We All Fall Together - Ten 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 twelve 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...

Copyright © 2007, Michael Ball