The McBournie Minute: Hater’s guide to fall

There’s something about the onset of fall that gets everyone all excited. It’s really the only other time people get excited about the beginning of a season other than spring. When fall arrives, people go nuts. They put on their hoodies, start picking apples and figure out what they are going to be for Halloween.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but fall sucks. Unless you live far enough south that the changing of the seasons really doesn’t mean that much to you, you should hate fall. Your romanticized visions of milder temperatures and foliage are a lie.

It’s time you hate fall, too. Here’s why.

The end of summer
Remember the days when you could go to the beach with your friends, lounge around by the pool, or do your favorite outdoor activity? Those days are over. The days are getting shorter, and turning the clocks back an hour in November only helps so much. When you get home from work, it’s just about sunset, and it’s dropped 15 degrees to boot. The best you can hope for is decent weather on the weekend.

Friggin’ weather
Speaking of weather, that sucks in the fall, too. Unlike the summer or winter, when you pretty much wear the same stuff on a daily basis, in the fall, one day it’s barely 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the next it’s 75. You can see your breath in the morning and you’re sweating in the afternoon. To make matters worse, your office building’s air can’t handle the temperature fluctuations, so one day it’s comfortable in the office because it’s cold outside, the next it feels like the Sahara because the heat is cranking even though it’s 70 outside. Same thing if you live in an apartment building and they switch off your air conditioning too early or heat too late. I don’t know if anyone else gets this, but with the temperature fluctuations, I get more nosebleeds than a cokehead. Day, night, it doesn’t matter. It just happens–and it sucks.

Foliage
As many of you know, I’m from Vermont, a state where thousands of people migrate this time of year, injecting the state economy with all kinds of cash–all to look at the trees. In Vermont, we call them “leaf peepers,” which sounds like a felony. Every fall, I could watch as the leaves of the Green Mountains exploded into bursts of yellow, orange and red. It was cool to look at–for about 30 seconds. The fact that people would actually take vacations to see this stuff is something I have never understood. You must have some trees back home, what makes the ones in Vermont so special, and how can you stare at them for hours on end? In a couple weeks, they’re just going to be a mess in your yard, or making those ugly water marks on your car after it rains.

Impending doom
I am convinced that people who like the fall are myopic. The weather is cooling off, the leaves are dying, and the weather’s steadily getting crappier. This just means that winter is around the corner. Everyone loves winter for about two weeks, then they return to their senses and realize that they’re in for a few months’ worth of dreariness and bitter wind. Fall is just winter’s harbinger.

Say it with me, now: Fall sucks.

4 thoughts on “The McBournie Minute: Hater’s guide to fall”

  1. agree to disagree here. people just like different things about seasons. for me fall is the time like you said to break out hoodies, see some good nature, look forward to the ucpcoming Halloween & Thanksgiving…the cold can at times make you feel alive, kind of like when it rains when you are in a desert or on a tropical island… both of which i know about. fall is what i miss most about VA & i think like i said, it is an acquired thing. just saying…

  2. Another problem with all the falling leaves is that what often happens is that the leaves are all over the road and then it rains, making everything very slippery. Not good! That being said, there’s a lot to like about fall weather. Even though the weather is cooler than it has been, it is not as cold as it is going to get. Because the weather is changeable there is always the hope that there might still be some warm weather. The biggest bummer is the days getting shorter. Also, not being female you don’t know about the pressure to wear fall colors like rust and mustard and lots of brown. this ends up being a part of your wardrobe that you have to have, yet you feel funny wearing it other times of the year.
    My vote- fall- some good some bad.

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