Story 534: Easter Washout

            Friend 1: (Answers phone) Hi, what’s up?

Friend 2: (On phone) Not much – just wanted to wish you and your family a Happy Easter!

Friend 1: Aw, thanks!  Normally I’d wish you and your family a Happy Passover at the same time, but apparently the lunar cycles went rogue and we’re not holiday buddies this year.

Friend 2: Oh well, it happens.  So, you still heading out to your cousins’ house for dinner today?

Friend 1: But of course: as long as I never have to host any of these things, I’m happy.

Friend 2: It’s just that all the rain we’ve had this week’s overflowed the creeks and rivers and swamps and there’s flooding everywhere.

Friend 1: Oh.  Right.  The rain.  How I loathe it.

Friend 2: Yeah, it’s been a bit of a drag lately – I know we’re coming up on “April showers bring May flowers,” but this is ridiculous.

Friend1: What May flowers?!  It’s been raining nonstop since September so all the flowers who eventually appear will drown!

Friend 2: It hasn’t been that bad –

Friend 1: It has too been that bad!  I didn’t realize this part of the country had transformed into Seattle sometime in the last 10 years, yet here we are!  I was shocked that one day in February we actually had snow when it was zip in that department for a straight 23 months!

Friend 2: Great, no frost; the flowers should be fine, then.

Friend 1: No, no!  This half of the Earth didn’t properly hibernate and reset, so when it’s time for flowers to bloom there’ll be bupkis instead!  The constant deluge will wash all the seeds away, and whatever managed to hang on will wait until July when it’s finally dry enough to emerge, then poke their heads out of the ground for two seconds just in time to shrivel up and die because it now over 100°F in the shade!

Friend 2: It’s not that terrible – I still see plenty of flowers out in the spring.

Friend 1: What spring?!  We get cold rain and warm rain, and that’s it!  And today’s Easter, the holiday of renewal and rebirth, and all I see are no flowers, and sheets and sheets of polluted water!

Friend 2: Well, maybe next week’ll be better since it’ll be the start of April.

Friend 1: The Earth doesn’t know that it’s April next week!  All it knows is it’s got a fever that it’s trying and failing to sweat out!

Friend 2: OK, anyway, you have a Happy Easter regardless of having to row to your family dinner – I’m hanging up now.

Friend 1: Thanks.  If my cousins’ house is now surrounded by a moat though, I am turning around and rowing back home, I don’t care how much chocolate the Easter Bunny has waiting for me.

Friend 2: Wow.  Situation must be worse than I thought.

Friend 1: You have no idea.