Opinion: I Miss the Drought

by Chris Cheshire

I didn’t sign up for this. I live in Los Angeles for a reason. We have an exorbitantly expensive water transport system built to support an unsustainable population in an uninhabitable speck of god-forsaken desert on the California coast for a reason. This kind of bullshit is not supposed to happen.

Just imagine, you wake up in the morning with a routine. You know consistency, one of the few luxuries of life. Maybe you stray from the path every once in a while, eat at that Chinese place you’re sure used to have a dog, but you can always return to certainty.

Then, one day, you hear it. You hadn’t believed it would come (What even is radar? There’s no way anyone on TV could know). The pitter patter of drops throwing themselves with an unquenchable rage against the roof above your head. You paid a guy to fix that roof last week. The tar isn’t even dry yet. Guess what? Now it never will be.

Then, you get out of bed. Your routine has already been disturbed– you spent an extra two minutes listening to the cursed rain spill itself over your home while sitting in bed. You get out of bed and stumble into the shower. You turn it on and BOOM, you flinch. You have post traumatic stress disorder from the rain you heard earlier. You decide that today isn’t the best to day to take a shower and you stumble back into your bed.

By the time you walk up to the front door, you realize you’ve been so distracted by the constant pounding in your ears that you forgot to make breakfast. You’re already five minutes late, you can’t turn around now. You open the door to hellscape.

Everywhere you look, water, droplets, streams, rivulets. Oil swirling above a drain. Your car is across the driveway– thank god, you parked under a tree last night. You gather yourself, take a deep breath, and launch yourself across the puddle on your front doorstep.

You miss. You trip, and fall even deeper into the puddle, then sit there.

By the time you get yourself up and make it to your car, you remember– it’s winter. The tree doesn’t have leaves. You duck into your car, then remember again– you have cloth seats. That stain is not going to come out.

When you get to work, you’re greeted by a locked door. The storeroom flooded. Your shift is cancelled.

It wasn’t always like this, you know. We used to have sun, it used to be dry. I miss the drought.