HUMOR
Ten Things to Look Forward To
(In a Globally Warm Fall in the Near Future)
(1) Pumpkin everything!
There is no fertile ground for growing actual pumpkins anymore, stripped of nutrients and a lack of water due to widespread droughts. Instead of orange-dotted acres with pony rides and hay bales, kids are sitting inside next to air purifiers. However, you can now buy a variety of pumpkin spice items, which brings everyone joy. No one really knows what an actual pumpkin smells or tastes like anymore. Everyone just takes Trader Joe at his word, uses cinnamon and allspice, and no one is the wiser.
(2) Sweater weather!
It is unseasonably warm this Autumn, but air conditioning in grocery stores can get super chilly! It’s nice to have a thick textile you can lift above your head and use as a shield to protect you from the damaging UV rays as you walk to your car, swatting at large Amazonian mosquitoes that have drifted to North America carrying the zebra variant. Honestly, sweaters are a thing of the past, like acid washed jeans or banana clips.
(3) Apple Picking!
The orchard owners are in quarantine, and now instead of actually picking apples you can bring sticks to swat at all the violent insects and count the number of blooms that froze earlier in the year, ruining the crop. Sure they aren’t actual apples, but you can certainly buy discount apple sauce packets* and whoever identifies the most bird skeletons out in the field wins a box of pumpkin-scented trash bags!
*may not be produced from actual apples and will 100% contain high fructose corn syrup and result in seasonal depression
(4) Corn Mazes!
Instead of old fashioned corn that just grew from seeds, now it is manufactured and genetically engineered to taste like cotton candy and baked squash and turkey and dressing and chewing gum. Mazes are located inside of a large greenhouse where you walk around in circles talking about the time when everyone used to wear sweaters.
(5) It’s Football Season!
But not the old fashioned game where men stood in lines and tried to pass/block an elongated ball toward a goal. What we now call football is when one partner rubs the ball of the other partner’s foot while staying home watching streaming videos of nature, which is rare to see anymore. It’s comforting.
(6) Driving the Countryside to Look at the Fall Foliage!
The leaves are not yellow and orange: that is all in your head. Those colors are from a wild fire, burning down a quaint village in Pennsylvania.
(7) Bonfires and crisp air!
We have gone over this. The air is more smoky than crisp and the houses are burning down. But fires, sure.
(8) Staying inside all day!
The sea levels are rising, the earth is eroding, and there are severe risks to our earth’s infrastructure, so naturally we need to stay inside, pretend we are fine, suck down an apple packet, and watch more episodes of “Lost, Naked, and Alone.”
(9) Trick or Treating!
Given the extreme heat, stifling humidity, and insect outbreaks, children are unable to go door to door to retrieve candy. However, parents can buy their children genetically-modified corn that tastes like twizzlers. The kids then set up an exchange with other kids by negotiating on zoom for corn that tastes like sweet tarts.
(10) Pull out the Plaid Clothing!
This is super helpful in case of a fire, flood, or other natural disaster and no one has seen you in public in a long time. Emergency personnel can spot you in bright red plaid as you are waving your arms around for help on your roof with an SOS sign made from a pizza box. And if your house burns down, which it probably will, you can rip it up and sew it together and use it to make colorful pillows in your tent that you piece together with pumpkin-scented tarps.
