My umbrella from hell

Buying an umbrella has been on my mind for almost as long as I can remember, but I always kept on procrastinating, only to be caught lacking when the rains came pouring down. Typical I’ll-do-it-next-time behavior!

That all came to an end late last month when I finally took the leap into manhood and purchased one! Now, of course I want a good umbrella so naturally I took my time inspecting the display for the best canopy I could find. Umbrellas aren’t exactly high-variety items like crisps (chips for you American psychos) so it came down to picking from around 3 makes; cheap and colorful, meh and pricier. I’ll let you have a guess on what I settled on.

Anyway, with me now the proud owner of beautiful black umbrella, all I had to do was wait for the heavens to tear up so I could take my baby for a test ride. My time came at last when it started drizzling yesterday and I quickly rushed to push the thing to its limits.

For a while, all was good until it was not. Clearly, someone must be plotting against me :) because I noticed that the rain started reaching my legs. It must have been windy as well so that could explain it, but I expected my umbrella to take care of that. Also, possibly due to the wind, the thing wanted to escape from me. I am no umbrella expert but I expected more; I was under the impression this thing could replace the dykes in The Netherlands.

What it does well

• It looks so beautiful, fancy and well built
• It comes with its own sheath
• It has a fancy open-and-close mechanism…..
• …and most importantly, it covers my head!

Where it’s lacking

• Why was the rain hitting my shorts?
• The drops from the top of the umbrella seem to hit the back of my feet in a kind of waterfall fashion especially once they accumulate

Final verdict

My less-than-stellar experience could be because I didn’t take my umbrella classes seriously so I may not know how to use/hold it. But despite all that, I can say I am now officially an umbrella dad!