I'm A Fall Guy

Norm Dvoskin

As far as I’m concerned, autumn is the best time of the year on Long Island. Summer’s too hot and buggy, with long traffic jams headed to the beach. Heat triggers aggression. All the major riots in this country have occurred in the summer. Crime statistics show that robberies, rapes, assaults and murders increase when the weather turns hot. Winter’s too cold, dark and snowy. January is like a month of Mondays and the only good thing about February is that it only hurts for a little while. Spring is usually very disappointing. It’s often much too chilly and damp. Every year we can hardly wait for spring. We go outside and look at the sky, the trees and check the temperature. Nice spring weather, when it finally arrives, usually lasts for about a week. April showers bring may Flowers? They also bring flooded basements and kids cooped up in the house for hours. But Autumn is just right with long periods of crisp, dry weather and lots of color. I don’t know why they don’t have a Fall Olympics?

People tend to ignore autumn. It needs a publicity agent. Writers ignore it and poets don’t write poems about it. Just to show you what I mean, I went to the “Oxford Dictionary of Quotations” and summer has 85 mentions. For example, “Summer time and the livin’ is easy.” It should be, summer time and the livin’ is sweaty. Winter is there with 58 quotes..."Now is the winter of our discontent"...”If winter comes can spring be far behind?” Spring has a mind boggling 91 such as, “The flowers that bloom in it, tra la” and “a young man’s fancy turns to you know what.” And autumn has a grand total of eleven measly mentions and none of these are even worth talking about.

Another reason Autumn is so terrific is that it’s the season that leads to romance. If you took a poll you’d find that more lasting relationships start in the fall. Why? Because the chill in the air gives rise to people wearing sweaters and sweaters have that remarkable capacity to add or subtract just what is required to compensate for those tiny flaws in our bodies. Aside from looking good, sweaters give the appearance of wanting to be hugged. The next thing you know romance follows.

In winter people wear too much clothes. Unless you’re an Eskimo, how can have desire for someone who looks like Nanook of the North?

In the summer the emphasis is on skin and the question people ask is “Will she or won’t she?” “Yes or No?” This leads to summer romances which we know are usually very short.