Walkin' In the Rain

And other romantic activities you might want to avoid…

In a useless effort to walk off a miniscule percentage of whatever disastrous combination of carbohydrates, fat and alcohol I consumed the day before, I take an hour’s stroll every morning, but the other morning it looked Dorothy’s House was going to fly by, closely followed by Margaret Hamilton on a bicycle, so I checked my smartphone to see a weather forecast and my smartphone said while it looked bad outside, it wasn’t going to rain.

Turns out, my smartphone’s an idiot and I’m a bigger idiot for believing it.

Because just as I get to the turnaround point in my walk, it starts raining like God’s pissed off again except this time he’s serious and didn’t tell anyone to build an ark so I’ve got a 30-minute walk home in rain so hard the neighborhood squirrels are lining up two-by-two and putting on life vests.

My next bad decision is staying under the trees lining the streets to get at least some protection from the rain and you know that deal where if you see lightening you’re supposed to “count one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two” and that tells you how far away the lightning was?

I hear a boom so loud it would scare the crap out of Thor the Thunder God and the sky lights up at the exact same moment which means the lightning struck something in my immediate vicinity and I realize I’m wearing a pair of completely unnecessary sunglasses with metal frames on top of my soaking wet baseball cap, which is on top of my soaking wet head so I might as well be walking around with a lightning rod shoved down the front of my pants.

At the same moment I also realize those pants have a metal zipper and don’t want to become one of those hilarious stories told by ER nurses that go: “Yeah, this moron actually got hit in the dick with a bolt of lightning” so I duck into a nearby coffee shop and wait until the storm calms down to monsoon intensity.

Once that happens I still have a 20-minute walk in the driving rain and by this point I couldn’t be wetter if you shoved me in a swimming pool. Right about here it struck me that all those poets and songwriters and film makers that talk about a “romantic walk in the rain” are full of crap.

Gene Kelly was singin’ in the rain because Gene Kelly was paid to be singin’ in the rain.

Having nothing else to do for the next 20 minutes except walk, get even more soaked and think, I began thinking about all the activities that sound romantic right up until you try them.

And we’ll start with…

Making Love On The Beach

This romantic activity got good press when Burt Lancaster and Debra Kerr were overcome with passion and made love on the beach in From Here to Eternity.

But in my limited experience beaches tend to be made up of sand and as we all know sand gets everywhere so you can’t walk 10 feet on a beach while wearing a Hazmat suit without acquiring enough sand in your shoes to make a Dune sequel. When Debra Kerr’s character says “I never knew it could be like this” there’s a 75% chance she meant having sex with a pound-and-a-half of sand between her butt cheeks.

Making Love Standing Up

Unless you’re dating a Chinese acrobat (and if you are, my congratulations) awkward sexual positions aren’t nearly as arousing as Hollywood movies like to pretend and they really like showing two people who are so hot to get busy they can’t wait to find a bed and have sex standing up in an alley next to a rat-infested dumpster.

Not nearly romantic as Hollywood likes to portray and if you try it anyway your heights better be compatible because if you plan on making love standing up to the 6-foot-5-inch tall Lisa Leslie, most guys would need to bring a pogo stick.

NOTE TO READERS:

Right about here I ran out of romantic activities to make fun of so I googled “list of romantic activities” and that AI robot who never had a girlfriend and will eventually kill all of us in our sleep suggested the following…

Writing Love Letters

Love letters have a positive reputation because we only remember the good ones, but are in fact a double-edged sword because you might find out the person you intend to spend the rest of your life with doesn’t know the difference between “their” and “they’re” plus you’re (or maybe it’s “your”) putting your feelings down on paper and creating that permanent record we were all warned about, which should be avoided because feelings change and you might not want your grandchildren to go through the stuff in your attic and then ask who the hell was “My Sweet Pookie-kins” and what does it mean when you said you wanted to:

• Grope for a trout in a peculiar river

• Put the Pope in Rome

• Do the deed of darkness

• Ride a dragon upon St. George

• Make feet for children’s stockings

Or…

• Enjoy some horizontal refreshment.

All of which are actual Old English terms for intercourse, so being old and English Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are probably familiar with them and come to think of it, I might start using some of them myself because, “Would you like to partake in some horizontal refreshment?” or “Shall we put the pope in Rome?” sounds way better than, “Let’s play hide the salami.”

Dancing

This is going to sound racist only because it is, but (and I can’t emphasize this too strongly) if you’re a White Male and your name isn’t Fred Astaire or Donald O’Connor or the previously mentioned Gene Kelly you should avoid dancing at all costs because you’re going to look like a dork.

The only White Male who could dance and still look cool in recent memory was the also-previously-mentioned Mick Jagger, but that was in the late 1960s and maybe into the 1970s, but Father Time (he’s a jealous bastard) took care of that and if you want to see someone look like an idiot, just check out 80-year-old Mick doing the “Chicken Dance.”

Having a Snowball Fight

Hollywood snowball fights look like great fun with lots of laughs that end with a lingering kiss, but in every snowball fight I’ve ever been part of, someone throws a snowball too hard (usually a dude) and hits somebody else too squarely in the face (usually his girlfriend) and after that you better drop the idea of a lingering kiss until next spring, sometime in mid-April, assuming you don’t listen to that AI robot and make the following suggestion in mid-March.

A Surprise Vacation

Springing a vacation on your loved one sounds romantic, but in reality your terrific surprise only confirms what your loved one already suspected after you pelted her in the face with that Nolan Ryan snowball:

You’re an egomaniac who thinks she’ll drop everything because you made plans without consulting her which means you don’t respect her or her work and that’s the female version of looking a vacation gift horse in the mouth; the male version is realizing your beloved has no idea who you are and what you care about because she made plans to visit the wine country and stay in a quaint bed & breakfast that doesn’t have cable TV during the World Series. 

Watch a Movie Marathon

This is a disaster waiting to happen because she’s going to show up with The Notebook, Titanic and Dirty Dancing and you’re going to show up with all 10 Fast & Furious movies.

At that point you’re both going to realize the only romantic thing you have in common is five minutes of sex every other week, something you haven’t done since you hit her in the face with a snowball.

Go On a Double Date

Two things to remember about this horrifying suggestion:

1.) People are on their best behavior when they first meet and…

B.) Familiarity breeds contempt.

So do the math and if you go on an ill-advised Double Date you’re going to think you’d much rather be with the girl or guy who make up 50% of the other couple. Women will think the other guy is much more polite and considerate than the idiot she brought along with her because this new guy never hit in the face with an overly-compacted-high-velocity snowball and men will think the other guy’s date is way hotter and doesn’t whine about slow service and never suggested they go on a romantic date while Game 7 of the NBA Championship was on TV.

The perils of double dating were demonstrated in 1973 when New York Yankees pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson held press conferences to announce they traded wives and I didn’t make that up.

https://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/55522/throwback-thursday-wife-swap

Double dates are mine fields and you’re wearing clown shoes.

Today’s Lesson

So I arrive home dripping cold water like a Titanic extra that Kate Winslet refused to let on her piano and take a warm shower and put on dry clothes and by the time I do all that the sun’s come out so if I’d just waited I could have avoided all that moisture and I’m pretty sure my smartphone and that AI robot had a good laugh about it.

So to sum up:

Avoid supposedly romantic activities suggested by human-hating AI robots, don’t listen to your smartphone and when you take a walk, bring an umbrella for sure and maybe swim fins and a snorkel, because walkin’ in the rain ain’t all it’s cracked to be.