Monday was the first day of spring, so it seems like the perfect issue for me to go on a rant on why I actually really hate spring.
I love when people ask me what my favorite season is because obviously fall is the only correct answer.
Winter is acceptable and summer is understandable, but when people say their favorite season is spring, I clearly can’t be friends with them anymore because I don’t have the time or energy to be friends with a crazy person.
I usually get met with looks of bewilderment when I say that I prefer fall and winter over spring and summer. I don’t mind.
Spring isn’t even a real season. If you live somewhere like Erie, it can never decide if it truly wants to be spring, or if it wants to stay winter.
One day the sun will be out and be like, “Hey guys, Mr. Sun here. Let me warm you up with my happy rays of sunshine so you can frolic in the fields.”
The next day, Old Man Winter is back with a vengeance and the sun is being lazier than me, hiding behind the clouds and pretending like he doesn’t notice all the snow falling from the clouds.
Even in places where it actually gets warm in the spring, it’s warm for like a week and then it plunges directly into summer by mid- April and you feel like your face is melting off and there is no mercy and you’re definitely dying.
“But Sam, spring is so beautiful with all of the flowers and the greenery,” people argue. And, you know, I would agree if that were actually true.
At least for Erie, spring just means it’s perpetually wet outside because of the melting snow, there are piles of dirty snow still hanging out in the shadows where the sun never reaches, the grass is a lovely shade of brown and is a muddy trap of death if you try to step in it, and the sky is a nice shade of gray sadness for three months.
So basically, spring in Erie is depressing. And then in April or May we’ll get a nice week or two of decently warm and bearable weather and then it either heads straight on into humid summer disgustingness or it stays in the 60-75 range for the entire summer, which is also annoying.
That being said, I actually do enjoy having four distinct seasons. I’ve lived in places like Mississippi where it’s hot as hell forever and then slightly less hot around Christmastime and New Year’s and then just goes right back to being hot.
I’ve also lived in places like Alaska, where you literally live hours away from the Arctic Circle, so your winters average anywhere from 5-25 degrees and you’re lucky if your summer reaches 70 degrees.
So even though I complain – pretty much about anything and everything all the time – I actually prefer Erie weather. Just not spring.

SAMANTHA GRISWOLD
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