Shouldbefall

I’ll be remembered by history for many reasons.

One was my creation of the fifth season: Slush. Anyone in a Northern climate will tell you it’s a special sort of hell on sunny frigid days when you plummet mid-calf into a puddle of grey, icy water that should by all laws of physics still be frozen. Everything around you is dead and muddy. It ruins Christmas knowing this is around the corner.

Like those wacky Caesars (Julius and Augustus) before me who named July and August after themselves (only to screw up the whole rest of the calendar, since ancient timey people apparently ran out of steam with giving actual names for the months and just started calling them "seventh month" etc. But now September is the ninth month! Confusing? Yes, we also would have accepted boring.)

I'll win you back with my next idea. I'd like to create a sixth season: Shouldbefall.

It’s October! Why am I all pit-stainy still? Is it because I’m refusing to wear short sleeves? Probably. Is that because not ready to accept that it’s 80 degrees and I can’t will it to be cooler with my super powerful mind? That could also be the case.

Each and every day, I leave my house bundled up, convinced that today will be the day I’m glad I put on a sweater and have a scarf. It should be sweater weather (swether?) and sooner or later – with the power of my super mind – it will be. But the past few weeks it’s not been. Each and every day I crawl back home on the verge of heatstroke, encased in a patina of sweat like I’ve been oiled up for the Miss Hawaiian Tropics pageant.

Thanks to global warming, trick-or-treaters this year probably won’t even have to obscure their Halloween costumes under parkas, like we always had to. Every year I was a clown, bobby soxer or geisha from the waist down, but pure Eskimo from the waist up. It’s hard to demand candy from strangers, then eat said candy in said stranger’s driveway with the double obstacles of gloves and your stupid hood stings pulled so tight it blocks everything but your nose.

You kids today with your melty glaciers and text messaging. The only thing I can console myself with is that every kid ever now is allergic to peanuts, so people probably don’t pass out Snickers – the holy grail of tick or treat loot – all willy nilly the way they used to in the good old days (by which I obviously mean the late 80s/early 90s.)