My First Blue Umbrella

By: John Gibb
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:24:52
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I still remember an incident that happened when I was a eight years old. While me and my mother were out shopping at the city’s busiest shop district, suddenly the sky became gray and heavy rain begun falling down. As the pavements and the parked cars were washed by its tremendous volume, my mother quickly grabbed my hand and led me to a nearby shop to buy an umbrella. She let me pick my favorite color and in a matter of minutes we were out again under its safety zone, quickly walking to the nearest bus stop.

Since that day, my favorite umbrella was that simple blue one my mother had purchased that September evening. Carrying it every time the weatherman predicted rainfall, my huge blue umbrella became soon a symbol of my presence in a room. Although it was rather big in size for my age, its light design and durable frame made it the perfect umbrella choice for me. I always had extra room to safely guard home my little brother and it was its color and easy opening mechanism that made it appealing to most of my school friends. In addition, the fact that its design and color were simple and its size larger than most kid’s umbrellas, made me think of it as a “serious” umbrella that easily a grownup would be seen carrying. This made me consider myself as more mature, able to protect and lead my brother or classmates during a heavy storm.

Perhaps, the fact that my umbrella successfully made it through the early school years, becoming an object of great sentimental value to me, was enough for me to be devastated when one winter evening I returned home without it under my arm. I have forgotten it inside the bus that brought me home and although I called the transportation office of my city and requested the driver to search the seats so as to recover my lost umbrella, his efforts were not successful. Since my carelessness was the reason that I lost my first blue umbrella, for years I refused to be seen carrying one, preferring to get myself wet to the bone whenever it rained. I thought of this as a personal ritual as a punishment I had to endure in order to remember that the things we love should be carefully taken care of. My only comfort was the thought that perhaps another person, the one who has probably found my umbrella hanging in that bus, would take better care of it and in return it would protect him or her as it did me for years.

Today, umbrellas are used by all both as a sun and rain protection mechanism. As classes and power roles are now signified by a different, more expensive set of apparatus, umbrella manufacturers have promoted a different image for the contemporary umbrellas’ uses. Given the fact that umbrellas can now be produced by companies as part of their promotional materials, exactly like jockey hats or T-shirts, carrying a logo, a brand name or a slogan, people are accustomed to see it everywhere. All over the world today, people have learned to rely on umbrellas so as to walk safely from their house to their car or metro-stop during mild or more severe weather conditions.

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