Headed for a Fall

Spring is supposed to be the season of renewal, and maybe it is for Planet Earth, but for Planet Joe, it’s fall.

That’s because decades after I last stepped into a classroom, internally I still function on a school calendar. Fall always offered a fresh start, no matter what complications the previous school year had brought.

New clothes, because I’d outgrown the ones I got last year. (My early sartorial models were Timmy on “Lassie” and Opie Taylor, which meant blue jeans and high-top Keds.)

New notebooks, rulers, protractors, compasses, pencils. (I was a big believer in the proper tools of the trade. Major advance: the authorization of ballpoints in the fourth grade.)

A new teacher, or set of teachers, who could help make or break a year. (Which is why fifth grade sucked.)

New subjects and challenges. (I recall wondering whether I could master cursive writing. The answer: not really.)

New textbooks, or at least unfamiliar ones, to be diligently enclosed in manila covers for protection. (Turning the covers inside-out allowed for personalized lettering and artwork.)

New classmates, to offset the ones who had moved away. (Growing up in a paper mill town, the transfer of parents helped provide both.) And reconnecting with others you hadn’t seen all summer, because they lived across town or didn’t play baseball.

A new season of high school football. (Perhaps the highest level of football that can be played with true integrity.)

Of course, none of those new starts apply directly for me now, one reason why each year tends to blur into the next with little distinction.

But I still find myself, in the August heat, straining to detect traces of the coming cooler, drier days. I try to imagine the smell of burning leaves, the feel of the approaching crisp evenings.

And I think: Fall sure comes a lot faster than it used to.