Letter From Nicole ~ Actually, This is From Crab-Daddy Chris

By Christopher Francis Quinlan I

Do you feel that? Fall is in the air. Everywhere you look, people are adorning their houses with scary Halloween and/or harvesty (a new word I just made up) looking decorations, sipping pumpkin spice lattes in designer coffee cups, and pulling out their sweaters. It is one of my favorite times of the year. I like dressing warmly in my favorite hoody and venturing out into the nippy air holding the hand of someone I love. I feel like this paragraph has really set the mood for an ideal fall atmosphere! How come I couldn’t write like this in high school or college!?

I didn’t always like the fall. When I was a kid, there would be one day each autumn when my dad, brother and I would rake all the leaves in our yard. We had a pretty sizable lot with big trees which meant a ton of leaves. My brother and I absolutely hated this day. One year, when I was an angry teenager, I put my headphones on and listened to the Blue Weezer album really loud so I wouldn’t have to talk to my dad. I didn’t think it was fair that I had to spend my Saturday doing so much work. Maybe I just dated myself by speaking about my music of choice, but just in case; I was listening on a Discman with skip protection.

Now that I’m older, I realize those days were a great time to be together with my dad and brother. He was instilling in us the importance of hard work and working together to. It really wasn’t all bad either. He told corny jokes, took us out to lunch and we usually played baseball on our cleanly raked yard after it was all done. I would love to go back and relive those days with my adult perspective.

Take time this season to work together, play together and enjoy the time you have. It’s amazing how quickly our kids grow-up. Play in a pile of leaves, carve pumpkins, drink some apple cider, go to a pumpkin patch or a corn maze, go on a walk and watch nature prepare for winter, or just sit around a fire and share stories. Build memories! The fall is a great time to warm the cockles of your heart with family, friends and loved ones.

One last factoid to leave you with for the week. I mentioned cider above. Do you know how to tell the difference between cider and apple juice? I wasn’t sure until Ned Flanders (from The Simpson’s) taught me this catchy little rhyme: “If it’s clear and yella’, you got juice there, fella’. If it’s dark and brown, you’re in cider town!”

Stay classy, folks.

-CFQ1