• Your umbrella.
• Your backup umbrella to your real umbrella.
• Your backup umbrella to your real umbrella, a soggy newspaper, your jacket, and your hands.
• Your bumbershoot if you’re fond of facetious American slang mocking the British.
• Your parapluie if you enjoy sounding French and pretentious.
• Your tiny paper parasol that you accidentally insert in your nose while drinking your fourth pina colada.
• Your recipe substitute for a plantain or a banana.
• Your way of saying, “I meant to do that,” after tripping over an area rug.
• Your boomerang if they won’t let you carry a real boomerang onto the plane.
• Your external expression of compassion that conceals seething contempt.
• Your ongoing plasma discharge if you’ve misplaced your electric arc.
• Your invitation to fight with a chimpanzee (teeth bared).
• Your means of faking interest in your partner’s dream about how they were naked and back in high school.
• Your scimitar if you’ve been conscripted by the army of the Ottoman Empire in the Fifteenth Century.
• Your frown if you’re a hibernating fruit bat.
• Your invitation to energetic sex with your partner (teeth bared).

MARK NUTTER grew up in a motel near Joliet, Illinois, which is not as glamorous as it sounds. He’s written a short fiction collection (‘Sunset Cruise on the River Styx’), musicals (‘ReAnimator the Musical’, ‘The Bicycle Men’), television (‘SNL,’ ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’) and film (‘Almost Heroes’). www.marknutter.com. Twitter: @mknutter33