As of midnight tonight, summer will officially be over. Labor Day in Minnesota signals the end of the State Fair and the beginning of the new school year.
That's how we roll, all agricultural and stuff.
When I was teaching in other states, states who got their start dates all wrong, school began in August. Even after a dozen years, it always felt wholly incorrect to do this, like the school calendar had been created by a bad, bad man who deserved a stern talking to and some eggs thrown at his car.
School is supposed to start in September. It just is.
Today, children are running, pell-mell, all over this fine state, through the forests, across the lakeshores and riverbanks.
One last hurrah.
No one says pell-mell anymore.
Why is that? Let's bring it back, just you and me.
You start saying pell-mell and I will too, OK?
You know what else I like? I like the word beserkly.
As in, "The horsedogs romped beserkly through the late summer woods."
"Hurtling themselves harum-scarum into the marsh,"
"Whilst stirring up all manner of water fowl."
I will pay you $20 if you can legitimately work "whilst stirring up all manner of water fowl" into polite conversation this week.
Or one million dollars if you can say the following with a mouth full of marbles:
With blackest moss the flower-pots
Were thickly crusted, one and all
Name that movie.
The woods this time of year are full of fungi.
I stumbled across these miniscule examples whilst allowing my equine-canines to gambol helter-skelter one eventide.
That's how I roll.
Goodbye, summer.
Thank you, Minnesota, for your state laws that require school to start at the appropriate time.
When does school start where you are? The right time or the wrong time?