I don't hate leaves. Who in her right mind hates leaves?
Like most people, I enjoy the different seasons and watching leaves change colors. Fall foliage is not as pretty as summer foliage, but it will do.
No, it is not that I don’t like leaves. I just don’t trust them after they fall off the tree. That’s when the trouble starts.
Call me leaf-phobic or just plain cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs if you want… I will just turn it around and call you not-leaf-phobic enough.
CREEPY
Leaves, particularly big heaps of them, are potential trouble with a capital creepy.
Who knows where they are going blow. Who knows where they have been. Who knows what they are trying to hide.
I can’t help it.
The sight of children romping in a big pile of leaves makes me nervous.
There’s probably not, but there COULD be dead squirrels under all those leaves. How do you know there’s not? The thought of potentially dead squirrels hiding in plain sight or out-of-view makes me quiver. I can’t for the life of me understand why it doesn’t concern you even a little.
Just picture it: a group of unsuspecting toddlers rough-housing in the fall leaves with a dog of some sort. Maybe a lab.
All of a sudden, there are a bunch of dead squirrels. DEAD SQUIRRELS I say. The kids are traumatized. The dog runs off with a bunch of dead squirrels in his mouth. No one can find him.
The police are called and next thing you know Nancy Grace is banging on MY door asking for an interview with ME.
“No thank you” is what I say to that sort of drama. Don’t need it. Don’t want it.
DIRTY
Friends rave about the benefits of leaves to the soil.
“Leaves help the dirt,” these friends say.
That is all good, and I would be completely down with it if leaves weren’t so dang dirty and criminal.
This brings me to the second reason leaves make me nervous: they are just going to follow you into the house and get their leafy germs all over your nice, clean floor.
You could die of a leaf-borne illness. They could eat all of your pot roast.
DANGEROUS
There is nothing as dangerous as a wet leaf.
Not a gun. Not a murderous clown. Not a murderous clown with a gun.
All wet leaves want to do is make you fall down and ruin your tights. You worked hard for the money that bought those tights.
And you shouldn’t have to go to work with mud on your face. Then you maybe could scrape your hand on the sidewalk during the fall. It isn’t right. Leaves are looking to make you look silly.
And they clog gutters.
Bottomless
Just when you think you’ve collected your last fall leaf, another shows its ugly, decaying (but not fast enough) leaf face.
They toy with you. They try to crush your dreams.
Trust and believe me, you’ll find leaves next spring from trees you don’t own and have never seen.
To leaves, life is just a cycle. They grow, fall off trees, get mulched, are bagged and then repeat. You can compost them — as I do — but there are always more.
There is a never-ending supply of leaves to mock you, make you fall, trash up your house and hide dead squirrels.
Contact this columnist at arobinson@DaytonDailyNews.com or Twitter.com/DDNSmartMouth
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