Monday, August 29, 2016

Trying to hold back the rain with a broom

I did not pick a good day to walk outside without an umbrella.  I had glanced up briefly as I opened the front door, decided the clouds would not fall, and locked the door firmly behind me.

Yet as I sat in my new favorite coffee haunt, aptly named Coffee Writer, I watched mist blanket the narrow strip of asphalt three feet from my open-air table.  Hmm, I wonder how long this will last?  I had watched it try to rain a couple times before, but in the end, the skies stayed white and the clouds floated by to fall on someone else.  I decided to wait it out, and read my book contentedly as the mist slowly became whole rain drops.  It was such a gradual process, that by the time I got up to to head  home, it was truly dreary weather.  Portland weather.  The kind of rain that was expected to stay all afternoon.  I couldn't sit at that open-air table all afternoon.
And so I set out into the steady rain with no umbrella, no newspaper, nothing to hold over my head.  I couldn't decide if I should walk straight home or run my errand -- either way I would be drenched by the time I made it up that colossal hill.
Hunching my shoulders, looking to all passersby like a pitiful farang (haven't learned the word for foreigner in Korean yet), I climbed the hills to the local shop and purchased a straw broom. Perhaps it was culturally taboo, but I still shielded my head with the light yellow broom; the resin smell wafting down.  I couldn't help but catch the eyes of the Koreans around me, huddled securely beneath colorful umbrellas, their thick-soled shoes stepping gingerly across the brick path.  Their brows furrowed, their eyes darted quizzically to mine, but they hurried along nonetheless.

Why is she using a broom as an umbrella?  I could almost hear their thoughts.  Silly foreigner.

I made it home, drenched, with no dignity in tact.  Be assured I know how to use a broom and an umbrella, but that day I had to be creative.

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