Introducing the Fall Crispness Index

Summer has the Humidex and winter has the wind chill, but there's no measurement system that tells you precisely how autumnal it feels out there. 

Allow me to introduce the Fall Crispness Index. Each item is worth one point on the FCI.

1. You ask yourself if you need a sweater, then decide you don't.
2. You do wear a sweater, but take it off at 10:30 am.
3. You wear a sweater, keep it on the whole day, and say "Whew, good thing I wore a sweater."
4. You utter the word "foliage".
5. You play a competitive but good-natured game of touch football with new friends in the quad. It's cheap pitcher day at the local pub, and you all go out for beers. After the third pitcher, your eyes meet with the cute girl you were playing with, and you hold each other's gaze for a beat too long. You mention how it's getting dark so early these days. She smiles.
6. Pumpkin Spice Lattes!
7. You utter the words "spectacular foliage".
8. You wear a scarf! 
9. You leave that scarf at a restaurant!
10. You skip class for the first time because you want to sleep in with her and you feel guilty but it's also thrilling. She's thrilling. You walk arm-in-arm to get breakfast, pulling each other close as the wind picks up, and you can smell that someone is burning leaves.
11. The World Series!
12. You try to identify who in your office will go totally, uncomfortably overboard for Halloween.
13. "Gobsmacking foliage".
14. The trees are almost bare now, and you know now why she was quiet at breakfast. Although if you were honest with yourself, you always knew. The boyfriend is back home, and he thought they were on a break, not broken. Now it's Thanksgiving, and although your train leaves two hours after hers, you go with her, and sit silently together in the McDonalds at the station waiting for boarding. She says she'll text when she arrives, but you know that he's picking her up in his truck, so you know she won't. A long hug, both wordlessly deciding there will be no kiss. She walks down the stairs leading to the platform and you wait for the backward glance that does not come. You pull your rolling suitcase out of the station and survey the waves of leaves on the sidewalk. They are dulled versions of their earlier selves, cracked and fraying, their reds and yellows muted now. You look at the few leaves still clutching to their branches and think they are all the more beautiful because they are fleeting. And even though it's a little out of the way, you walk to the bar where your eyes first met hers to have a beer and wait for your own train.
15. Gourds!

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