Mariano was eating hail.

I was calling my dad.

We all grow up in different environments, with different moments that change our lives. We are not the same person. None of us. Except for weather. Weather is the same. Someone once told me that they love small talk conversations about the weather. My initial reaction was to hate them because to me that was like saying “I hate fun” but then they explained that they liked these convos because it was the one time that everybody involved in the conversation was dealing with the same variables in the same way and was discussing the same thing.

The inoffensive nature of conversations concerning the nature surrounding you tends to offend me, but I also like extremes and weather is easily the most inoffensive conversation you can have. You can’t have opinions about what the weather is. You can’t argue about whether or not it’s raining. We all agree on the definition of rain. You can argue about what you like about the rain, but every body respects everybody else’s opinions of weather.

I left Perch for a second to pick up a hail stone. I told my dad that they were the size of ping pong balls. They weren’t. They were the size of my thumbnail. A woman walked by and said “This is crazy right?”

“Yeah.”

“I was in my car when it started.”

I was on the phone but it didn’t matter. My dad could hear her. She could be a part of our conversation.

“It sounded like someone was pounding on the roof.”

She had interrupted me mid-sentence with a loved one and I was smiling.

“I was afraid to get out of my car. I thought it would hurt me.”

She laughed because she thought that that was funny. It wasn’t. I laughed too.

I’m not polite. Being laughed at is a privileged not a right and it needs to be worked toward.

The weather made me a person. Made me a person who fits into this society in a way I am not used to. Made me a functioning member. Because we all were on the same page – a page I typically run from, but you can’t run from hail or tornadoes or earthquakes. I’m stuck on that page so I might as well be a part of that page.

I ate a hail stone.