If you're a resident of New Orleans, rain is no stranger. In fact, it's the friend who comes over often uninvited, messes up your house, and leaves the next day like nothing ever happened. It's a pattern we're used to, yet never seem to learn from. Here are some things that are repeated occurrences for rainy days in NOLA.
1. Waiting for classes to get canceled.
Either the classes get canceled in advance and it ends up not raining, or the campus floods and they decide to cancel while you're already on campus.
2. Going one mph in the streets because they're flooded.
Or just plain old getting stranded.
3. Getting trapped in buildings.
No biggie, they have vending machines. Oh wait, I don't have any money.
4. Barefoot life.
Hey, at least now you don't have to drive to the beach. Also, there's no point in sacrificing your shoes over and over again.
5. Struggling with the umbrella because of the wind.
You soon learn that there is no point. You're going to get soaked anyway and you end up fighting with the umbrella half the time--- scratch that, the entire time. Those wind gusts are no joke.
6. Having to reroute your entire drive because your usual route is flooded.
This consists of texting multiple friends about which routes to take only to have them respond with the fact that they were about to ask you the same thing.
7. There is no staying dry. Goodbye makeup.
Why even bother?
8. A million of these being sent to your phone
I think all it takes is looking outside the window to grasp the point.
9. Deciding whether it's better to walk (or swim) to where you need to go
Or some other form of water transportation. The car just isn't working out anymore.
10. The social media posts (or cries for help)
"Nothing to see here. Just a casual day riding my bike."
All it takes is a visit to Facebook or switching on the news channel to see pictures and videos of people playing out in the flooded streets, water up to their knees. It's what we do.
You think we would be prepared, but we're just as unprepared each time as the last time it rained. It's just another day in the life of a New Orleanian. And to top it all off, the next day is typically so beautiful, you would have never known what a disaster the previous day was.
