In The Dark and Rain

When I was a kid, Dad took great delight in sending me out of the house to get something or take out the trash, alone, at night. He’d always say, “Watch out for the Boogieman!” and then proceed to sneak up on me in the dark and scare the crap out of me. It happened enough that my childhood fear of the dark was pretty much gone by the time I was seven or eight, so my dad’s amateur immersion therapy seemed to have worked as intended.

By the time I was twelve, I began to take walks at night through our Phoenix neighborhood, something you could still do at the time. Our neighborhood had a series of alleyways where the dumpsters were kept, and I began walking them in the dark since I could walk forever without running into anyone or anything.

Thus began my tradition of night walking.

To this day I love the darkness. I hate walking during the day. The night is a safe place for me to walk hidden and secure, even though nearly all of the bad things and armed encounters that have ever happened to me happened while I was out for a walk. But still, I refuse to stop taking walks at night.

My walks are always therapeutic. It’s my own personal meditation. If something is bothering me or stressing me out, all I have to do is take a night walk for a few hours and by the end I’ve usually figured out what to do about whatever is bothering me, or at least figured out how to accept what is bothering me and stop dwelling on it. It’s a formula for peace and contentment. Well, that and swinging kettlebells. Nothing like a KB for wearing you out to the point you just don’t care anymore.

Tonight I wanted to hit the road after midnight thanks to my screwed up sleeping habits. I’ve been doing okay lately and getting enough sleep more or less, but I have a killer headache today, and I went to sleep at five o’clock in the afternoon. By the time eleven came around, I was just waking up, dang it all. Figuring I’d get to bed around sun up, I’d decided to head out and see if I could exhaust myself by doing five or six miles.

Well, I got dressed and opened the door, and what do you think greeted me? Yep, it was raining. A lot. I’m not the kind of guy that likes to walk around in the rain, but when the mood hits me, I’ll go ahead and do it, unless it’s too cold. I hate cold rain, like tiny knives slicing through my skin. But warm monsoon rain is all good by comparison.

Rain, rain…

So I went out and faced the monsoon. No lightning, but I was miserable at first. You ever notice how you can face any of the elements as long as it doesn’t get in your face? Wind, Rain, snow, dust storms- it doesn’t matter as long as it stays away from the eyes and mouth. Humanity has spent thousands of years perfecting the technology to keep nature away from the face, yet thus far I’ve been remiss in utilizing any of it.

The rain got on my face, in my eyes, the humidity fogged my glasses. The good point was it was so wet I didn’t feel uncomfortably sweaty or anything. Ahhh…

Hats

As I was saying, mankind has spent thousands of years working on head-covering technology, but our society that is so used to white and pink collar jobs, air conditioning, and staying indoors has basically atrophied in the department of hats.

Back in the day, women wore bonnets or those big, floppy things covered in flowers and fruit and small animals. Men wore tricorns and then beavers, planters, or cowboy hats, and later on porkpies and panamas and fedoras. Men always wore hats up until the ‘60’s. Now, all you can get at a reasonable price are useless baseball caps or boonie hats.

Where are the American versions of the coolie hats they wear in Southeast Asia? You know those big conical straw jobs with the chin strap to lock it down tight? Yeah, something like that without the chin strap. Maybe a modern sombrero is in order. I’m not talking about the garish multi-colored fiesta hats either, but a natural colored straw sombrero with a ten-inch brim and a lattice around the crown to let the heat out and shaped to let the water run off the right way. That would be sweet.

I love cowboy hats but dislike the boots and long jeans that they require you wear without looking like an idiot. So they’re out. They don’t make a panama with a wide enough brim, and regular panamas make you look like a grandpa. At least like my grandpa, who wore a panama all the time.

There are custom hats out there, but who wants to pay custom prices for a hat that’s gonna get trashed in short order?