Tess has a post titled Every Umbrella Is Yours. She says to ask me about the title if you're curious. People were, so I'm answering here.
The quote is not mine; it's from a book I once had called Life's Little Destruction Book. It's meant to be a play on those sappy, Jack Handy-esque "Life's Little Instruction Book" things which were going around a few years back. They were pretty silly. The destruction one was extremely funny.
I was writing to Tracy shortly after we first met, and I sent her some of those quotes along with some of my own random thoughts (I'm not sure why; I think we were talking about a fortune cookie program or something). She seemed to like the umbrella one in particular. I thought it was funny for completely different reasons than Tracy's. Growing up in AZ, I never owned an umbrella, and thought it was just something of a non-sequitur: you see an umbrella gathering dust some place, you grab it since nobody would need it. Or something.
Anyway, when I went to Oregon to see Tracy for the first time, we went to a Mexican restaurant. Right inside by the front door they had a 4x6 foot area with a bunch of wet, open umbrellas sitting there all jumbled together. Instead of benches to wait on, they had an umbrella waiting area. When I walked in and saw it I started laughing uncontrollably, remembering the email I had sent months ago. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd seen in a while. Oddly, Tracy wasn't scared off by this and married me anyway. More evidence that we'll be together forever.
Just in case people want to see the other quotes from that book (and because they are still pretty funny), I added a random destruction quote printer to the nav bar on the right side of the main page.
Actually... I never knew that was a quote from another source until just now; I thought it was a Wee original (Remember, this is before I knew about your penchant for obscure quotes... heh heh). I'd been complaining about losing yet another umbrella, and you advised me just to pick up another one the next time I saw one laying around somewhere, because...(insert quote here).
I like the quote feature on the site. I think I must have one... =)
Posted by Tess at November 12, 2002 3:22 PMI could have sworn I sent that to you in a list of other random things. Maybe I did after I said it to you. I know a list of stuff made it into an email at some point; I'm positive of it.
Ah, whatever the origin, it's still pretty darn funny (especially now that I know why it's supposed to be funny). But not original, no. There are precious few of those. I'm not that an original of a guy...
Posted by wee at November 12, 2002 3:33 PMOh, I was by NO means implying that... anyone who knows you would definitely say that your sense of humor, as well as you in general, are completely original. =) You just also have an amazing memory, and that extends to obscure funny quotes, is all.
You probably did send me a list of them at some point and I forgot; but I remembered that quote specifically because it was so appropo to my particular dilemma vis-a-vis frequent loss of brollies. heh
Posted by Tess at November 13, 2002 9:49 AM