Even the chores Autumn presents are fresh and interesting. There are all sorts of work to be done, like exercising my golden retriever, Griffin. Autumn winds make him hyper, and if I don't run him every day, he chews up the phone cords. Fortunately, walking him is always very pleasant. I like to take him to the beach, which is beautiful come October, with frothy waves and a gray sky. Griffin's red fur sparkles against the landscape as he races along the sand. Sometimes, he stops running to sniff out interesting dead creatures, like jellyfish. One time, he found a rotted dead perch that even I could smell with my normal human nose. It was really stinky! But that didn't stop Griffin from gobbling it down in one gulp. I was so mad at that crazy dog! Later, when he threw it up on the kitchen floor, I was even madder.
Taking care of the dog gets extra difficult come Autumn. His hyperactivity makes him go to the bathroom more, which means I have to walk around with a bucket and shovel dog doo into a pail. When I was a lot younger, I would pick up the pieces with my bare hands. One day, one of the pieces broke in my hand and maggots came wriggling out. They were small and white, except for their heads, which were clear. I thought them adorable and decided to keep them as pets and raise them until they were full-grown flies. I broke more and more pieces of poo in half until I had an entire fistful of maggots. I brought them in to show my mom and she screamed. She didn't let me "scoop the poo" for a long time after that.
Another Autumn chore I do is help my dad rake the leaves. My parents have a big yard at their house, and we usually spend one whole weekend raking and bagging up all the leaves. It's hard work, but it's fun, especially when we jump in the piles afterward. It is very important to "scoop the poo" BEFORE raking the leaves and jumping in the piles. I like to dive in headfirst, and I've come up with a big mouthful of poo on more than one occasion!
After the leaves are all raked, my dad slathers them in nice fresh gasoline and lights them on fire. Usually it's creeping up on evening when he does this, so the sun is setting. My mom brings us out cocoa with marshmallows and we sit and sip, watching the fire in the twilight, the smell of burning leaves and gasoline mingling with the chocolate aroma.
Of course, once the chores are done, it's time to have fun, and there's just nothing more fun to do in Autumn than celebrate the holidays. My favorite holiday? Easy! Halloween! Or "All Hallow's Eve," as the ancient druids once called it. I love Halloween so much! I love how every year in every house across the country, families sit down together and carve faces into the sides of pumpkins. I love every step of the process: Picking out the pumpkin up at the Fred Meyer; taking it home; cutting the top off; pulling its guts out and feeling them squish around in my hands, those sweet, smooth innards running out of the cracks between my fingers and down my arm...
My Dad always buys our pumpkins as early as possible so that the jack o' lanterns have plenty of time to rot before Halloween. By the time the big night finally arrives, they are really soft and moldy. They sag to the side and their faces look sort of bluish and shriveled. It really enhances the fear factor, and it drives away trick-or-treaters, which is good because strangers make Griffin nervous, and then he chews up the phone cords.
As we all know, though, the very, very best part of Halloween is dressing up and going trick-or-treating. In 23 years of life, I haven't missed a single Halloween night of trick-or-treating. This year, I'm going trick-or-treating with my friend, Eric. He's going to go as a 40-year-old man. It's going to be a great costume because he's already 34, so he won't have to dress up much at all. He'll just draw a couple lines on his face and gray his hair a bit, and presto! Hopefully this year the people who give out the candy will be nicer than they were last year. Last year, they said things like, "They just keep getting bigger every year," and "Aren't you guys a little old?" Thankfully, Eric's really big and mean-looking, so we still got our candy, but they didn't have to make us feel bad about it.
I haven't decided yet what I'm going to be, though I'm thinking of taping purple balloons all over my body and going as a bunch of grapes. If that doesn't work, I'll be a streaker. I'll wear a trench coat and grow a moustache. Underneath the coat I'll be completely naked, and throughout the night I'll open it up and jiggle my dick and balls at people.
It's going to be such fun. Though really, what isn't fun about Autumn? It's just the most beautiful, best-smelling, best-tasting, most special time of year!
