Internet down yesterday, so I’m posting this a day late:
It rained today. Not too hard or anything, but it hadn’t rained in a while, so it was nice. It was the kind of gray morning where I didn’t want to get out of bed. I opened my windows to air the apartment out a little bit. I took the bus to school, but the on-again-off-again drizzle meant I only needed my umbrella about half the time I was out and about on campus. I could have gone without an umbrella for most of the day, but I was glad to have it on my return home when the rain started to come down more heavily. I know I’m growing up because I had my umbrella with me all day. There was a time not too long ago when I wouldn’t stand for such an inconvenience. I also wouldn’t think that far in advance.
In college, I tried to be a good liberal arts student and take a broad swath of courses from a variety of disciplines. I’ve always been interested in, if not particularly knowledgeable about, art, so I took an art history course to enhance my appreciation of it all and to become more cultured. I wanted to be able to talk about art at black-tie gallery openings. I saw art as a possible foray into a mysterious, elitist class where members threw champagne and caviar at me just to hear me opine on whatever hung in front of me.
Apparently, I never found the right people to impress. Or I did, but instead of wowing them with my art-speak, I told them an embarrassing story about myself in an attempt to put us all at ease. Or I didn’t learn as much as I liked to think I did. No matter what the reason is for me not going to classy events and shoveling down caviar on a regular basis, I took an art history class as an undergrad.
I really enjoyed the course. I feel like I learned a lot at the time, and I hope that I still remember some of it. An element of the course was to visit the local art museum and write about one of its special exhibits. One of the nice things about going to school in DC is that the local art museum is the National Gallery. The special exhibit focused on turn-of-the-century, absinthe-addled Montmartre artists.
I decided to visit the exhibit on a Saturday afternoon because I had the afternoon free from any pep band activities and it just seemed like the thing to do. I invited my friend, Pravin, to join me, and he was game. When I make plans to do something—when I makes a schedule—I like to keep to it. So when Saturday afternoon came along, I was going to the National Gallery. I folded up some computer paper and placed it along with a pen into my back pocket to take notes.
I noticed the skies were a bit overcast, so I grabbed a thin rain jacket before heading out the door. I did not, however, grab an umbrella. I’ve never really owned an umbrella until this past year, actually. I’ve had umbrellas in my possession, but they’re always umbrellas that someone left at my place or that I found near a garbage can. Many of my past umbrellas have featured broken spokes and missing handles. These features were a bonus because when I lost or misplaced one of them, it was no big deal. I did not bring an umbrella with me to the art museum, though, because it wasn’t raining outside. My rain jacket would be sufficient in case it decided to drizzle outside.
When I stopped by Pravin’s place to pick him up, he decided a rain jacket would be too much. Besides, we were just going to take a university bus to the closest Metro station, and then we’d only have a short walk outside to the museum. By the time we got to the bus stop, we remembered that the bus didn’t run a regular schedule on the weekends. We would have to wait a half-hour. Of course, we reasoned, the Metro stop was only about a half-hour’s walk away—it would be more efficient if we just walked across the Key Bridge to the stop in Rosslyn, Virginia.
Walking down to the Key Bridge, the sky darkened. We continued walking. A quarter of the way over the Key Bridge, a light rain fell. I zipped up my jacket, making sure it still covered the paper in my back pocket, and we continued walking. Half-way over the Key Bridge, clouds turned black in a gray sky, and it began raining in earnest. Pravin and I decided it best to start jogging. By the time we reached the end of the Key Bridge, we were running through sheets of rain that stung the back of my hands and splashed into my eyes, blinding me.
Groping our way to the Metro station, we finally found safety from the elements and went underground. We took the Metro down to the Mall, and left puddles of water on our vacant seats. Coming out of the depths, we saw the torrent had not let up. A mad dash took us to the museum. At the entrance, plastic bags were made available to store your umbrella to keep you from tracking water into the museum. Going through the metal detector, a security guard looked at me dripping onto the marble floor and shook his head sadly.
“Sure is raining out there,” an old man near me offered.
“Yeah,” I said, “just a little.” I ran my fingers through my hair and squeezed. More water ker-plunked to the floor.
Pravin and I walked to the exhibit. I took out my paper and pen. I couldn’t unfold my paper. It was a white-ish, slightly fuzzy blob. I found a program to write in the margins of, but soon gave up after realizing I would have to go back through the rain after my visit. Pravin and I made a quick tour, made quicker by the fact that we were sopping wet and freezing in the air-conditioned gallery, and left.
Back in the rain, it just didn’t matter any more. We reached the point of complete saturation. We explored the barren downtown a bit, sat on empty benches, jumped in foot-deep puddles, and looked skywards, laughing and drinking the rain. Images of Gene Kelly and Singin’ in the Rain entered my thoughts. My wallet was in my pocket, my cash was soaked, my shoes wouldn’t dry out for days, and in that moment, there was nothing I could do about it but enjoy it. The complete lack of choice in being drenched gave me a weird sense of freedom. Eventually, we found our way back to campus. We parted ways, and I took a hot shower.
I ended up having to go back to the museum the next week to take notes on the exhibit. I remember that it was nice enough and there were a few pieces I really liked, but the trip lacked the luster of my earlier visit. Maybe because all of me was dry except for my shoes. Wet shoes can be pretty annoying.
You can’t really plan moments like getting caught in the middle of a down-pour. It’s nice now to be the kind of person that has a working umbrella that can keep me dry from the rain, but it also reduces the likelihood of unexpected, joyous disasters. I wonder if that’s part of growing up. Of course, a working umbrella wouldn’t have made a bit of difference in that storm other than the fact that I could have done a better Gene Kelly impersonation.
