Perhaps a nice poncho won't let me down

Our apartment is the place where umbrellas go to die. I swear this is true, though I can't figure out why. We buy umbrellas all the time. Yet whenever I go into the closet to grab one, I inevitably come out with something that looks like Edward Scissorhands was playing with it all night.

So this morning, I was pleased to find that the only problem with the one (how did we end up with ONE?) umbrella we had was that its handle wouldn't go all the way in. It hadn't started raining yet, so I walked to work with it stuffed into my bag, and it was a fairly effective weapon, poking out and slamming into people on the sidewalk. I apologized and tried to protect everyone from it, which made me look like I was trying to smuggle a metal stick across town.

In the afternoon, it rained. So walking back from grabbing lunch, I had to open the umbrella. Huge mistake. I got back to the office and the stupid thing wouldn't close. I stood outside the revolving doors, knowing I would never get through them, and tried to jam it closed. I pushed it into a stone wall. Nothing. I looked at the rather disheveled man next to me and explained "It's broken." He didn't care. Then I tried to manually pull each tiny umbrella wire towards the others, willing them to close. No. I gauged my odds of getting through the door with it and not killing or embarrassing myself. Not good. I tried reasoning with the umbrella while I pulled at its wiry tentacles. This went on for at least 5 minutes until I finally walked down the street and placed it into a garbage can. Of course it filled the entire can and made the whole thing look like a mushroom, blocking anyone else from being able to put trash into it. I felt bad and I walked back down the street in the rain, not without profanity.

I'm not saying it's the greatest story ever, but I believe it proves my point.