So I’ve been planning for weeks to buy my new brown Frye boots this week from my special discount place near my office, that has them for half price. Today, I came to gym/work only in my sneakers, intending to make the trek up 8th avenue to buy the beloved Fryes. At 11:15, with already wet sneakers, I could stand the suspense no longer and grabbed my umbrella, my wallet, and headed out the door.
I should have called first. After a five block trek in the driving rain, crossing streets that are more like shallow streams, and fighting with other people’s umbrellas and hordes of lost be-poncho’ed tourists, I arrive at the store to see the metal grate pulled down. They’re closed today. Who knew my buddies with the great shoe prices were Jewish. Seriously, WHO KNEW?
So there I am, with plans for tonight that involve a fair amount of walking through Brooklyn, in my sopping wet sneakers and soaked-to-the-knee jeans. I formulate a quick plan – who’d sell wellingtons or rain boots around here? So I start walking another ten blocks to the Daffy’s on 57th and Broadway. Daffy’s, I am sure, will have rain boots.
Daffy’s, it seems, has a discouraging dearth of rain boots. So, in a last ditch attempt at not getting trench foot and/or being miserable for the entire day, I go across the street to the Gap. Maybe the Gap sells rain boots. What do I know? It’s, at this point, my only option.
This is where the story gets funny.
Ten minutes later, I walk out of the gap with a pair of little boy’s tough-leather wallabees. Yeah, you heard me. Size six little boy’s shoes that have the lace across the top. Look, I figure, they’re not rain boots but they’re also made for the most destructive little tyrants on the planet – little boys. And anyone who’s making shoes for little boys is going to think to themselves, “will little boys sensibly wear rain boots or take taxis when it’s pissing it down?” And they will answer themselves, “NO THEY BLOODY WILL NOT,” and then proceed to construct relatively durable little-boy wallabees. This is the thought process I am relying on, right now.
This is where the story gets tragic.
As I step outside of the Gap and try to simultaneously re-don my trenchcoat and open my umbrella to the torrential flooding from the sky, a gust of wind rips around the corner and sends the metal pole of my umbrella on a direct and successful collision course with my forehead. This stunning achievement on the part of today’s weather meant I dropped my trench coat from the shoulders I was slinging it across. Dropped it directly into an enormous puddle. Dropped it directly into an enormous puddle – INSIDE DOWN.
And then, because it’s only funny when this happens, a bus drove by and soaked my back as I bent down to pick up the jacket from the pond it was floating in.
At this point, basically, I can either give up, go berserk and rip my clothes off and go running down Broadway screaming until they either douse me in liquid nitrogen to put me out of my misery or lock me up in Bellevue for the rest of eternity, or I can Get My Shit Together And Figure Something Out.
I briefly contemplate the first option. By briefly, I mean, I stand there stunned, in the rain with a wet back, wet feet, wet legs, and a wet raincoat that was known as my last salvation from the wetness. I stand there for about two minutes. Two very long, agonizingly self-pitying minutes. I am fighting back tears that, like, long to join their people in the puddles on the ground.
So I do what any sensible person does. I fight my way across the street again, slip into Daffy’s, and buy the cheapest rain-coat thing I can find that isn’t a dreaded rain poncho. It turns out, it’s a brown puffy jacket made almost entirely of polyester and plastic, with a fake fur collar. It cost me twenty dollars and I will probably love it until the very last gasping second of Time Itself because I do not have to be wet everywhere, just everywhere but my torso.
So, fifty bucks later and still wet-pant-legged, I sit at my desk with relatively dry feet and a relatively dry torso. My poor begraggled tan trench coat is hung over the chair and I’ve borrowed a coworker’s space heater to warm my jean-legs into a semblance of dryness. Until the ark itself floats by my 43rd floor window and beckons me to join, I’m staying right the fuck here.
And ordering lunch delivered.
N.B.: Other considered titles for this post include but are not limited to: “how to spend fifty bucks without even trying”, OR “a sopping advertisement for visa check card”, OR “how I completely forgot everything I ever learned in girl scouts”.