Okay, I'll just say it. I hate summer. I know- I can hear the disbelieving shrieks of schoolchildren everywhere, but it is just awful. Okay, maybe not
awful, but it's about as close as you can get to being awful without actually being awful.
My two main reasons for disliking summer are as follows:
1. It is extraordinarily hot outside
all the time. Some days I wonder why I even bothered to shower before work when I sweat two gallons walking from the parking lot to the building.
2. The primary sport of the season is baseball. I used to rag on baseball all the time for being boring. I have since retracted those comments and warmed up to it, but it's not soccer or football. Baseball is like that last resort friend you keep in the wings. Well I have nothing better to do...I guess I'll watch baseball.
Anyway, apparently this isn't the popular view because every year on Ohio University's campus around March, or whenever the temperature rises above 40 degrees, students flock to "South Beach," throwing frisbees and playing basketball in shorts and t-shirts or sunbathing in bikinis. And every year, I laugh at its ridiculousness. It is just way to cold for that stuff still. But people do it because they can't wait for it to actually be warm enough for both this behavior and apparel to be acceptable. They grab on to any little taste of summer they can get and dive in. This is how I am about fall.
As soon as it drops below 70 degrees, whether we have passed Labor Day or not, it is fall, and I am wearing jeans and a hoodie, drinking hot beverages like it is my job, and talking about football and leaves to anyone who will listen, which often means that I'm talking to myself.
Maybe it's just residual excitement from the years of my life when fall meant it was time to head back to school, start to soccer and marching band season, and wear the same hoodie every day for a week without judgment, but I just don't get this excited for any other season.
Maybe it's because fall weather is absolutely the most beautiful and comfortable weather of the year. I wish I could spend all day hanging out under a tree with a book. I can enjoy a cup of coffee without sweating at the same time. Fall even
smells good.
Maybe it's because when fall arrives, I know that Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner, and I am a total freak about the holidays. Oh, it's October? Josh Groban Holiday Pandora station, here I come. Not to mention, I have already scoped out nurseries where I can buy a
real Christmas tree (they're the only kind that count). Little known fact: Santa himself despises fake Christmas trees and skips over the houses of people that harbor them. Okay, that's not true, but this one is: the first commercially manufactured fake Christmas trees were made by a toilet brush company. Your fake Christmas tree is a giant, green toilet brush, and that is how I will forever see it.
Or maybe it's because fall is the season for me to get my hopes up every year that my beloved Cincinnati Bengals will win the Super Bowl. You're all laughing, aren't you? Yes, I am aware that the Bengals haven't won a playoff game since I was born, but hey, go big or go home. Some day it will happen, and I will be able to say I believed the whole time. Haters gonna hate.
Whatever it is, I'm happy that fall is here and ready to enjoy it.
More ink and watercolor pencils...
