Once upon a time Mommy worked at NASA in Houston, Texas for a year. She liked her work, but she did not like the Houston climate. It rained a lot. In fact, it rained off and on nearly every day in the spring.
Being from California, Mommy was not used to that much rain. She figured out how to cope, however. She bough a small umbrella that folded up to fit inside her backpack. That way, if it rained, she could quickly pull out the umbrella, and if it did not rain, the umbrella would be out of the way in her backpack. This was especially helpful because Mommy walked back and forth from work .She liked walking, but she often got caught in surprise rainstorms.
One day, it was not raining when Mommy left her house. In fact, it was pretty hot.
Mommy had a long walk. She lived more than two miles from NASA. When she walked, she thought a lot. She thought about work, about her family, about lots of things. So, she did not pay a lot of attention to what was going on around her. (That is probably why a lot of detail-oblivious people get called absent-minded.)
Mommy got pretty used to doing things automatically, without thinking, while she walked, so that she could think about the things that she wanted to. When the cars stopped moving, she sensed a red light and crossed the street, and when her skin felt wet, she sensed the rain and put up her umbrella. It all worked out pretty well.
On this day that I am talking about, though, she was already at NASA, and there had been no rain. Somewhere in her subconscious she was thinking about how great it was to have a morning without rain. Then, suddenly her skin felt wet, and her automatic reaction took over: Out came the umbrella and on Mommy walked.
Mommy felt pretty good about her quick reaction to the sudden rain, until she noticed that people had stopped walking around the buildings and were looking at her. That was when she realized that she was walking through a sprinkler with her umbrella up.
Conclusion: Make sure it is raining before you put up your umbrella.
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This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.
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About Me
- Elizabeth Mahlou
- I am the mother of 4 birth children (plus 3 others who lived with us) and grandmother of 2, all of them exceptional children. Married for 42 years, I grew up in Maine, live in California, and work in many places in education, linguistics, and program management. In my spare time, I rescue and tame feral cats and have the scars to prove it. A long-time ignorantly blissful atheist converted by a theophanic experience to Catholicism, I am now a joyful catechist. Oh, I also authored a dozen books, two under my pen name of Mahlou (Blest Atheist and A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God).
Recommended Reading List
Because I am blog inept, I don't quite know how to get a reading list to stay at the end of the page and not disappear from sight. Therefore, I entered it as my first post. I suppose that is not all that bad because readers started commenting about the books, even suggesting additional readings. So, you can participate with others in my reading list by clicking here.I do post additional books as I read them and find them to be meaningful to me, and therefore, hopefully, meaningful to you. One advantage of all the plane traveling I do is that I acquire reading time that I might not otherwise take.
Oh yes...what a great story.
ReplyDeleteI can see that happening!
Lol, that is a practical thing to do, actually. I would do that myself :)
ReplyDeleteThis is so cute. I have several umbrellas but I don't know where they are when I need them. I need to keep one in the car. I bought a purse that had one in it early this summer. But the purse only lasted six weeks. I still have the umbrella.
ReplyDelete