The Weatherman, The Umbrella and I > IDEAS & IDEALS

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Weathermen are the most impudent persons of all. They never apologize for the wrong they perpetually do to me in the prediction of weather. It seems they do not understand the agonies and sufferings of the innocent people caused by the casual mistakes they continually make. Using strange charts or maps, and inexplicable numbers and jargon, they persuade me to go to work in the morning with the additional burden of an umbrella. But in the evening I return home, after having had an unusually fine and sunny day with nothing in my hand, only to be reminded by my greeting wife of the plain fact that I did not leave home so light.

     My heart jumps within. My brain goes back and forth along the route I have travelled during the day with the unnecessary thing in my hand - the office, the drugstore, the telephone booth, and the coffee shop. Finally I come to an angry as well as painful conclusion that it had been with me all the time until I got off the home-bound bus. I feel my blood pressure begins to rise again.

     The difficulty of the problem concerning these irresponsible weathermen is that I cannot entirely distrust them. From time to time they hit the bull's eye. It was a bright sunny morning about a week ago, and the weatherman intoned with the same familiar voice the same incantation against the blue sky that it would rain. I ignored the advice of the weatherman and left home without taking an umbrella with me. But, alas! He was right.  Around three o'clock in the afternoon the sky began to gather black clouds, and thunder began to roll with frequent lightening, and it started to rain cats and dogs.

     I met the rain on my way to the bus station from my office. When I got on the bus, I was soaked to the skin. It was a surprise attack indeed. I gave some serious thought to this calamity on the bus. I could not repeat this absurd game for good. By the time I arrived home, I had also arrived at a great decision in my life. I decided to follow the weathermen from now on. I could not live on a hunch any more. I decided to be scientific in the age of science.

     Now the only remaining problem was how to keep my umbrella safe from being lost. There is not the slightest possibility of losing it on a rainy day, but it is not so easy, as you might suppose, to arrive home in the evening with your umbrella safe and sound in your hand after having a clear and sunny day. It is a battle against your forgetfulness, from which you come out mostly a loser, not a winner.

     I have invented a system, at last, to beat the enemy of forgetfulness. In coffee shops, I decided to sit on my umbrella, although I feel greatly uncomfortable on it. I know I can hang it on the back of my chair as the most of the gentlemen do, but I have already lost several of mine in coffee shops because I had treated them with more civility and courtesy. In the telephone booth, the best way I have found, after having lost several of them, was to hang the hook of the umbrella around my neck during the conversation. The degree of alertness and precaution for the protection of my umbrella reaches its climax when I get on the home-bound bus. I fasten it to my belt with an extra cord which I keep always prepared in my pocket. This may look awkward and sound funny to you, but what would you say if I could absorb myself in reading an evening newspaper or in silly meditations at the cost of merely looking awkward or sounding funny? When I rise up from my seat, the umbrella comes along with me automatically.

     With this method or system I thought I had solved one of the most difficult problems in life once for all, and could live well and happily hereafter. But I was wrong. I had to hurdle another obstacle. It all happened yesterday on my way home. I was walking to the bus-stop, as I always do, with the usual cumbersome piece in my hand following the advice of the weatherman in the morning. It seemed that no one, except me, cared a bit about the warning of the weatherman because I was the only man around to be found with an umbrella in his hand. I felt as if I were a fool among those smart and brave people who could ignore the weatherman. However, to their great embarrassment and disappointment, but to my great satisfaction and ecstasy, it came. Moreover, it was a cloudburst.

     Slowly, with utmost leisure and dignity, I pushed open my spring-button-release, the newest model, while the brave and smart people scattered frantically, like the frightened sheep, for any nearest cover they could find. It was a great pleasure as well as a privilege to be able to observe such a commotion, such a calamity, such a disaster, with a smile. My umbrella, which had been so ugly and clumsy in my hand until a minute ago, was the most beautiful thing in the world now. I felt amply rewarded for my labor when I walked along the pavement - all cleared and cleaned for the moment by the rain - under the protection of the umbrella. Like wet chickens, most of the people were waiting under the scanty eaves for the rain to stop, and walking by them I thought they were looking at me with envy and reverence. Deliberately I slowed down my pace in order to enjoy the fruit of my labor, patience, and scientific resolution.

     The progress of my happiness was shattered to pieces the moment a young man invaded my proud and peaceful domain of umbrella from behind, saying, "Let me share your umbrella." The man was already under my umbrella before I made any reply. He offered, out of good intention, of course, to hold it up for me and took it from my hand before I realized it. He was taller and bigger than me. And he walked so fast with his long legs that I had much difficulty in catching up with his pace with my short legs. Half of my body was getting wet under the umbrella that was not large enough for two fully-grown adults.

     I was no longer the owner of the umbrella. I was very angry with this man but I could not be so cruel and unfeeling as to kick out this impudent fellow, a total stranger, an opportunist, into the rain. All the glories and happiness which my umbrella had brought to me turned into all misery and pain the moment I had an intruder under it. I had to swallow all the mortification and vexation until we came to my bus-stop. It seemed like it took me more than a year to get there. I said nothing during our walk, as an expression of my displeasure. Most probably, the man thought that I was a mean and narrow-minded fellow, and a very particular guy who was very difficult to deal with.

     I  am, in fact, all for sharing my umbrella with anyone who is in need. The reason I was so much upset by the act of the young man that day was simply because I was forced to to good. Probably all the "umbrella intruders," in the world, including the young man I met, can justify their action more convincingly than I can explain my resentment. However, sharing an umbrella with a stranger in a rainy day is, like giving up your hard-earned seat to the old or to the weak in a crowded bus or in train, an act of kindness; and all acts of kindness, big or small, should be done, I think, without being forced or pressed, like the gentle rain that drops upon your umbrella.
           (June 12, 1989)