Five things that will help you survive the worst Tuesday of the year
You’re probably weeping as you read this. Your coffee is most likely dangerously close to your laptop’s keyboard, and you might be considering knocking it over to buy a few hours of idleness while IT finds you a new computer. But not before you’ve spent the better part of the morning staring at Facebook photos of past summer weekends, wishing you could get sucked into your screen and back to better times. Times before the world ended. Times before the day after Labor Day.
Because today, fellow sufferers, is the worst Tuesday of the year.
Boston summers are so precious that they seem almost like an accident. In the dead of winter, when Mass. Ave. looks more like the Siberian Steppe, it’s easy to forget it ever even happened at all. How could it be that at one point, we were warm? But summer did happen, and somehow, it happens every year. The sun filters through trees and it lights up the glass buildings until close to 9 o’clock around the end of June. The humid air hangs heavy over the bricks of sunbaked brownstones in July and August. Soup is out of the question.
This is not to say that all hope is lost: Here are five wonderful aspects of fall to keep in mind as you battle your way through this horrible day.
1. New England style was made for fall.
Sundresses and seersucker just never look quite as at home on the cobblestone streets of Boston as wool and leather. That’s not shocking, given that we have three months a year to practice wearing summer clothes and nine to dress ourselves for the cold. Fall presents fantastic layering opportunities, and you can once again wear your beloved old flannel shirt and your thick canvas jacket without looking like a moron. It’s the one season you can get away with wearing tweed. Also, let’s set the record straight: Yes, you can wear white pants after Labor Day. Throw out that stodgy old rulebook. Your grandmother will get over it.
2. You can actually get things done because you’re not just staring out the window or lying down outside all the time.
Who wants to work when you could be in an inner tube in a body of water? Nobody. Like a siren’s song, one glimpse outside can lure you out of the office and send to you a patio, a park, or a beach. In the fall, those temptations lessen. If they didn’t, we’d probably all get fired or fail out of school. Fall is New England’s way of saying, “You need to get your butt in gear again. Let me help you by making it a bit darker and colder. You’re welcome.’’
3. Think of the Instagram opportunities!
If summer is queen, fall is king when it comes to social media. All you have to do is head to an apple orchard. Pro tip: Wear a nice red flannel to go full-New England. It’ll contrast with the leaves and match well with the fruit. Do you love pumpkins? So do all of your followers. Post a photo of a patch and watch the likes pour in. Have I mentioned apple cider doughnuts? Toss one of those bad boys up on your feed and you’ll get so many orange hearts you won’t know what to do with yourself. Fall foliage? You’ll break the Internet.
4. The church of the Patriots, where Brady is God, reopens its doors.
It was a rough offseason, but now that Judge Richard “Savior of New England’’ Berman’s ruling means that Brady can play in the first four games, Sundays will come alive. The Patriots games at one, four, or eight p.m. will lead to more displays of emotion from flinty New Englanders than you see at marriages or funerals. And once again, you have an excuse to melt cheese on anything.
5. There’s always going to be another summer.
None of these things stop the sting. They don’t make it any easier as you sit at school or work today, especially when the weather hasn’t taken the hint and it’s still hot and sunny out there. Perhaps the only true solace I can offer is this: After the crisp fall ends and the warm holidays are over, when winter seems like a tunnel from which we’ll never emerge, just remember that the earth has never not rotated around the sun. Summer will come again. And in a few short months, you just stocked up on a year’s worth of #tbts.
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