Because self-mythologizing is fun, I wasn’t ever born. I was found under a pile of raked leaves during the middle of a cloudy October day sometime in the Eighties. I was wearing only a placard tied with thick blood red ribbon around my tiny neck. The couple that found me expected the cream card printed on heavy stock to give some clue to my origins. Instead, sans serif, it read, “Leaves are always dying, but no one would notice if not for the Fall.” Half of them at that moment decided to cherish me forever.

My father peeled off the rough spun cotton sweater he was wearing at the time and swaddled me in it. He held me close to him, and from what I’ve been told, the love in his blue eyes burned the clouds away. He got the sun; all he left me with was an aspersion to itchy clothes, situations, and people.

Anyway, my family and I (henceforth referred to as we) commemorate this day by the giving of sweaters. I have a sweater for every year I’ve been trying to feed from the great buffet of life, which is to say I have too many fucking sweaters. Closets and drawers and armoires all teeming with sweaters, a lot of very earnest, well meaning sweaters. Having a Fall birthday ain’t all that.

This year, I told myself, would be different. I filed all the appropriate forms to get my gray October birthday (term used loosely) adjusted to a day in July when the sun would burn bright enough that nothing but shorts and well-ventilated polos would be comfortable enough for living and dancing.

So on this past Friday, with the money Mom had given me for my new fake birthday, I set out to Edinburgh, Indiana to buy some new clothes at an outlet mall. I drove my car there alone. I brought a bag of weed.

Someone had cared enough to inform everyone  and everything ahead of me that I’d be passing by soon. Driving through Hoosier National Forest, fallen trees knew something that those still rooted clearly did not. The chosen few lie prostrate at the side of the road, and let their long, dry hair wave like palm leaves in the wind of passing cars and progress. I can’t say I’ve ever met more polite, deferential trees, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the other wayfarers I let travel beside, behind, and beyond me mistook them as sad casualties of some stormy Indiana Summer storm, but I’m not the type to correct anyone.

Farther on and caught in construction traffic, I felt the orange stares of tanned men. Their barrels slowed me to a pace I wouldn’t mind while still giving them the chance to see my face well enough to wonder as I passed how brightly my eyes gleamed and which direction they pointed under my black Wayfarers. I have to think it was all intentional, planned.

Clearly, this was shaping up to be my day.

And so every time some poor, minimum wage girl brought me shorts in a different size than what I had selected to my fitting room I felt fortunate. Every time the forty percent discount was applied to an already discounted article of clothing, I felt like a son of Abraham. I’m an easy guy to please; my mood times two pairs of shorts, three shirts, and a pair of pants equaled quiet satisfaction worth sharing. I can’t say that any of those clothes really matched, but I’m happy with what I bought.

On the way home, I stopped by Bloomington to visit a head shop and buy a new spoon and some glass bead filters.

By tonight, I was trying to find some activity to pass the evening. I decided to use the money I had budgeted to replace the weed that had run out to instead buy some odds and ends. Without any cash allocated to buy anything to smoke, I felt oddly liberated. I smiling bought a new toothbrush and various hygiene products to replenish my dopp bag. I asked Carrie for the name of the vintner she liked so I could buy a bottle or two of good wine.

I finished a bottle of Argentinean Malbec and sat down to write this silly little thing. I had cicadas for a chorus and a glowing Weber grill for my star. I can’t say that any of this matched, but I’m happy with what I wrought.