on whom God’s sacred and holy light shines. Surely, there are some who are deserving of walking through an atmosphere more water than air while remaining bone dry. Good news, darling reader! There are, and you can pick out the Elect very easily: they’re walking through the streets of a town with 30,000 people per square mile carrying a patio umbrella.

Stay dry, friend!

You see, darling reader, in this postmodern world we’re living in, where traditional symbols of authority are being deconstructed faster than new ones can be erected, how can we be expected to know our place in the class structure? The Person Who Thinks It’s Acceptable to Walk Through an Urban Metropolis With a Beach Umbrella does us a crucial service, reminding we plebs wandering the hellish nightmarescape that is the Contemporary American City with a mere Totes umbrella or, even more pathetically, no umbrella whatsoever, that there are still champions walking among mortals. I mean, these demigods have to be inherently superior to the rest of us, no? Why else would they be allowed to saunter through the city under a circus tent while the rest of us stand aside in awe, our flimsy toy umbrellas buffeted by Poseiden’s own rage.

And not only that, but the Person Who Thinks It’s Acceptable to Walk Through an Urban Metropolis With a Beach Umbrella compels us to engage in two of our greatest joys: diving into curbside puddles to evade inexorable obstacles, and getting raked across the eyes by thin steel rods. Sometimes both at the same time!

Not sure if you heard me complain about the weather up here in the Hub of the Universe for the past month or so. I do my best to have an Epictetus-esque stiff upper lip when it comes to the weather, but this past June just weighed on me, as it did most people around here.

Why? Because it’s been like, a hundred years since the last time Boston had a more miserable June. The good folks over at the Boston Globe put together this nifty interactive calendar to show you just how ridiculously crappy the weather was. Look at it! Only 27 percent of the suns rays shined on us last month! On a third of all June days, there wasn’t even enough sunlight to cast a shadow!

That’s not weather. That’s a month-long sojourn into a hellish nightmarescape of sodden dread. You had to be here. It’s not even that the sun didn’t shine. It’s that the cold, damp atmosphere actually fed on the dreams of an already existentially disturbed populace. It was terrible.

And then it was sunny and in the mid-70s last weekend, and everyone just moved on. It’s amazing what actually getting your daily supply of vitamin D can do for the spirits.

Why was I able to see my breath on the walk home this evening? It’s June! ! ! !