Fall favorites leave season grateful, thankful

Kayla Goon ’17 isn’t your average white girl—she likes Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Venti.

Okay, so maybe she isn’t totally original compared to other teenage girls, but that doesn’t keep her from regularly updating her Tumblr with unique and stylized posts detailing all the things she loves about me, the noblest and humblest season, Fall. I also go by Autumn, but I appreciate Fall for its gender neutrality. Unlike the other seasons, I don’t confine myself to a single identification. But enough about me, Kayla is the one who’s truly important in my short 91.25-day life-cycle.

She loves me for who I am and always brings out the best in me more than others have done. She posts “jumping into crunchy piles of leaves” with an absurdly-filtered image from Instagram to show her admiration for my hair loss. She doesn’t care about the slugs, earwigs or other gross garden species she might find in the pile. She doesn’t make a status complaining about the one spot of wet leaves from last night’s rain that soaked her Uggs. Instead, she makes sure everyone sees me for my “elaborately-designed” corn mazes that have led to thousands of mowed down crops, just so teenagers can run around a farm like wild animals. She doesn’t even mention the fact that the maze is only a single line without any turns or the fact that she still manages to get lost. I’ve heard murmors among her followers, and I have come to the conclusion that she does it “for the vine.” Her optimism inspires me.

Every time I see her bun of hair ascend to the top of her head and her palm remove her iPhone as she gets ready for school, I know she is ready to embrace all the greatness I am, facing the fluctuating weather in her North Face jacket and Lululemon yoga pants with great determination.

Within minutes, her Tumblr dashboard will be updated with a new poem, and I will be the first to favorite and reblog. She supports me with internet fame, and I love her for this, that and so much more.

I love the way she pretends to like the sweater her aunt gave her last Thanksgiving, rationalizing it with “it’s comfortable” and “it’s sweater weather” when the sweater is knitted with steel wool and the temperature is still 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

I love the way she brings hot cocoa to school, under the continued delusion she has that it is getting colder outside even though we’ve been hitting record climate highs for the past 20 years.

I love the way she instinctively prowls the pumpkin savannah, searching the horizon for the perfect subject for her next instagram post. And upon discovering the weakest of the herd, pounces atop it with a piercing roar to claim it as her own, snarling at any possible competition.

Most of all, I love the way she never forgets to tag me: #fallingforfall. #ilyKayla.