It’s the last moment before the Fall, you see.
I dunno, I’ve never been able to work up much of an appreciation for Autumn. I love watching Sooner football as much as the next guy who won’t permit himself to attend any games (more on that later), and while I tend to enjoy the great outdoors only insofar as they’re visible from I-35 between home and the office, I’ll readily admit that Nature can do some good work with arboreal shading when it feels like doing so. My main problem is what everyone else seems to consider the biggest draw: the change in the weather. I can understand the desire to avoid the 110-degree flesh-melter days, but the reasonable solution seems to me to be cranking nature down to about 80, not overcompensating by dropping it to 50. Or 30.
Still, there’s nothing to be gained by dreading the prospect of eventual cloudy, dreary days, especially at the expense of enjoying the still-delightfully-balmy ones we’re currently having. I’ll just have to try to concentrate more on the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” part rather than the “harbinger of flu season” aspect and relish the sunshine while we have it.
Just remember the traditional Irish toast:
May the road rise to meet you,
And the sun be ever off your starboard bow,
So it’s no directly in your eyes but you can still feel it on your face,
It means ahead of you and to your right, like about 2 o’clock,
No, I’ve never “served in the Irish Navy,” Mr. Smarts,
I just watched a bunch of Battlestar,
You know what, never mind,
Just “may yer path be sunny,” how’s that?
Yes, even at night,
It’s a metaphor,
Well, yer an idjit,
I can’t be– where the devil are me keys?
STEVE GILL is unusually tall, has a B.A. in Letters and a minor in Classics from OU, drinks a great deal of coffee and openly delights in writing, editing and catching the occasional typo for Slice – especially since his dream career (millionaire layabout in a P.G. Wodehouse novel) is notoriously difficult to break into. He's probably trying to think of a joke about pirates right now.
