As the spirit of fall grips McLean, students are pulling out their scarcely-worn flannels and resuming their long-forgotten claims that Autumn is the best season.  Pumpkin Spice Lattes are being bought at insane rates and many strange, seemingly un-fun activities are suddenly socially acceptable.

The strangest of these activities is apple picking.  When going apple picking one usually travels with a group of friends to an orchard, the closest being in Silver Spring, a short 25 mile drive away, then, upon arriving at the orchard, proceeds to literally climb trees and pick apples.  The apple picker pays money — actual real money — for this pleasure.  An outing of this sort usually takes up to four hours and the picker proudly walks home with a bushel of self-picked apples.

Another fool-proof method of enjoying time with your friends and getting apples is doing virtually anything else, such as sitting silently in somebody’s dingy basement, for three hours and 45 minutes, then taking 15 minutes to head down to the McLean Giant to buy apples.  If that is unsatisfactory, I can only assume that the McLean Safeway sells apples as well.

Presently, much of the fruit picking labor in this country consists of under payed, often illegal, foreign workers.  However now, the privileged self-proclaimed fall lover is joining their ranks.  The main difference between the two groups is that unlike the under-payed illegal worker, the privileged self-proclaimed fall lover actually pays to pick the fruit.

Imagine the apple-farmers’ delight when they realized that instead of paying for the labor and transport involved in picking and shipping apples, they could actually get payed themselves for allowing others to pick their apples and walk off with them.  The biggest winner in this situation is the farmer and if the farmer is winning, I can guarantee that the self-proclaimed fall lover, by allowing the farmer this exceedingly cheap harvest and sale of their crop, is the loser.