Here. comes. the. rain. again…

So, I can pretty much scratch off "visit the Amazon" from my bucket list because I'M ALREADY LIVING IN A JUNGLE. Really. Look outside. 

New Orleans in the summer means it's pouring rain in the sunshine every day. Like clockwork.

Is it 4 o'clock? Yes. Everyone is already inside. 

Good for lush greenery and heightened mosquito production, bad for outdoor activities…and the devil's wife. 

Ha Southern joke. 

For those of you not living in a tropical location, let me paint a picture: this isn't a little afternoon shower, this is an afternoon SOAK, the hardest rain you've ever heard for 30 straight minutes, then it's gone. You never even had to take your sunglasses off.

business on the right party on the left

No one likes getting rained on, but I have a particular hatred for it. It's the only time in my life where I want to wear a baseball cap.


I have always hated the rain. I remember being five years old and hating it, and the no-nonsense babysitter telling me to get over it. 

"You're not sugar, you're not going to melt," she would say.

Of course I then considered this literally, my body being made of a big mound of sugar, disintegrating whenever the rain touched me. 

That made me hate it even more.

I still think about that to this day. Really. Being made of sugar and melting like the witch in the Wizard of OZ. I'm melting!!!!!!!

It doesn't help that I don't have an umbrella. 

I know, I know, how can someone who hates the rain as much as I do not have an umbrella?? 

Well, I'll tell you why. I had an umbrella. I had 20 of them, but they're all lost now. 

And I never kept them in the right place anyway. I'd keep one in my car, but then it would be useless when it would be raining on my way to my car. 

Or I'd keep one at work, and then it would rain on the drive to work.

It's very complicated. Rain is complicated.

Not everyone hates the rain though. 

The hippies dancing in the mud at music festivals certainly don't. (Maybe it's the drugs). 

Ducks don't mind either. 

My favorite story, though, is when my friend Meredith was in Central America, she said it began to torrentially pour down rain and as everyone took shelter under overhangs and patio umbrellas, they all saw this man riding his bike down the street, completely unfazed by the rain falling on his head. 

And they heard him singing. Singing! Singing in the rain! (Not melting)

His song was a good choice, too, one by Eurythmics: "Here comes the rain again…falling on my head like a memory."  

However, with his accent and pitch, it sounded more like a pause after every word "here. comes. the. rain. again. Fal. ling. on. my. head. like. a. memory."

hahahaha I like imagining that guy. Meredith does a great impression.

I never really thought about what those lyrics mean before, but in New Orleans, the rain could mean a memory of the exact same thing that happened yesterday and the day before that. 

Maybe it could mean a memory of all the events that have been RUINED by the rain. 

Or maybe it's a figurative set of lyrics, like rain falling on you in life. Imaginary rain.

Which would make me imaginary sugar.

I feel like a good response to my rain neurosis would be "um, you should get out more," But I CAN'T RIGHT NOW. 

It's 4 o'clock.

And I don't have an umbrella.

-Jenny