The new school year is here

Fall is right around the corner and I’m already wearing cotton scarves and getting ready to put on some boots (the fashionable kind not the snow kind). We are on the cusp of the season that makes New England what it is: crisp air, good sleeping weather, hearty produce at the farm stands, apples!  People have a bounce and a smile.  Finally, the weight of summer’s humidity (especially this summer) has dissipated, and the season of endless weekend activities is closing in on itself.  Going away for the weekend and making time for barbecues and the beach is such a chore! I am always relieved when summer arrives and all of the college students leave town – it's when I get my city back from the masses.  But the students are a big part of Cambridge and Somerville (and yes, Boston but that is so across the river), so by the time first semester rolls around, we need a good dose of a certain type of energy that only slack-jawed innocents can bring. Of course, they can annoy me like none other.  They don’t seem to know how to walk in a straight line and using the sidewalk in Harvard Square is completely beyond their abilities.  Their fashion sense is an eyesore.  And their mere presence draws out more people asking for spare change and hecklers who will throw a comment at anyone in a skirt.

Conversations amongst students are either frivolous or way too earnest, and always over the line of loud. Just sit in any bar for an hour and you will get the gist.  As the years go by, though, I get older (imagine!); and I look upon these saplings with amusement more than anything else.  We are all like this at some point in our lives.  They are the center of the universe – every book, album, and philosophical theory is right there waiting to be discovered.  Every store, park bench, and barstool is right there waiting to be occupied.  And of course!  They deserve this.  I can only imagine what I was like at that same point in my life.  I feel benevolent and forgiving towards the Boston newcomers this year.

So far, that is.  It is quite possible that the autumn air has drugged me.  Please don’t let me come down.