the rain

I am convinced that the majority of the people in Scotland have ceased to notice when it is actually raining or not. I’m being serious here. Most of the people, I’m sure, after living in Scotland, completely lose the ability to discern whether or not it is actually raining. Since this amuses me thoroughly, I test it by stating the obvious. “It’s raining.” I say when it’s raining, turning to my nearest companion. They look at me with somewhat bemused smiles, “Yes. It’s Scotland,” is invariably the reply. But then when it isn’t raining I say, “It isn’t raining.” And I see faces turn towards the sky. If it’s sunny, they will look at the sun with a bit of surprise. If it’s cloudy and not rainy then little lines start appearing between slightly furrowed eyebrows, hands come out palms up to feel for drops, “Well, no…no, not currently it’s not. But just wait a wee bit and you’ll see. Don’t get too used to it. This is unusual.” They say this, despite the fact that I have seen the sun nearly every day, throughout the day, albeit usually in bright bursts followed by more rain, like deep gulping breaths between being repeatedly dunked in a pool. I even find myself thinking “Oh, it’s rainy,” and then having to check. “Is it? Is it really raining, Kirsten? Or do I just feel like it’s raining? Oh… no… it’s actually quite clear just now.”

I have some theories for why this might be. Most of the explanations lie in the fact that Scotland is not so much a place as an entity; an entity which loves just a taste of madness, madness like salt should flavor food-just enough to make the experience richer, but not enough to overwhelm the palate. The explanation lies within the fact that Scotland herself is a quirky little bird of a country, and intent on forcing those who live here to let go of caring about unimportant things like what side of the sidewalk to walk on or whether or not it’s raining, and concentrate on things that are real like highlands and stories and dancing and getting drunk.

The types of rain here are vast, and each of them is designed with the specific and mischievous intent of making those who spend any amount of time here at all either decide to go absolutely batty or simply let go, content in the knowledge that everything is, after all, what it is.


The first and most common type of rain is the way Scotland has of simply being wet. The atmosphere can be a thick cloud of “rainy” type air more dense than what could be called a fog, since everything instantly begins to gleam when it ventures outdoors, and it doesn’t really obscure vision like a fog- it could legitimately be called a drizzle if it were moving in any way that was even a little consistent with gravity or wind. But you can still feel it, because it has individual drops, and if it’s cold enough outside the drops sting you in the face a little. I’ll call it a frizzle. This state of wetness exists for the sole purpose of mocking those who try to defy it with an umbrella and (also) those who are silly enough to purchase blow dryers.

The first time you come across this weather, you think to yourself, “Ok, I’ve got this. I am prepared. I have rain gear. I have dealt with rain before. No biggie.” You aren’t worried, because you are a silly and naïve person with no idea what you are getting yourself into or the forces you are coming up against. You will break out your rain coat, your wellingtons, your brand new umbrella, and rush to wherever you are meant to go. You avoid puddles and walk under trees-but not the edges of trees because those drip!- and do whatever possible to increase your rain avoidance. You are fully confident in your ability to avoid becoming wet. As you walk you pass a pitying glance at the people who got caught in the frizzle with no suitable rain gear. You arrive, take off your jacket, and realize that you are soaking. Your clothes are soaking through your rain coat (how is that possible?). Your hair is stuck to the side of your head. Your face is dripping with what you hope is water, although it could be snot because you have just realized that you think you are sick, and that your face is numb. Your socks are wet. Your hands are pruny. On the bright side, it’s occurring to you that you feel like you just drank the ocean and won’t need another glass of water for months.

The second time you experience it, you break out some semi water proof shoes and a water proof jacket and run from overhang to overhang. There you are, looking for the dry places. Hugging the walls of buildings. Cutting through buildings when possible. You stand in the bus stops and curse the wind when it blows, cutting into you. You arrive sopping wet. You know why? Because there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can be in the comfort of your own home in a freaking ziplock bag and get still wet when this type of rain comes. If you’re ever in Scotland taking a bath and suddenly feel cold and as if the water just got wetter, you know what the weather is outside.

The third time you experience the frizzle, you throw on a few layers for warmth, and so you have something to take off at your destination (the frizzle sees skin, in addition to clothing, gravity, wind, hair, cars, international law, hope, and buildings not so much as a barrier but as a challenge and happily goes right through your skin to cool your entire body down to the same temperature as the surrounding air in a matter of nanoseconds) and walk to your destination.

The fourth time you experience this weather, you notice that the people around are out in about the same numbers as in dry weather (I’m not exaggerating here at all), walking at the same pace, standing outside, talking to each other. You slow down. If you see someone you know you stop and have a chat. The most amazing thing is, when you arrive… you are slightly damp. Yes- your hair is absurd, but your cheeks are a lovely shade of pink and you aren’t soaked- because Scotland likes to screw with you. The only difference from dry weather is you don’t see people reading while outside, since the frizzle eats books like candy. I once took out a book in the frizzle and watched it disintegrate before my eyes as tiny shrieks came out from the wet pulp sitting in the space in my hands where a book had been just moments before. I stared at it, not comprehending how anything could change so fast, and wondering what would happen if the crazies found out about this power of Scotland and harnessed it for evil.

If books are candy, then hair is like oxygen for frizzle. People with straight hair don the “drown rat” look. People with curly hair come in with the “new escaped from the insane asylum” hair do. I once saw a bald man have a bad hair day here. Scotland’s generally wet drizzle instills life in hair. This life, however, is a wanton, naughty child which cackles and plays and takes on a personality of its own, often completely different from that of the owner. I have seen shy people who would prefer to fly under the radar of the general public walk in with hair sticking every which way in a beautiful, partly curled look which drew every eye in the room and was the envy of artsy people across the globe who spent fruitless hours at the mirror trying to achieve the same effect. I saw people who spent hours expressing themselves through their hair sigh as they caught a glimpse of themselves in a window and pull it up in a discrete pony tail. My hair prefers to fluctuate between looking wavy with soft ringlets (this generally happens on the way home when nobody will see me) and looking as if I haven’t washed it in quite some time, or my personal favorite, looking like I am in late elementary school by developing the bump on the back of my head that is typical of prepubescent girls. I don’t understand why this particular look is typical of girls age 8-10 and people with severe bedhead, but it also apparently is typical of a certain 23 year old Masters student in Scotland.

One of my classmates put the experience perfectly, “You get all done up in the morning only to arrive at class late, out of breath and looking like crap from the rain, since there isn’t anything you could have done about it and an umbrella won’t do a bit of good. Then you start looking around and realize that all of your classmates look like total crap too with their hair a mess because they walked through the rain too. Then your teacher arrives and her hair is ridiculous too and you realize that there isn’t a damn thing anyone in the world can do to stop the rain and you all look ridiculous so nobody cares and it’s great.” And it is. It’s great. Because it just really doesn’t matter at all. I don’t own a hairbrush. I am free and easy and I love it here. Originally I was going to buy one, but then I decided, why bother? And it really hasn’t made the least bit of difference. Of course if Lauren visits, I’m stealing hers and saying she forgot one, but that’s just a matter of principle.

I remember the first time I saw someone walking through the frizzle and realized that they were not happy to be walking in the rain. They weren’t unhappy to be walking in the rain. I’m not even sure they realized it was raining. I was floored when I realized that nobody seemed to mind the frizzle at all. Nobody seemed to notice. Nobody seemed particularly bothered by something so trivial as a little bit of rain that couldn’t be avoided- after all, it is Scotland. Then I started looking around and think to myself, “It’s only the tourists that are using umbrellas. We are the only ones who know that it’s raining… That or we’re the only ones who think an umbrella will do any good.” So there we are, walking with the umbrella, with all the Scots look at us thinking to themselves in their indecipherable but adorable accents, “ah yes! Isn’t that cute? They still believe an umbrella will help. They still think an umbrella will save them from the frizzle.”

The second type of rain is rain. Real rain. The kind that comes down, plop! And you can hear each one. Good, decent, respectable rain. The kind that bounces off the top of your umbrella and rolls down the sides and jumps off the edge onto the ground where they form puddles and have parties and drink tea and sing songs and jump up to see who can hang on to the back of cars bumpers the longest and obeys all laws of gravity without the little raindrop police having to come by and put them in little raindrop-sized handcuffs and cart them off to rain drop prison. This is the kind that makes the Scotts (generally) bust out their umbrellas. This usually happens at least once a day, although it can happen more on rainy days. It doesn’t last long. Additionally, even though it is decent and innocent and good plopping rain, it often canoodles with the frizzle- so that just one or two vagrant teen age raindrops will come down SPLASH! on your face when you’re walking sans umbrella, or a 3 minute shower will come when it was frizzling and you were already wet but you weren’t expecting to be so soaked and I had no idea- really I didn’t- no idea at all that rain had the capacity to cackle at you as it comes down, but I swear that’s the sound the part rain/part frizzle makes when you are hiding under [insert nearest inadequate shelter here]. It mocks me, but it also sings to me. It tells me “look and see, see how shiny I make things? See how green I make things? See how new I make old things look and how old I make new things look? Look at me! Look at me! Pay attention to me! I can come down! I can make noise!” And yet I haven't seen a proper storm. I hope they'll come eventually.
I’ve always liked wind and rain. They are so present tense.

The third type of rain is not so much rain, as the way Scotland screws with your head by being brighter when raining than during the in between rain periods. I know everywhere in the world experiences the raining while sunny phenomenon so don’t get all “Oh look, she’s making a big deal out of nothing. It rains while it’s sunny here too. ‘Ooooh look at me, I’m Kirsten and I get confused by rain and sun together. What is this black magic that it can rain while sunny?’” My point is that it frequently gets a little brighter while raining and then gets darker in between, which begins to screw with you after a while because your subconscious starts to associate it being just a little brighter with rain and maybe also with that time when you were five and would play in the sprinkler in the sun and then it makes you think that it is always rainy or always sunny or in some sort of limbo state of neither rainy nor not rainy because rainy and sunny aren’t really opposites anymore like they taught you or maybe the weather is like Schrodinger’s cat and it is both raining and not raining and Scotland is the proverbial box.

I also haven’t seen any worms on the sidewalk. I wonder if they have worms in Scotland. Or maybe the worms know how to swim so they don’t need to come out when it rains to keep from drowning. I always thought it was sad that they had to come out to save themselves and then sometimes the ground was still too wet to go back home, but the sun was too hot and they died and I felt so sorry for the worms with nowhere to go and nothing you could do to save them. In the third grade my best friend Debra and I used to try to save them by building little houses of sticks and grass on the sidewalk to shade them from the heat until they could go home and carry them into it, but other girls thought it was gross and the boys thought it was dumb. But I always hated trying to avoid stepping on them and not just because sometimes you accidentally squished that huge a worm on the sidewalk after a rain and a bit of it stuck to your shoe and got all over you when you took them off and you were sure the sharks could smell death on you-since fish eat worms and sharks are fish- and they would come eat you, but because I just felt so sorry for them. Also they smelled. Maybe, also, Scottish worms wear little sweaters because it can get very chilly sometimes and they don’t have much body fat, though probably it is not so cold underground since there isn’t the wind such, but they might still want a nice scarf or something.

The last type of rain that is of note in that it very likely to drive you completely insane until you decide it doesn’t matter at all is the spritzing. This is a small squirt of light rain that comes periodically because someone has a squirt bottle, lies in wait, and sprays you a few times as you walk past. It doesn’t last very long, but it happens nearly every time you go outside, particularly if you want to look nice. It could be the sunniest, most beautiful day out and you will walk out and feel a little spritz. Sometimes the entire sky will join in the spritzing party and spritz a little here and there, throwing it like confetti or candy at a parade for two to three minutes until it gets bored and goes off to look for some town up near Orkney or some tourists on the top level of a bus that it can rain on. When you walk out the door, you will feel a short spritz, usually in the face or on the back of the head. Don’t take offense, in reality it’s a sort of greeting, like telling you “Welcome outside! We missed you! Here, have some rain!”

If you turn around quickly enough you will see a short, happy little Scotsman from the Ministry of Rain with a squirt bottle aimed at the back of your head who thinks water is the greatest thing there is or ever was, but they are highly trained in ninja-like techniques, so it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to spot one unless he’s a rooky. They also come by about every half hour and squirt your windows when you aren’t looking so there are always some droplets on any window at any given time, no matter what; leaving the impression that it always just rained a little. Again, this is because Scotland cares/is screwing with you and never wants you to feel as if it isn’t either raining or having just rained and is about to start again after a short intermission for bathroom breaks and chips and such. The spritzing is long enough to render your hair completely ridiculous and short enough to make an umbrella completely useless since even though an umbrella could stop the spritz, it lasts for such a short period of time that by the time you have it open the little Scott with the squirt bottle has moved on, shaking their head at you and saying in his laughing Glaswegian accent “An umbrella? This is just the wee spritzing service. This isn’t hearty rain. Let’s not be selfish. This bottle has to last for more people than just you.”

I’m having some difficulty with the whole umbrella issue anyway. I have always felt that, as a moral issue, umbrellas ought to be large. I don’t do that little flimsy purse umbrella nonsense. I feel like an umbrella should be able to shield one person completely from the rain, and at least two people easily if they are willing to snuggle just a little. However, the problem with having a big umbrella is that the sidewalks in here are very small. I didn’t realize this until I was walking with my umbrella up and had to lift it up over people so that we could pass. There just isn’t room for a big umbrella on these sidewalks. I’m not entirely sure what to do about this.

I also am a huge advocate of the big umbrella because it is less likely to turn inside out on you when the wind begins to blow. One of the exceptions to this love of the big umbrella was a purse sized umbrella that I had as an undergraduate. It had Monet’s water lilies on it and was broken so that when you pushed the button to open it, if you didn’t hold the top, the whole thing would go shooting forward a few feet forward leaving you holding that little handle part at the bottom. It was fantastic. But when you put it back together it worked wonderfully and it never turned inside out and it was beautiful.

I hate when umbrellas turn inside out. Not only do I hate it because I am suddenly exposed to the elements when I was not expecting it, but I feel like it is a personal betrayal of trust. I feel like I have been cheated on. I trusted the umbrella to shelter me, to keep me safe and warm and dry and then it flips inside out and all of a sudden there I am, awkward and trying to convince it to come back to me while everybody watches “Please, baby, I know you want to run away with the wind. I know being stable is boring… but… but… I NEED you, please go back to how you were” and the worst part, the part I hate the most, is that you know, you KNOW with that sick feeling in your gut that once it happens the first time it’s going to happen over and over and over again, any time the wind blows. From then on your umbrella is totally unreliable, but you can never bring yourself to buy another one because, well, you already have an umbrella. And who buys umbrellas anyway, until you’re stuck in the rain somewhere, which explains why we always get the cheapest ones. You may have guessed this already, but my umbrella cheated on me. I can’t really blame it because the wind here, as it was on this day, can be ridiculous. The little traitor is sitting in the hallway right now thinking about what it has done. Obviously I’ll forgive it and use it again with no hard feelings, but I’m not sure if I can really learn to trust it, since its integrity was compromised so early on.



update:
tl;dr version: sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't. it's hard to tell which is which.