It’s morning. You have just gotten up, eaten breakfast, and are ready to start your day, which involves leaving the comfort of your home to venture outdoors. It seems like a perfect day, until you realize it is raining.
Now, rain is certainly a good thing. It’s both relaxing and necessary, but extremely unpleasant to have to walk through. So, you venture to your coat closet to figure out the best thing to bring with you out into the rain. You’ve got three options: an umbrella, a waterproof rain jacket, or an umbrella hat.
For starters, there are so many different types of umbrellas. You’ve got the classic, the foldable, the parasol, the bubble, the storm, the automatic and the golf umbrella. If you have all of these, you will have an umbrella for every possible occasion. In the rain, you should probably stay away from a parasol or a golf umbrella. They have their time and place, but it’s not here. Umbrellas allow you to stay mostly dry, but in the wind, you run the risk of losing your umbrella or it flipping inside out. And, if you’re not careful, you could poke someone’s eye out when you walk next to them. They are awkward to carry and they don’t really work if two people are trying to use one. Perhaps the worst thing about an umbrella is the amount of water that stays on them when closed.
I’ve got to give credit to the newer umbrella inventors. There have been some very helpful revisions in modern umbrellas. There are now reverse umbrellas. These close all the water in to prevent that trail of drips you leave on the floor when you bring it inside, but it’s inevitable water still makes it in if you choose an umbrella.
Rain jackets are also an option and my personal go-to. But once again, they have their pros and cons. If you decide to go with a rain jacket and you’re wearing a backpack, it might get soaking wet and ruin something. When it comes to wind, wearing a rain jacket will result in you potentially having to hold up your hood constantly as you walk and while it will keep you warm, it makes a lot of noise and will probably still be wet by the time you make it indoors.
Alright, what about the umbrella hat? Perhaps the most useful of them all, the umbrella hat simply sits on your head and is fastened by elastic straps. There is no long handle that limits the use of one of your hands and in the wind, due to the size, the umbrella hat is less likely to flip inside out. Growing up, we had one of these fascinating objects, though it was rarely worn. My parents always said it looked ridiculous and we never wore it outside of our own backyard. It was more of a toy. But if you think about it, the umbrella hat works as a large umbrella in the way that it protects your head and it acts as a hood in the same way, and you don’t have to hold it at all. There is still the potential of bringing rain inside however, and the rest of your body will not stay dry.
So, what it sounds like we need, is a combination of all these inventions: a full body, rain jacket like, reverse umbrella suit with some sort of protective umbrella hat. Then we can walk through the rain showers and make it inside while keeping the water out. In the meantime, grab your umbrella hat and all important rain boots, and go sing in the rain, hands free.
