Odd rain

Today it was raining in NY City as I walked to work. It was a rather light and pleasant rain. Except for one oddity.

As you undoubtedly know if you live in a big city, fellow pedestrians carrying umbrellas can be hazardous to your health. If people are not mindful, those ungainly objects, with their sharp and spiky metallic parts, can poke you in the eye.

Unfortunately, there is now a class of pedestrian that is very much not mindful. These are the people who hold their umbrella in one hand and their SmartPhone in the other.

It’s not so much that they are holding the SmartPhone — it’s that they are staring intently into it, oblivious to the world around them. When I see somebody carrying both an umbrella and a SmartPhone, I steer a very clear path.

I suspect that if one of these multi-taskers did poke you in the eye with their umbrella, they wouldn’t even notice. After all, they are not really present on that rainy street. Rather, they are living in the world of whatever or whoever is currently on the little screen in their hand.

It makes for an odd rain experience, and one can only live in hope that something will come along soon to wean people off this strange way of being.

Hmm, come to think of it, “odd rain” is an apt anagram for the situation. As is “in hope”, for that matter.

Just what they are anagrams for, I will leave as an exercise for the reader. 🙂