Rainbrellas

Here’s something that puzzles me. Why are the great majority of umbrellas black, when that’s…

The most unsafe color for them.

At night in the pouring rain, hunched in on yourself, a stark black umbrella pulled down close limits your vision. And maybe you’re wearing a navy jacket, or charcoal or deep brown, so you merge entirely into the darkness, invisible to a driver making a fast right turn through your crosswalk. Not good.

I used to have a black umbrella that was checkered with reflecting squares. It eventually broke and I couldn’t find another like it.

So I looked through a hundred some options and settled for clear plastic which lets me see everything around me even in the dark.

I talked this article into my recorder while I was out walking in this morning’s rain, and I started thinking, even better than clear plastic would be yellow. That’s got to be the safest color.

And just then the universe, as if to punctuate my thought with an affirmation, put a woman with a lemon-yellow umbrella down at the end of the block, getting her dog a walk and a bath at the same time.