It’s Ninety Degrees Outside and I’m Already Carving Pumpkins: The End of Summer Memes Understand Me

Let me start with my people, the premature pumpkin community, because we are not well and we know it. There’s a man in a full business suit with a carved pumpkin for a head, striding around like the transition from beach bod to gourd bod is seamless, and that is me on September first at 12:01 a.m., no notes. The blurry pumpkin-headed figure rushing forward at full speed the moment the breeze drops a single degree is a self-portrait. And the confrontation meme, the woman screaming “it’s still August” at a serene pumpkin man, plays out in my group chats daily, and I want the record to show that I cannot hear her over the crunching leaves. Let people enjoy things, August. Your reign is ending.

Then there’s the reckoning section, the memes that force us to audit the summer we actually had versus the one we planned. The squirrel comparison destroyed me: the relaxed grilling cowboy squirrel we all intended to be, versus the caffeinated spreadsheet squirrel we became, and I am legally pursuing action against the month of July for false advertising. The skeleton swapping its summer bikini for autumn fur is the seasonal costume change we’re all performing, from dead inside at the pool to dead inside at the pumpkin patch, same interior, better outerwear. And the horse standing upright in a crowded public pool is the “I have completely given up” energy that closes every summer, and honestly, same. Same, horse.

But the spooky season overture might be my favorite movement in this whole symphony. The sheet ghost at the window, waiting, who has clearly been wearing the sheet since July fifth and sweating profusely inside it, any day now, buddy. Ghostface posted up in a mountain landscape, patient, refusing to appear until it drops below seventy, because even slashers have standards, and right now the only thing being slashed is the air conditioning bill. And the patron saint of it all, a man with a coffee standing outside a freshly bloomed Spirit Halloween, marking the true new year. Nature is healing. The banners are up. The abandoned retail spaces are transforming, as foretold. Satan’s air fryer is being unplugged, and we are all walking into the crisp air of our reward.

Here’s my theory on why this transition unhinges us so beautifully every year: fall is the only season we get to anticipate together, loudly, as a team sport. Nobody counts down to summer humidity. But the first cool breeze creates an instant nationwide alliance of people sniffing the air like meteorological bloodhounds, and the memes are our group chat. The anticipation is genuinely better than most holidays. It’s a holiday about a holiday. I refuse to examine this further.

And to the summer mourners clutching their last beach day, I see you, and the memes see you too, that’s why half of them include your grief right next to Michael Myers making leaf angels. Both things are true at once: summer deserved a better goodbye, and also I’ve already bought decorative gourds. The seasons don’t need us to pick cleanly. They just need us to feel everything dramatically, in public, with lattes, and on that front, I have never once failed. The sweater is ready. The sweat is temporary. The leaves are almost here.

The ghost is waiting. The banners bloomed. Crunch responsibly.