All The Dead Brollys!

All The Dead Brollys!
(c) 2007 Jon Donlon

A few weeks ago a wind and rain storm lashed our town here in Japan. Of course, for the twenty-five minute walk into work I grabbed my worn, worker’s-yellow poly-sylab-space-age-micro-pore-breathable-raintight parka that has traveled with me now for years, round-and-round the world. I slipped it on and then the zipper ran a’ fowl. Fortunately, it also has long narrow rectangles of velcro to seal the storm flap, so I was able to use that to hold the thing closed in the gusting wind.

Unfortunately, although because I’ve lived through hurricanes, including Katrina in Louisiana last year, and I knew that this particular blow was no typhoon, the storm was indeed a savage one. It left limbs down, debris liberally strewn about, and at our apartment complex a formerly quite leafy and fairly substantial tree uprooted. Velcro alone didn’t do the job and the wind lashed rain saturated my shirt and dungarees by the time I got to my office desk. If I hadn’t noticed that obvious damp reality, pretty much each of my students kindly pointed the fact out.

None the less, as I looked around during my walk, the Japanese had been doing battle with not only the wind, tormenting them with its whipping and curling, snapping and pounding, but with the umbrellas they insisted on trying to use. Perhaps needless to say – though I’ll say so regardless – many a brolly bit the dust (although every molecule of dust had of course been scoured away by the pitiless, driving rain) that morning. For days their spindly silver ribs glinted in the unusually clear sunlight, stuck in the weirdest places.

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