He ain’t heavy, he’s my brolly

I bought myself an umbrella a while back to replace my loaner. I was stuck in a logic problem in the research phase of the purchase though. I wondered just what makes an expensive umbrella worth the money. My intuition told me that an expensive umbrella would suffer from the same basic issues as a cheap one: breakage of ribs or struts or spars or whatever they’re called, ripping of the nylon, etc. I did a cursory internet search for umbrellas and discovered that I could purchase an Armani umbrella for $700. The fancy touches included a silver handle and mahogany shaft. It still had thin steel ribs and used nylon to block the rain. Anyway, I defaulted to a cheap one but not the cheapest. I spent $10 when I could have spent $5. I hoped that paying 100% more than the base model would yield a much better brolly. Of course you can never know in advance which straw will break the brolly’s back. As such, I felt that there was no way to really know how much benefit you would get from a more expensive model. I opted for a collapsible one that would fit into my bag easily and therefore be convenient enough to carry all the time. I had been stuck walking in the rain in the past due to a misreading of the weather, so I wanted to be able to keep one at all times. So I had a good stretch of time with the collapsible umbrella, and I carried it everywhere (insert montage of me and my umbrella in various scenic locales throughout Sydney). Until last night.

I walked home from work in the rain. The umbrella held up well for the first half of the walk, but as the rain increased and the wind increased, there was definitely a lot more stress on the parts of the umbrella. I trudged through the driving rain, and of course I was concerned for the health of the brolly, but I was wearing my dress pants so I didn’t want to put it away. I looked at other pedestrians and saw sorry looking umbrellas everywhere. The perfect dome shape was deformed all over the place. Forlorn looking umbrellas were the norm. I still had faith that a combination of savvy walking and well angled holding and just plain good will would save the day. Alas, in the end the wind won and one particular gust blew my umbrella inside out snapping some of the spars in the process. It was a violent end to a good umbrella. I made a show of trying to go on with the busted up nylon still protecting me, but in the end I just walked home in the pouring rain. I tossed my umbrella out upon my arrival at home. There is a silver lining to the story because sitting atop the rubbish bin when I threw out the umbrella was a suit jacket and vest, just sitting there, waiting to be adopted by a new owner. Or should I say silvery lining.

There is of course no way to know if a more expensive model would have survived the trip, but I prefer to think not. I choose to believe that my umbrella gave a valiant effort, and was the equal to any $700 Armani model. In other news, I hope that I won’t have to write the word umbrella again because I feel that I have hit my quota for the year.