After the Foliage

Fall is here once again. Time for the brisk autumn air to move in and turn all the leaves a vibrant shade of orange before they fall to the ground. After which will begin yet another round of the ultimate suckers game for kids: raking leaves. Do parents even lump that chore on their kids anymore? They did in my day. But see, my parents were tricky. Actually, the adult community as a whole was pretty darn sneaky.

My dad told me that he used to love raking leaves. He and his brother would rake them into a big pile and then jump into it. Wow, that did sound like lots of fun. Jumping into a big leafy cushion and watching as the bright autumn colors poofed up around you. Just like the House of Balls at an amusement park. All over television, in commercials for banks and home insurance, heck even on Sesame Street there were similar images showcasing the joys of raking. You’d see a picture perfect back yard with a tall oak tree and a white picket fence, and two small children raking leaves into a pile. Dressed in their perfectly color-coordinated L.L. Bean jackets and scarves, they were joyously and whimsically throwing their brightly-colored leaves into the air like confetti. Innocent children, playing without a care in the world.

I bought into that big pile of crap.

Believe me, I’m all for the whole “spoonful of sugar with the medicine” thing. If you can make a chore seem like a game, fantastic. But let’s be honest here. When you’re nine years old, it takes a good five or six hours to rake a big enough pile to warrant jumping into. My sister and I spent the whole first day of our fall vacation raking a kind of big pile. It certainly seemed like it should have been bigger for as much as we were sweating in November. Exhausted, with blisters on our thumbs and cricks in our backs, we weren’t exactly in a joyous or whimsical mood. But still we drummed up the energy, got a big running start and flopped into our pile.

It was fun. For about a minute. We jumped in a few times. We even threw a couple handfuls into the air—though our dry brown leaves didn’t quite have that confetti look to them. And that’s about as much enjoyment as we were able to squeeze out of it. I mean there I was, lying in my pile-o-six-hours-of-work, already feeling the anticlimactic end to a hard day, already suspecting I’d been had. But then the insult went a step further. Ever lay in a pile of dry crumbly leaves before? Let me rephrase. Ever jumped into a pile of dry crumbly leaves so that they break into tiny pieces under your weight, then poof back into the air, getting into your eyes, nose, mouth and down the back of your shirt? Not that sneezing and itching aren’t fun and all, but you’re also sharing this particular pile with the many insects who make dry crumbly leaves their home.

The only thing you accomplish in this not-so-much-fun game is strewing your big pile of leaves all over the yard so that your parents don’t actually believe you did your chores.

Parents, your children look up to you. They trust you as only a child can. I beg you, please don’t betray that trust. Don’t tell them something that sucks is really going to be fun. Just be honest with them. Tell them it sucks, you know it sucks, but you’d rather be watching football. Let the harsh reality come from you. Don’t force them to learn it the hard way. If you want to cushion the blow or make this horrible chore seem fun, do what my parents did that following autumn: pay them two dollars an hour.