Five reasons to fall for fall

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/09/2018 (2861 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Grab a family-sized box of tissues, kids, because Uncle Doug has some extremely sad news to share with you today.

After doing some intensive research, which included looking at the calendar, I have determined there are only (gasp!) five more days of summer. Unless, of course, there are six more days of summer.

Q: Huh?

A: I think I can explain.

The arrival of fall is traditionally a confusing time. On the one hand, for professional weather prognosticators, who adhere to a strictly meteorological perspective, summer ended weeks ago when fall walked in the door on Sept. 1.

On the other hand, from an astronomical perspective, according to the website Timeanddate.com (Slogan: “If you want to have a good time, you need a good watch!”), fall arrives in Winnipeg on Saturday, Sept. 22, at precisely 8:54 p.m., when the September equinox rolls into town.

Unless, of course, you are a believer in Co-ordinated Universal Time, in which case the first day of fall in Winnipeg arrives on Sunday, Sept. 23, at 1:54 UTC.

Q: Huh? Saturday or Sunday? What does that mean?

A: It has something to do with science.

Q: That’s the best you can do?

A: Yes.

Anyway, the equinox is the moment (in this case, pick the moment you like) that the sun crosses the celestial equator — you know, the imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator — from north to south and vice versa in March.

It marks the two times each year (spring and fall) when day and night are roughly the same length because the sun shines directly on the equator. Experts warn if you are standing on the equator when the equinox arrives, you will probably be extremely hot and sweaty.

Science aside, the main thrust of my gist is that you summer-lovers only have a handful of days left in which to squeeze into your Bermuda shorts, slather yourself with sunscreen, fling Frisbees around the park and fire up your propane barbecues to transform slabs of expensive meat into hardened lumps of carbon.

The arrival of fall means we have to face a cold reality in this hemisphere: it’s time to bundle up in down-filled parkas or one of those Snuggie as-seen-on-TV blanket/robe thingies and spend the next nine months hiding in the den watching professional hockey on your big-screen TV and shrieking for your spouse to bring you grease-containing snacks.

I personally love fall because I am far more comfortable wearing a bulky wool sweater than I am cavorting in a skimpy Speedo-style bathing suit, but that’s just me.

I realize many of you get mildly depressed as the days get shorter and the nights get longer. Which is why today, in a sincere and humanitarian effort to write enough words to get another paycheque, I am going to help you transition between seasons with Doug’s Five Reasons To Love The Fall:

1) My birthday — By an amazing coincidence, my birthday happens to fall in the fall. This does not mean I expect you to send me expensive bottles of single-malt Scotch. No, it means I expect you to send me foreign sports cars.

I’m also not trying to suggest that people born in the fall are better than people born in other months, because science has already done that for me. It’s true — autumnal babies, those born between September and November, stand the best chance of living to 100 than tots born in other months.

If you are not already green with envy, consider that September babies are also less likely to grow up to be juvenile delinquents or criminals, so politics is probably out of the question. Fall babies also grow up to be better athletes than summer babies. So, like Donald Trump, fall babies are super smart, incredibly fit geniuses.

2) Sports — For couch potatoes, there is no time like the fall. This is when the professional football season AND the professional hockey season AND the professional baseball season are in full swing, which means guys of my gender will have even fewer reasons to A) leave their dens; and B) communicate their innermost feelings to family members who do not understand the importance of not reaching down into the bottom of a noisy chip bag and rooting around for crumbs during the (bad word) playoffs.

3) Crunchy, crunchy leaves — The best thing in the world is raking up a huge pile of crunchy brown leaves in your backyard and then jumping into it, hopefully not while holding a caramel apple. Then, using one of those hand-held leaf blowers, you can quietly blast the leaves in your yard into your neighbour’s yard, which is only fair because he never returned your new lawn mower. I believe this was how the Civil War got started.

Safety Tip: Before flinging yourself head-first into a pile of leaves, make sure that your wife has not piled them up on top of the large concrete garden gnome you bought at a yard sale last year, because you don’t want to have its pointy concrete hat surgically removed from your small intestine.

4) The Siberian hamster — If you want proof that fall is the sexiest time of the year, consider the Siberian hamster, whose naughty bits in the fall “swell up to 17 times their size from short days to long; the swelling allows, in part, the animals to time reproduction properly.” It also makes it harder for them to climb stairs. Science can be creepy.

5) Getting our chunk on — According to research, fall is the fattest season of the year. Seriously, ’tis the season for weight gain, in the sense we develop an overpowering taste for fattier foods in the autumn, leading to seasonal weight gain. Apparently lack of vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin) can help pack on the pounds, because a lack of this vitamin reduces fat breakdown and triggers fat storage.

So turn that frown upside down, kids, because fall is almost here. We’re not sure exactly what day it arrives, but don’t worry about it, because there will be professional sports on TV. Also, your Siberian hamster just fell down the stairs.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca