Still Raining

I was aloof at the swim meet.
New Orleans, Louisiana - March 2005

I haven't been in San Francisco long enough for me to figure out a pattern. This is only my third winter, such as it is, here. I know, I know, as we all rememeber from an NPR perspective-slash-calendar tour on KQED a few weeks ago, Winter arrives on December 21, Spring on March 21, Summer on June 21, and Autumn on September 21, give or take, every year. Facts are facts, though, and it's just not fair to compare the facts surrounding the cruel, vile, harsh winters in San Francisco with those in the other parts of the country.

But as time goes on, and we move into the middle of April, I've been starting to wonder what exactly is going on around here. It's still raining. It's still raining a lot. This morning, as is tradition when anything but blue starts falling from the skies, there were delays on BART.

If there's one thing I've learned this winter is that there are certain conversational lines that are best left responded to with lies, or just not directly responded to at all. I have to admit something.

I like rain.

There it is. I like it. Try to breathe. It shakes things up, changes the mundane, gives texture to the day, mystery. The clouds, even a gray overcast, make just about any photograph more lively than a blank, bald, clear blue sky does. Now, I'm not a communist. I'm not saying I don't like sunny days. I'm just saying there's more to life.

On a cloudless day last week, I was in the kitchen here at work, and I found myself in a conversation with a California-raised coworker who was nearly crushed under the weight of my admission. How could that be? How can you like rain? While I was talking to him, I realized the truth is, he really had no interest at all in whether I liked rain or not, or even if there were people in the world who had anything but out and out hatred of it. It was a sunny day, warm, and he wanted to revel in that, and I was wrong for trying to take that away from him. My lamenting that the rain was gone until October was stepping on his seven-month-long parade. Afterall, the weather, remember, is perfect here. It says so right on pages 4-305 of the rule book and welcome manual.

To retaliate, he's started referring to me not as "Scott," or even "Shiface," but as "Rain Main." There's something instantly gratifying about seeing a grown man with a well-paying job and some amount of responsibility walking into a room with VPs in it and start saying, "Definately, definately not raining. Definately not raining. Wapner comes on at 4..." as the VPs look at him like his pants are on backward.

But here we are, on another rainy day, and I'm starting to get used to the feeling of water dissolved in the air, and sometimes seeing that water fall in sheets, even making it all the way down to the ground. Wipers going; kids jumping in puddles, even though they've been trained to their laughter at that is just as bad as drinking corporate poppy seeds.

What if all this global warming hooey is true? What if this has all caused a shift in the climate here, and this rain is going to continue through the summer? What if a Giants' home game gets is cancelled?

I can only dream, and next time someone tells me they're glad the rain's gone, smile, nod, and butter my bagel.

-=-
For those of you keeping score at home, it's now been 12 days since my boss blamed me for the fact that the new version of this software I've been documenting was late. The software still hasn't shipped, and as of my last check on the subject, yesterday, there were still no less than two features not working completely, including one, "Software does not work on Solaris." Yep. That's the technical writer's fault.