Fall reminds me of school. We saw a school bus while driving home last night and it reminded me of the first time I rode a bus in kindergarten and how big it seemed. It was green inside. That was the Fall of 1979. That memory goes along with memories of moving to Oregon that summer. I think that's when we got those puppets, the alligator, the dog, the monkey... there was another one too. Anyway, a Fall day...
I don't know how much I really like Fall. Maybe it's because it reminds me of school. Fall mornings are exciting and a little frightening. There are things I love about school and learning, but also some things I don't like. Homework, for one thing. But I have fond memories of being at Ricks College in the Fall. The Fall of 1996. Tawnia was there too. The air on Fall mornings reminds me of substitute teaching in Long Beach. Getting up early and meeting a new classroom of students. It was a very adventurous job.
I think I idealize the Fall sometimes because it reminds me of sweater advertisments. It makes me want to wear tweed and go to Harvard and read poetry while the leaves fall outside the window. It makes me want to get an expensive haircut and contemplate profound things such as what to buy people for Christmas, and whether I should start getting in shape for football on Thanksgiving morning.
Now I live in a place where Fall is subtle. It cools down, but the Winter it leads to is very mild compared with other places I've been. It's nice though, to realize that though the nights are getting longer and colder, it's not going to freeze.
When I was in New York in October, I talked to Laurel on the phone while leaves fell outside my hotel window. The sun was setting and the falling leaves cast shadows on the curtains.
Last year I spent a Fall night in Oregon with Nathan and Amanda. We were woken up at 3 AM by a fire alarm, so Nathan and I walked around Salem in our PJ's and blankets for a few minutes. It was pretty cold out.
And that's the perfect Fall day. A combination of all that. The cool morning air, school, work, reading, talking, and being woken up by a fire alarm.
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5 comments:
Most of that sounds good to me, too, but I wouldn't count being woken up by a fire alarm as part of ANY perfect day.
That's a risk you take when you live in a college dorm. Fire alarms go off in the middle of the night multiple times in a semester.
You know, I never had a fire alarm the semester I lived in a college dorm... Of course, in the case of Willamette, it was an actual fire that was set.
Personally, I think being woken up by a fire alarm is much better than not being woken up by a fire alarm and waking up instead burned to a crisp.
I second that.
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