Mandatory Fall "Fun"

Newsletter 2021-10-22

We’re a third of the way through October. If you’re a parent, that means you should be roughly 33 percent done with your mandatory “fun” activities for fall. If you don’t complete the requisite number of apple picks, hay rides, and costume events by Thanksgiving, your parenting license will be revoked. Or it would be if any of us were actually licensed. The way things stand now, they just turn you loose from the hospital with newborns with no formal training whatsoever. You have to figure out which end of the baby the food goes in all on your own. And then you have to take that baby to a pumpkin patch for a photo-worthy family outing because that’s what’s demanded by our strongest survival instincts. And Instagram. At this point, they’re one in the same.

The problem is there are only so many hours in the day. You don’t have time to hold down a job and keep your kid alive and visit every apple orchard in a tri-state area. You have to prioritize which fall activities to take advantage of…