Fall at school smells really good. The playground has dry, crunchy, swirly leaves all around the edges and wet, mushy ones are stuck to the seats of the swings. The grass on the soccer field still gets cut every week and the chilly breezes of October carry the smell of fresh cut grass up and down the hallways when a door is propped open by a custodian or an unruly kid.
We can’t decide if we need coats or not. Actually, we know we don’t need coats but our teachers aren’t sure they should let us go to recess without them. We don’t notice the slimy snotty crusty noses wiped on our long sleeves or the deep, hacky coughs that we bring back in from the chilly fall weather after lunch recess.
The hallways are lined with class projects. Mrs. Burke’s Kindergartners have decorated leaf cutouts with crayons that are lined along the hall next to their classroom. Mrs. Gredy’s 3rd graders have bug collections while the 4th graders build birdhouses and miniature log cabins that line the opposite hallway – The Big Kid Hallway.
The bus drivers give us little treat bags full of Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks tied with orange ribbons. The lunch ladies find ways to fancy up apple slices with caramel and cider. Mr. Simon teaches us Christmas songs already because we’re practicing for our big Christmas concert at the end of the semester. Sometimes on nice days, we’ll sit outside under the trees while he plays guitar and teaches us a brand new song.
Our hot, foggy breath on the bus windows is smeared with initials and hearts and tiny footprints made from the side of your curled fist pressed into them. The floor of the bus is hot and we can feel the heart burning against the backs of our feet under the seats. Everyone’s nose runs and everyone coughs in the hot, closed air of the school bus. It is not wonder we’re all catching the same colds.
We take fieldtrips to farms and pastures and historic places, tying our sweatshirts around our wastes at lunch while the hood of it drags the floor behind us. By the time we get on the bus to head back to school, we’re all wearing our sweatshirts again as the sun already begins to dip in the sky.
When we get home from school, we carve pumpkins with our parents and start asking for hot chocolate and watching “13 Nights of Halloween” on ABC Family. We go shopping for our Halloween costumes weeks in advance but forget to get Trick-r-Treat buckets until the day of. We have Fall Break Sleepovers and you can start to see smoke rising from more and more chimneys on the way to school in the mornings. We forget all about Thanksgiving between the excitement of Halloween candy and the Christmas Kleenex commercials that have been playing for weeks.
The hot blowing air of furnaces that have been still and silent all summer tells us that Winter is almost here, with its own set of treats and activities. But I really like Fall at school. It just smells really good.
