What is 'weather'?

Growing up in paradise had its advantages. When I wasn't at the beach or Disneyland, I spent my time roaming our neighbor's avocado orchard with my best friend/golden retriever. It's called "growing up in Southern California", bitches.

There were some drawbacks though. The biggest being the slow discovery that I'm not sure life gets better than what I was raised with. Pretty much everywhere else I've lived has had some crushing dose of reality.

The first time I had an inkling that I was raised in a metaphorical Garden of Eden came when I experienced winter. Growing up "seasons" was something I read about in a Laura Ingalls Wilder book. For context, my family's Christmas Eve tradition is a picnic at the beach. This was my life twelve months a year:

When I went away to college, the first few months didn't hold any meteorological surprises. One fall day something odd happened: water fell from the sky.

I'd seen rain a few times in Malibu, but it was kind of a mist that made people drive incredibly slow. This was different. It was like someone turned on a showerhead and doused me with it every time I walked outside. It made doing anything other than sitting in bed surfing the internet very difficult.

So I came up with a solution.

I found the warmest clothes I owned and put all of them on...

...and promptly learned there's a difference between being warm and being dry.

To make matters more complicated, our campus was enormous so most people rode bikes to get to class. If you've ever ridden a bike in the rain, you know that the back tire is lovely at spitting up puddles and dirt. Like so:

Which had an unfortunate effect on one's backside. Pretty much we all walked around looking like victims of explosive diarrhea.

After awhile I got tired of perpetual laundry and the forest of wet denim hanging off my bed. I called my mother crying.

This is how I got a package in the mail with my junior high sister's water polo parka. I'm not a very big person, so on the long walk to class it made me look like a goddamn hobbit.

Two days of this shame and I couldn't take it anymore.

I thought about it long and hard. I didn't want to look like a freaking gnome of darkness but I was also fed up with having so many wet clothes. And there it was - that was the problem...too many wet clothes.

Solution:

Brilliant, right? The less clothes you wear, the less that get wet. Welcome to my 'rain uniform': a tank top, athletic shorts, and Rainbows.

Full disclosure: this probably got me more judgment than the parka, but it came with less laundry.

This was my strategy all through college. My senior year I did notice something for sale at the local department store.

Maybe it was overkill but...