Slip N' Slide

A canopy of umbrellas shields the concrete jungle from a rainy day.  Each falling drop joins the groundwater army collectively turning the walking commute into an escape from the temple of doom.  Puddles can be an inch or a foot deep but only hindsight can make that destinction.  Tidal waves rush over curbs and into your shoes leaving you yearning for fresh socks.  You curse the wind as it furiously blows the flying water under your umbrella and straight onto your once dry pants. 

Luckily, rainy days have been around for some time so people have developed various ways to cope..  Umbrellas, rain boots, and trench coats serve to keep you at least moderately dry as you leap over puddles and dodge splashing cars with the grace of a newborn giraffe.  The real peril lies not in what you are prepared for but in the unexpected.

Construction had just completed to match the sidewalk of a building to its opulent marble archway.  Since it’s not uncommon to use marble as flooring no one gave it a second thought when they saw it replace the usual gray cement of the sidewalk.  It tends not to rain indoors.  Person after person stepped confidently onto the surprisingly slick surface and face after face dropped as they struggled to keep their balance.  It was only a matter of time before someone’s flailing arms weren’t enough to keep him upright but no one was any less surprised when it finally happened. 

A woman who had managed to wobble all the way to the middle of the marble let out a slight shriek as her left leg popped out in front of her. Miraculously she managed to recover but there was no time to celebrate because in the next step her balance betrayed her completely. 

She landed with a much louder shriek this time accompanied by a light thud.  People looked on as this woman, who was clearly composed solely of bouncy balls and whistles, attempted to regain her composure.  In the same fluid motion she had astonishingly made it about halfway back up. It wasn’t meant to be. 

Her foot slipped out from under her once again sending her to the ground.  A man who hadn’t yet stepped onto the slick marble noticed the damsel in distress and rushed to help.  The momentum he had gained before hitting the marble became an issue as he attempted a stop to rescue bouncy balls. She watched, along with the now sizeable crowd surrounding the ten-foot patch of peril, as he clumsily slid by wildly waving his umbrella.

The human hockey puck’s ordeal ended abruptly when the sidewalk turned back to cement.  Bouncy balls, however, struggled for several more seconds before finally righting herself.  With no acknowledgement that the ordeal had even taken place she turned to continue along her journey through wonderfully mind-numbing monotony that is the daily commute.