On the rainiest day of the year, Jack was walking home. It was February, so to say it was the rainiest day of the year wasn't saying much, but being February, it was the type of rain that chills you to the bone and makes you consider whether it had intended to be snow, but someone had made a mistake. Ordinarily, Jack liked rain. When it was summer. Or late spring. Autumn rain in particular held a special place in his heart.
But it wasn't autumn. It was February. Jack tried to pretend to like the rain, regardless of how cold it was making him, as a steady stream of droplets made their way from his soaked hair into his eyes. Jack didn't have an umbrella. It's not that he didn't have one with him, he didn't own one. Today, he decided, was the day he'd buy an umbrella. Or rather, tomorrow. Right now, all he wanted was to get home and out of the rain. Tomorrow would be a better day to go to the shops. It probably wouldn't be raining tomorrow.
But what kind of umbrella should he get? The kind that folded in and retracted were really easy to carry around. You'd be far more likely to have the umbrella handy for unexpected rainfall. But he detested the handles on those things. They were always short, stubby things that were awkward to hold properly, especially when the wind picked up and threatened to take the umbrella away from you. And besides, they were always too small. It seemed like they were purposefully designed to keep your head dry but let about half of the rest of your body get soaked. The big, full size umbrellas seemed like far better umbrellas. They protected your entire body from the cold rain. They were like parents, he thought, hovering around their child, shielding them from all the dangers of the world while the child skips on, blissfully unaware. But just like how the parents' protection becomes overbearing and stifling when there aren't any dangers around that the child can't handle, the large umbrellas become oppressive to carry around when it isn't raining.
He'd check online when he arrived home, he decided. Someone must have been anguished by the same dilemma before, and they would have come to some conclusion about what the best umbrellas were. There might even be some type of umbrella he never knew about that solved every problem, and there'd be reviews of it.
Once Jack finally made it home, he wiped the wet mud from his shoes on the non-existing door mat and tracked muddy water all over the hallway. He'd never gotten a doormat. Never gotten around to it, and besides, it was such a hassle to clean the floors with a doormat that you needed to deal with. And it was important that whatever banal message, or lack thereof, that was on the doormat you got was a message you could stand by for years to come.
Doing his best to contain the mud to the entrance, he undressed and changed into dry clothes, then glanced at the clock in the hallway. Five thirty. He could do some quick searches online before he had to worry about food.
The best umbrella. 542,000,000 results. There were regular, full size umbrellas, the standard retractable ones, a bunch of transparent, extra domed umbrellas that he suddenly recalled having seen in some pictures from Japan, umbrellas with a hole on top and another layer of cloth over the hole, a bit like a hot air balloon, to protect it from damage when the wind caught it, lopsided umbrellas, parasols, photography diffuser umbrellas, and cocktail umbrellas. Some of those were, perhaps, more useful than others as a tool to protect yourself from rain, but Jack had been right. There was a whole world of different umbrellas out there. All he had to do was choose, and hope he could find one at the store tomorrow.
As he went clicking through the different umbrellas, reading and watching video reviews, the clock ticked past six and was well on its way to seven before Jack had the presence of mind to look at it. Crap. He still had to eat, and it was getting too late to cook anything worthwhile.
He decided to order in. A couple clicks online, and like magic there'd be food at his doorstep in half an hour, while he went about doing some chores around the house. The 21st century.
Except, it all took a bit longer than half an hour. As he was scrolling through available restaurants on the food delivery website, he had to decide what he wanted to eat. Pizza? He had had pizza a couple days ago. Maybe he'd order a burger. Oh, but burgers never survived the delivery particularly well. He finally decided to order some Indian food, and went looking for his regular, comfortable Indian restaurant.
He knew he liked it, it had been his default Indian restaurant for three years, but for some reason he decided to look at the reviews. There were a bunch of bad ones in the past month. Slow delivery. Wrong order. One even complained about under-cooked chicken. Uh-oh. Maybe he'd try out a different restaurant today. Maybe he'd just order pizza again.
Eventually, finally, he had decided what to order and from whom to order it, and he hit confirm on the ordering page. Seven forty-five. He decided to skip the chores for today, and went into the living room to find something to watch for the evening.
Starting up his video streaming app of choice, Jack started scrolling through the selection. He had about twenty-three movies and series on his watchlist, but he quickly went through and discarded all of them. Most of them were movies that you didn't just watch, you had to be in the right mood for them and feel like you could devote the entire running length to really watch the movie. Maybe a light comedy?
When the sushi finally arrived, Jack still hadn't selected anything to watch. In frustration, he hit the shuffle button. And then he hit it again. And a few more times before a nature documentary show came up. He threw the remote aside with an audible sigh. It wasn't really what he was in the mood for, but it'd probably be good and at this point he just wanted to eat his food and go to bed.
Jack woke up to the smattering of rain on his bedroom window. For a moment he lay there, listening, enjoying the soothing sound of randomness striking the window. Sporadically the wind would pick up, creating a wave of high frequency smattering, and then it'd slow down until it almost seemed like it had stopped. And then it'd pick up again. He looked over to the window and saw the droplets hanging on to the surface, some of them growing heavy and falling down, many of them staying put and refracting the light into thousands of tiny, upside down versions of the outside world. And then he remembered that it was February, and he had to get to work.
Preparing the best he could for the outside conditions, which wasn't all that much when you didn't have an umbrella, Jack went to work. He'd definitely get an umbrella on his way home. He'd go and buy a small retractable one so he could carry it with him at all times and never again be forced to arrive to work soaked to his underwear.
Eight and something hours later, Jack was on his way home. He had promised himself to go buy an umbrella after work, but he was on his way home. Today had been a lousy day, and he just wanted to get home, put his feet up, and watch something stupid on the TV for a couple of hours. And anyway, it had stopped raining, and there wasn't any rain on the forecast. It'd be days before the next rain, maybe weeks. He could get an umbrella later.