Mike
Ball
Read Mike's bio and previous columns here
September 24, 2007
We All Fall Together –
10 Sure Signs That Summer Is Over
On Sunday, September 23, we experienced the magnificent Autumnal
Equinox, one of the two days out of every year when we enjoy exactly
equal amounts of day and night. It also marks the beginning of autumn,
or fall, the favorite season of football fans and leaf rake
manufacturers.
The other day of the year with exactly 12 hours of daylight is the
Vernal Equinox, which, of course, marks the beginning of Verne.
The onset of fall means different things to each of us. To parents it
means that the kids are going back to school – to learn, to grow and to
develop eventually into happy, productive, well-educated citizens of our
great land. To kids it means struggling to stay awake through social
studies, then having the big kid in your gym class administer your
bi-weekly wedgie.
On the lake it means that, over the course of the summer, the seagulls
(often affectionately referred to around here as “winged rats”) have
deposited so much crap on every horizontal surface that even they won’t
sit in it any longer.
And so, working on the Standard Columnist Assumption that none of my
readers are observant enough to have noticed the word “September” on
their calendars or remember that they recently had to buy their kid a
protractor and a new backpack, it’s time for me to bring you yet another
list:
Ten Sure Signs That
Summer Is Over.
1. The lady who walks her dog past your house every morning shows up
wearing a jacket, hat and mittens, even though the air temperature is 85
degrees and she has a plume of steam rising from her collar.
2. You just saw four yellow jacket wasps abandon a dumpster full of
caramel apple cores and carry away a Rottweiler.
3. The center aisles at your Costco store have blown right past
Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and gone straight to their gala
St. Patrick’s Day displays.
4. You’re wearing socks to work.
5. You’re wearing socks to bed.
6. You’re wearing socks.
7. You bought a brand new six-pack of sunscreen on the closeout table at
the drug store but you haven’t cracked it open, since nobody in your
hemisphere has seen the sun in weeks.
8. You decide that there’s no longer any point in properly repairing
those two broken dock sections you duct-taped together last spring,
since you’ll just be taking it all out in a few weeks anyway.
9. You decide that there’s no longer any point in putting the Christmas
decorations back in the attic, since you’ll just be putting them all up
in a few months anyway.
10. Your baseball team didn’t make the playoffs, so you’re looking for
another way to facilitate naps. Fortunately, you’ve got at least another
month of PGA golf and NASCAR – and then professional bowling kicks in .
. .
© 2007 Michael Ball.
Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be
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