Umbrellas

Since today is rainy, it's a good day for interesting facts and anecdotes about umbrellas.

To begin with, let me give a history of my umbrellas:

I owned a red umbrella with a bear's head on the handle when I was in elementary school.
In middle school, I owned a bright, sunny yellow umbrella.
A year or two ago, I got my current purple and giraffe umbrella. This is the best pattern by far, and it even folds up doubly, so it's smaller when you're not using it. Unfortunately, it broke recently - not enough that I can't use it, but enough to look lopsided. I suppose it's back to the yellow one!

My father is notorious for losing his umbrellas. I theorize that this is because he never get's attached to them, the way I do to mine. His are always black or dark gray. He actually has been doing pretty well recently.

We (my brother, sister, and I) once put on a Vaudeville show in which our umbrellas functioned as our canes and we wore paper bowls as derby hats. We sang "You're a Grand Old Flag" and popped up our umbrellas on each color - this was fortunately the stage at which we had a red, white, and blue umbrella, respectively.

We bought an umbrella in Ireland when we went there, which was broken the very same day by the wind.

When we were small, we used to lie underneath the open umbrellas and pretend they were tents.

Beach umbrellas are the best way of identifying your party while in the water - they keep you from getting swept too far along the coast.

An umbrella is a "parapluie" in French and a "paraguas" in Spanish, both meaning "for water."

Robinson Crusoe made himself an umbrella out of skins, in order to keep his complexion from being ruined by the sun! Makes you wonder about priorities...

Some umbrellas pop open with such force that they can be used as weapons.

The niftiest kinds of umbrellas use a button to both open and close.

It is very difficult to share an umbrella with anyone appreciably taller than you.