Under My Umbrella (ella, ella)

I learned a lot from my study abroad experience in Madrid. For example, I learned that one will receive jamon in her meals even if she says she is a vegetarian and that hissing is an appropriate form of inter-gender communication. I discovered how to roll my r's and how to navigate one of the best metro systems in the world- which also appeared to be the top make-out location for all of the nation's young people. Most of all, though, I learned a critical element of essential Spanish womanhood. Allow me to elaborate...

A typical Spanish girl grows up to be a drop-dead gorgeous 20-something with a high pitched giggle and fabulous fashion sense. At some point between her 20th and 60th birthday, however, something crazy happens. Perhaps a result of excessive jamon intake, she shrinks about a foot and becomes attached at the hip to her friends. These tight huddles of older women stroll down the sidewalk at a very leisurely pace with a complete disregard to the pacing needs of impatient Americanas, such as myself.

Evading these amoeba-esque sidewalk clusters proves to be black-diamond-difficult when it is raining out. Each woman carries an umbrella, cleverly called a paragua (for water), creating a patchwork of nylon and metal that completely obstructs one's view and doubles the collective womanly girth of the group. The group of Jamon-I-Shrunk-the-Ladies not only irritated the more well-paced among us, but proved to be a head poking target for us 5'8"-ers whose amply sized dome never failed to be placed at the elder paragua height. Many times I clunked and bumped up against these parasols of death without so much of a 'permiso' or 'perdoname' from a cluster being. As an evolutionary reflex, I grew to avoid busy areas during rain and did not carry my own paragua, neededing full vision capacity to guard against the paragua gangs that roamed the calles freely (and slowly).

Boston has turned into Seattle this week and I have been struck by the number of paraguas out and about in my home Northeastern-turned-Pacific-Northwestern city. I have an umbrella. It's pink and is currently sitting on my desk at work. But I'm pretty sure that the paragua experience of abroad has turned me away from using umbrellas unless it is monsooning, and even then I'll rarely snap it up.

I often like to think of myself as low maintenance; one who can go with the flow and not worry about the frizzy hair and damp clothes that accompany rain exposure. Yet, I'm beginning to think that behavior could be considered unprofessional; at the very least it probably appears that I am just clueless (which is true for a number of things, but seasonal etiquette is not usually one of them). The truth of my umbrella strike, however, lies in the paraguas. Prado-ing visitors, consider yourself warned: You TOO could end up frizzy and damp.