Umbrella Repairman

I am in the habit of using an umbrella whenever I go anywhere. It helps deflect the heat of the sun and of course, protects my skin. Well, I guess my poor umbrella has been blown inside out too many times because when I tried to demonstrate “It rains in July” in 6e , I opened it to find a tangled, crumpled heap of umbrella innards covered by its colorful, Easter egg-themed shroud. Oh dear. After class in the teachers’ lounge, four teachers huddled over my mortally wounded umbrella, trying to reattach all its spindly metal ribs. Finally, the disciplinarian, who is a faithful member of my adult classes, looked at me and gravely said, “It is bro-ken.”

I stopped by Kaka’s on the way home. She immediately said, “Why aren’t you using your umbrella?! The sun is too much!” I showed her the poor, bedraggled thing and she said, “You know crazy Ousman? Take it to him. He repairs umbrellas.” I assume it’s the same crazy man who once snatched my umbrella from my hand after I refused to give it to him, since he was carrying a big black umbrella already. He got in my face, as in his sweaty forehead touching mine, and yelled at me in Arabic. I shoved him as hard as I could and hurried off. Luckily he did not follow me and my umbrella, but stood there with his own big, black umbrella, yelling at my quickly receding back. So, assuming this is the same man, I don’t think I’ll be taking my umbrella to Crazy Ousman, the umbrella repairman.

An item that will be of interest to my agriculturally minded (thought that was a loftier term than “corn fed”) family: The corn harvest has been over for a while now, but the family is still working on shelling the ears. Why? Because they’re doing it by hand. They have no machine, no device to help them, but they do sometimes hit two ears together, which pops off a few kernels at a time. Little Moussa Haroun puts a bunch of ears in a sack and beats it with a big stick to his own dancey rhythm. Everyone helps out when they have free time (yes even me and my soft little hands), but there’s still an enormous pile of unshelled ears looming in the family’s boxcar like storage container. Talk about slow going! Did we ever shell corn by hand in America? Surely at some point in our agricultural history we must have. Maybe my grandparents even did it (is that true, guys?) But it’s such a far cry from the hulking, lumbering, bright red (or forest green…) machines of American harvest, it seems inconceivable. Actually, now that I think about it, I have no idea how ears are shelled. Regardless, I’m certain they’re no longer shelled one at a time by leathery, hard-worked hands.