I May Be a Wizard.

So, I have been carrying my umbrella (not as nice as my first one but of decent quality) with me everywhere I go because the weather forecast has been calling for rain. Mostly, each day it has simply been oppressively sunny and humid without the hint of a storm. The temperatures were not terribly high, but the air felt incredibly thick and heavy. In hopes of avoiding some ridicule, I left the umbrella behind when we went to lunch. While grabbing a quick coffee afterward, the atmosphere finally let go of the vast amounts of moisture it had been unstably hoarding for over a week and a beautiful, powerful thunderstorm began raining down huge drops of water and hail. Since my guest was speaking in 20 minutes, we all had to run back to the math building. As soon as my hand touched the umbrella to walk him to the seminar room in a different part of campus, the rain stopped.

I mean, I am not saying I am Thor or anything like that, but maybe a distant, distant cousin. The other possibility is that perhaps my umbrella is magic, but in any case I think I can control the weather.

This is a much more remarkable skill in my mind than the last magical talent I acquired ... causing every stoplight in Norman to turn red as I approached. I really spent two years without a green light in that city, so eventually I found every street that only had stop signs or could optimize my route to hit the fewest stoplights over a given distance.

Stopping or preventing the rain seems much better since perhaps it will snag me an invite to a few summer picnics this year. Of course, I will be made fun of for having an umbrella on a beautiful, sunny, summer afternoon.