Wear Your Underpants; A Cheese Factory Tale

So one time, at the cheese factory, we had a guy who was fresh out of prison working as a janitor. He had a bushy mountain-man beard going on, but what he was really known for was the complaints about his refusal to wear undergarments. See, at the cheese factory everyone wore white, and if you didn't buy your own whites, you could use a jumpsuit deal provided by the factory. Those things were well-worn and therefore a bit thin.

People complained, especially the older women on the janitorial staff with him and the younger women who had no desire to see his hairy butt-crack. It was, indeed, hairy. My lovely photographic memory has the moment I realized what I was seeing as I followed him up a staircase burned into my brain. I was told that the front view was even worse, but cleverly kept my eyes up to at least mountain-beard level after that.

He was told several times by management to wear something under his jumpsuit, and didn't. So they fired him. Today's lesson: Wearing underpants to work is probably a good idea, unless you're a stripper.

Why I Don't Dance in the Rain

Life's not about waiting for the storms to pass... It's about learning to dance in the rain.

Not for me, it isn't. I will wait inside, thank you, and this is why:

One day as a young adult I decided that dancing in the rain was a very romantic notion. I had never danced in the rain, to speak of, without an umbrella and a destination. I declared that I was going to do so, just for the experience, so I went outside.

I tried dancing, but it wasn't very pleasant. "Is rain supposed to hurt?" I asked, and my family, watching from the door replied, "Get back in the house! That's hail!"

I grew up in Southern California. I wasn't really familiar with hail, so forgive me learning that lesson the hard way.

A few years later I was confident that it was not hailing, it was only raining. I had a significant other, and again romantic ideas flooded my head. We could go dance in the rain together! What fun, what a way to live a dream! My s.o. refused to dance, but we walked together, so I counted it.

All in all it was successful enough, until I arrived at my aunt's house, sopping wet. Something was wiggling in my hair. I pulled out one nasty green worm-thing and decided in retrospect that I wished I'd just brought along an umbrella. I haven't danced in the rain since.

If you're now thinking that the whole dancing in the rain thing is a metaphor and maybe I'm taking it all a bit seriously, my reply is that this post is an allegory answering the metaphor. Dancing in the rain usually ends up backfiring. I am, therefore, a cautious person, despite the fact that, at my core, I am a rebel. I am a rebel in mind, heart, and spirit, who is contained by the lesson that if I'm too happy, I'll get slammed in the face with hail or a worm or something. Metaphorically speaking.

I'm not going to tell you not to dance in the rain, though. I probably won't tell my daughter not to, either. Maybe it'll work out for you. Maybe you'll get hailed on or step in a puddle that looks an inch deep but is actually a small pond. I will be perfectly happy standing off to the side with my umbrella, chuckling.