Josh Bowman is spending the next couple of weeks offering tips on how to do basic activities (you’re welcome). Today: using an umbrella. Ella. Ella. Eh. Eh. Eh.

1. Take it down when you are walking under long awnings or construction scaffolding.
2. Don’t whack people on the legs or shake it out inside a house, bus, or car.
3. Twirling your umbrella is a fun way to signal to the rest of the world that you enjoy musicals.
4. If you are The Penguin, you can use your umbrella any way you choose. As long as it is dastardly.
5. When walking with your special fella/lady/undefined, hold your umbrella between you two and walk arm-in-arm. It’s a romantic way to get soaked on one side.
6. Your umbrella says a lot about you. If it features a print of a Van Gogh painting, that shows you appreciate art. If it is covered in spikes and has a devil’s head on the handle, it shows that you appreciate METAL.
7. Don’t stab people. For no reason. Have a reason before you stab somebody.
8. It’s bad form to open an umbrella. Inside. A funeral home. At a funeral. For a baby.
9. Some umbrella’s have a button that shoots the umbrella out and extends the handle. Those buttons are cool. That’s all.
10. Don’t borrow a friend’s umbrella and then promptly lose it. They might have really liked that umbrella.

—Photo ewan traveler/Flickr