I remember a time many, many seasons ago when Fall was everything to me. It was finally football season, the first fire in the fireplace, sweatshirts, the smell of spiced cider, the sounds of my mother screaming, "Watch out, the cars can't stop in wet leaves".
Now in my memory, I couldn't remember any massive pile-ups due to wet leaves in rush hour or any kind of catastrophic accident where three or more cars tried to stop on a road with wet leaves landed down on the interstate skidding upside down until stopping on a kitty. My mother insisted that if I ever slipped and fell on the wet leaves, that some industrial size asphalt spreader would surely run me over creating a skid mark through eleven blocks and two zip codes. She made it sound as if the minute you got into your vehicle, it had a wet leaf sensor that would automatically disengage any braking system within the car.
Well that strategy worked for her until about my 11th birthday when a neighbor showed me how fun it was to skid through the leaves in a car. Now I come from a generation where we didn't have seatbelts unless you had a luxury car. We rode bike without helmets and did wheelies on skateboards without elbow and wrist pads. So I guess my mother was doing her part to keep her three boys from becoming bumper meat, but it helps if there is some kind of data to back up your hypothesis. I wouldn't know for many years that her theorem did have some legitimacy to it, but it's rate of occurrence was far less substantial than I had been lead to believe. Even though it was done to prevent her sons from being even more incorrigible then we already were, I still like to think of Fall as a serene time before the doors all close for the winter and our youths were filled with fun.
Now, when you've just stoked the fireplace and your sipping that sip of wine, reach over and grab:
A humorous look at our healthcare system with the twists and turns of a car spun out in the wet leaves. Be well.
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