Umbrellas are SNOW not necessary

I love snowy days. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t, and if you tell me that you don’t, I’ll tell you that you have no soul. But I have one grievance about snowy days. Stupid people, despite the fact that they are normally annoying, are especially annoying on snow days, and I will tell you why in one simple word: umbrellas.

Stupid people carry umbrellas on snowy days. Snow is not an umbrella form of precipitation and you stupid people carrying them have become a burden, nay a safety hazard, to the rest of us non-suspecting, non-umbrella-wielding pedestrians.

When it rains, I understand that I have to be on the look-out for “the dip;” that thing that you tall umbrella users do to avoid other umbrellas, nearly poking the eyes out of us short folk as a result. But when it snows, I’m not prepared for that sort of thing. So there I am, walking along, looking at those big, fluffy flakes and envisioning the nice warm cup of hot chocolate I’ll be drinking in my nice warm apartment when I get home when BLAM! Umbrella pokey thing right to the eye! Now all I can envision is the nice EMT who will be driving the ambulance to the hospital to remove that bit of metal from my cornea.

If that’s not bad enough, I have to compensate for your “slip” factor. It’s snowy, it’s slushy, and it’s slippery. These are not ideal walking conditions as it is and then I get stuck behind you, and you’re walking slowly, and I know this because if you are the type to carry an umbrella in the snow then you are the type to walk more slowly than is called for, and you will do one of two things: either A) the stop-short causing me to dodge the pokey thing once again and walk around you while you decide which is the least snowy path (channel Frost here people, just pick a path) or B) you slip. God forbid you slip because that umbrella will take on a life of its own and it’s anyone’s guess where it will end up. Will you throw it? Will you try to hook it on something, something that is hopefully not me, to save your fall? Will you jab it at me in the hopes that I will catch it, again, saving your stupid toosh from snowy peril? No one knows and therefore no one is safe. Not me and certainly not you because let me tell you, nothing could make me more angry on a snowy day than trying to go sledding and winding up with an umbrella jammed somewhere in my cranial region. Should that happen you can expect that favor will be returned, but most likely not in a direct “eye for an eye” sense.

So I’m just asking this one tiny favor on behalf of pedestrians everywhere. Leave your umbrellas at home and save them for spring...that is, if we ever make it to spring. Pull out a nice little hat and a scarf and brave the weather like the rest of us, with icicled hair and weakened immune systems.