When it rains, I watch it from my porch or I watch it from a window.
As three children run by, going from the end of a street that I can not see to the beginning of another, in the middle of this drenching rain, I think about people that carry umbrellas. I'm not really one of them. I sit on my porch. I sit by my window.
Sometimes I get wet on the way out of the store when I have shopped for groceries. I take a deep breath and make a run for it, getting quick to the car.
I might be seen strolling through my yard for the sake of it all.
I ponder people on busy streets carrying umbrellas. I think that there must be more space between them because of this. Does one on a rainy day have to add commuting time for the subtraction of available space on a busy street crowded with umbrellas?
I sit by my window and I hear the rain pour, long and drenching, and grasp at the diameter of an umbrella, the diameter of an average-sized person, and the circumference of personal space that one who walks on a busy street crowded with umbrellas would contain. I don't know if people would be slowed by their instruments of apparent protection, or if they should unsuccessfully scurry, and thus travel at their usual, dry-weather rate. I can't imagine a mathematical scenerio that would increase their rate of speed.
It is difficult for me to grasp being on a street busy with people and crowded by umbrellas in the rain while I watch the empty sidewalk from my window.
I am going outside to sit on the porch.
