Spring: awesome or annoying?

The birds are singing, the bees are buzzing, the sun is shining and flowers are blooming. I hate it all.

These characteristics are flourishing all around me as I walk around campus —and I can’t help but wish it would all go away.

Thus, as I wander in a haze of allergies and squinting from the unnaturally shining sun, an even cheerier presence asserts itself.

Sunny, an old friend from high school whom I see occasionally around campus, is gamboling in the sunshine with not a care in the world, causing me to itch with annoyance. That, or pollen allergies.

Seeing my evident discomfort that borders on annoyance, Sunny skips over and asks me what’s the matter.

I tell her in no uncertain tone that I’m thoroughly irritated by spring.

“Why?” she asks, incredulous in cuffed Capri pants and gladiator sandals.

“Spring sucks, because out of nowhere, allergies come swarming out, the sun shines in the most inopportune moments, rain pops out right after, birds never shut up, bees bother the shit out of everyone and stupid people feel the need to spend every minute outside annoying the shit out of me,” I grumpily reply.

This paragon of bright, shiny and carefree young adulthood can only stare in astonishment as I unload my venom about how much I absolutely can’t stand spring in all of its schizophrenic weather and luring of idiots out into the everyday world that they’d otherwise avoid if it were cold and dreary.

“But, it’s pretty,” is the response I get from Sunny.

The supposed beauty of spring is the only answer I get after ranting and raving about the weather changing from obnoxious sunshine and warmth to humid and seemingly incessant downpours; about pollen clogging everything everywhere, causing watery eyes and explosive sneezing; and about the lack of anything to look forward to during spring except the end of spring.

To clarify, spring weather is notoriously inclement. Not to say that sunshine or rain are bad, but to have both, also with humidity and sudden wind gusts in the space of a few hours, is annoying at best, if not downright infuriating. How does one dress for all for seasons in two hours? Answer: one doesn’t.

The supposed beauty of the flowers blooming is lost upon me when my allergies flare up and I can’t see or smell the aforementioned flowers.

Speaking of aforementioned, spring weather seems to bring out a plethora of dumb people that a combination of cold and rain contrive to keep indoors, leaving the outdoors safe for the rest of us. With the first rays of spring sunshine, they all spill out of their hidey holes: brandishing didgeridoos and reeking of a combination of patchouli and mothballs from the incredibly short shorts they’ve had in storage for the last eight months. They proceed to hop about and generally annoy me with their spritely carelessness.

Every other season has an exciting and enjoyable holiday to savor: Fall has Halloween and Thanksgiving, winter has Christmas, New Year’s, St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day and summer has the Fourth of July. Spring has Easter, Mother’s and Father’s Day, meaning you get to spend time finding rotting eggs and being nice to your parents. In addition, the breaks from school are much longer in the other seasons, with spring granting a measly week off from school.

As I go to great pains to explain this to an increasingly confused and shocked Sunny, I notice that my face is getting warm and my chest is pounding. It seems that not only do my allergies react to the sudden onslaught of spring in a negative manner, but the rest of me gets exacerbated as well.

This brings the dawning realization that, no matter what I say, Sunny is in happy-go-lucky flowers-and-sunshine-land.

To this insurmountable wall of happy, I concede that spring has gotten the better of me, as it always does. I look at Sunny twirling in the sunshine and can swear I faintly hear Louis Armstrong in the background warbling, “What a Wonderful World.”

I merely sigh and longingly count the days until summer. Exactly 78 days.