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Attack of the autumn people

3 min read

Autumn is upon us, and I’m eating vegetable soup for the fifth day in a row. The potatoes in my soup turned gray, but I’m still slurping it up.

Side note: I don’t throw food away until it goes bad. Criminally bad. Soup that kills. I will throw away lumpy milk, moldy, blue-green cheese and greasy, black bananas. Basically, I will throw away any item of food that you’d find in a song describing the Grinch. I’ll eat everything else.

But I digress, like I do. On the last day of summer, the temperature reached 80 degrees. On the first day of fall, it was a bitter 60 degrees. It’s like Mother Nature looked at the date and hit the off switch.

At midnight, just like Cinderella’s ball gown, the cocoa butter sunscreen turned into pumpkin and nutmeg hand sanitizer. I woke up and, suddenly, the country smells like a snickerdoodle.

I am not an autumn person. I can’t even wear fall colors. If I wear tan, taupe or burnt umber, I look like a North American brown bear from far away. Whenever I approach, everyone hides their picnic baskets.

I’m not ready for sweater weather. Like most guys, I can’t rock a colorful sweater without looking like Bill Cosby – and that is not a good look for a multitude of reasons.

When you’re a big guy, layers are your enemy. You will look like the Michelin Man.

To everything there is a season but let them turn on their own, please. You guys were tripping over my season to get to yours. You were hauling out the Halloween decorations at the end of July. Many of you have been craving pumpkin carving. You’ve been posting pictures of jack-o-lanterns while I was in the pool. You rushed my summer out the door. Slow your pumpkin roll.

Dear fall friends, the skiers and snowboarders are in the rearview mirror and passing in the fast lane. They’re going to rush you right out of your apple orchard, pumpkin patch or haunted maze. They will be out there lacing up their ski boots, waiting for the first snowfall.

Don’t worry. I’ll be behind them, picking out swimwear for the next summer, and planning my beach vacation.

Side note: We don’t really have spring in Southwestern Pennsylvania. There will be a day in mid-March when a dude in a muscle shirt will drive down the street in a snowplow. It will be 84 degrees, but he will be removing that last, giant mound of gritty, gray snow from the mall parking lot, the one by the high end of the alphabet, back where the new Volvos park to avoid dents and dings.

As a society, we don’t agree on anything. That’s clear on the other pages of this newspaper, but let’s stop stepping on other people’s seasons.

Now, it’s your time. You can get your pumpkin-spiced latte and call it a witches brew. I will be sitting by the fire, silently waiting for summer.

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