Grade Three was the most important year of your life, you just don’t know it. You learned cursive, a staple in the world of computers. You learn how to solve mathematical problems that include different colours of pants and different prices of donuts. It is also somewhere around here that Mrs. Miller asked you what your favourite season and expected you to give her a reason why. That is how Grade Three differs from Grade Two. Reason.

Every year I exclaim my love for autumn. How cold it gets and how much better the warmth feels than usual. The harvest season. The inevitability of a long and horrendous winter, which I also love. One time my friend Dave told me not to knock the weather, because without it 80% of people wouldn’t have anything to talk about. Dave is wise. Somewhere along the line people lost their Grade Three reasoning and let the weather dictate their mood. This type of person is as logical as those ‘Mood Rings’ that girls wore in Grade Three that changed colour based on the mood of the wearer, but were actually just based on the temperature. As smart as a circular piece of metal and a semi-precious gem. Maybe not as smart. Complaining about the weather is like complaining about a terminal illness, it is not going to get any better and you sound like an ass.

This is my first full Fall I’ve spent as an independent. The first year I had to bake my own pumpkin pie. So I made three. And two apple pies. This means I’ve never seen Fall in another place. How things fall, or what leaves look like after two days of laying in the gutters, how some people have never eaten pumpkin pie, or rarely celebrate Thanksgiving. Culture shock. If there was such a thing. At least there is football and the beginning of the glorious hockey season. The beginning of purpose.

I went apple picking last week. Got 20lbs of apples for $11. It was heaven, stomach ten apples full, batting rotten apples out of the air with an old branch, crushing apples barehanded, singlehanded. Since I ate my first complete apple, core and stem, one hungry day working construction in the Fall in Regina, apples have been my favourite fruit.

I don’t know how I reasoned in Grade Three, but it was likely almost as wise as my reasoning of today, except now I don’t hate weather. I appreciate the season that is nothing more than the death one season and the beginning of another. The middle man. I appreciate the reasoning of a Grade Three kid, and how it is likely more solid than that of any adult.

I’m not thankful though. Not until next week.