IS IT FALL OR…

A GIANT MONDAY?

Come Labor Day and the living isn't so easy. The sounds of Summer still echo in our ears, and the briny air of the beaches still linger in out nostrils, while the last of the burgers and franks hold hostage to our taste buds. We start the process of folding away our summer gear, close our pools and take out the stiffness that is not summer-like. The casualness of Summer is called to a halt, it's business as usual.

But going to work after that summer vacation is a lot like going to work after a long weekend. You must go back to the usual routines of traffic, meetings and more formal attire. I remember when I worked how much I hated it, wearing wing-tip hoes that annoyed me for their stiffness under my ankles, and the tie that was now looped around my neck to the suffocating top button of the dress shirt and suit. Oh, that suit, it was always a sign of regimentation to me.

Autumn usually meant going to school night to meet the teachers and see the classroom while discussing our little progenies, where they sat, and wondering why the young teacher doesn't have her own parents here, after all: it is after dark. I recall arriving home from the city and we rushed to the school, and you felt like people thought you were better than they were because you had a tie and suit. Meanwhile, they looked comfortable in their open neck shirt in the leftover heat and humidity of summer.

Getting on the highway that Tuesday after Labor Day was the saddest part of your beginnings of Fall. The traffic that had dwindled down to a manageable flow of cars during the summer due to the vacationing teachers, college students and daily commuters was back, and wondered how many more new drivers were on the road?

Fall meant the holidays were calling you, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas and Chanukah all started the long list of things you needed to do to prepare for the moments of family joy and pounds you will gain, the colds you will catch and usual viruses that complicated everything.

Suddenly work was more demanding, things needed to be done before the holidays took root, meetings, usually in the morning or early afternoon were scheduled and you wondered how you would ever get anything done? In the Direct Mail business, the fall/winter planning was centered around the spring and summer, and the spring/summer it was centered around the fall and winter. Again, how could you be creative with that in front of you? Ever design a Christmas ad in 90+ heat?

Once in the office, the obligatory question was asked a bunch of times: "How was your summer?" You thought to yourself as you asked it, (Hurry up and tell me, I got things to do.)

But Autumn is here and with all the downsides, the air turns cooler and the sun shines more directly in your eyes, while it whisks away the humidity that oppressed you all summer, the trees take on a brilliance, their peepholes of sunshine blinding you and they become the harbinger of falling leaves, leave that will give way to rainfall in October and snow that will surely follow in winter.