Rain Is My Kryptonite

It’s thunderstorm season. I should know that. I’ve lived here forever. And yet, recently, I have often found myself stuck without an umbrella, covering head and shoulders with an old T-shirt or an old issue of this fine publication (the wider pages would have come in handy; the smaller edition just doesn’t cut it). I usually end up cursing the rain.

Screw you rain, I will say. Or worse.

During the last major T-storm, I was riding back to work on a Metro bus. We had just passed 14th and Irving Streets NW when the bus pulled over and idled. A minute passed. The rain beat hard on the bus roof. Ping. Ping. Ping. Finally, a man sweating through his undershirt hollered to the bus driver a serious what-the-hell-is-going-on!

The bus driver complained that the doors had stopped working. He couldn’t close the doors. He said he could close them but not through the authorized way. He had to call the home office.

The home office told him he had to wait for repairs. The rain started to sound a lot meaner. We could wait it out on the bus or leave. I left. I ended up running home—five long blocks—and getting soaked. Awesome.

Last night, I was all the way across town at the D.C. Jail when the rain hit. Can I confess something? I started to get scared. I thought about bailing, pulling over and waiting out the thunder and lightning around 10th and S Streets NW. I am genuinely freaked that a tree will topple onto my car and I will die. I kept thinking: Which are the ugly streets without old trees?

Thank God for the new Target complex. No old trees!

So I stuck with it and made it home and even found a parking space. I picked up an old hoodie from the trunk of my car, wrapped it around my head, and scampered home. My pants and backpack got soaked. But I was just glad to be home.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 9:24 am and is filed under City Paper, Driving, Environment, Target, Trees. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.