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Grab your plaid flannel shacket. Grab your wide-brimmed fedora. Grab your bottle of antihistamine. It’s pumpkin patch season!

C’mon honey, let get the kids! There are only ten days remaining for us to indulge in America’s favorite autumnal tradition: traipsing about an actual farm to snap selfies with smelly livestock, get desperately lost in a cornfield, and fork over top dollar for a decorative gourd or three.

Aha! A parking space, right next to an antique John Deere tractor. Everybody, listen up. A century ago, this hunk of iron was responsible for producing 85 percent of the American calorie intake, and hey, get back here! Don’t you want to hear the rest of my dad history lesson?

Fine, let’s go inside. Do you have the hand sanitizer? What about the Bactine? Great!

Hooboy, look at this place: its as if a museum of American agribusiness and a McDonald’s Playplace were sucked up by a tornado and then dropped into the suburbs. There are real goats and horses here, as well as a snack bar serving funnel cakes, plus hay bales stacked dangerously high, and all manners of rusty farming equipment painted to resemble barnyard animals. Where should we start?

Oh cool, a livestock feeding tank filled to the brim with corn kernels. Dive in everyone—what could go wrong? Oh god, it’s so deep! I’m sinking! Where did my daughter go? There you are—wait, you’re not my child. Aha! Nope, that’s someone’s shoe. Who’s crying? Are you my kid? You are! Fabulous. Let’s never go in there again.

Look, the farmer has erected a wild west boomtown out of plywood. Look kids, there are all sorts of storefronts from a bygone era of American capitalism: a saloon, a dry goods store, and even a Blockbuster Video. How quaint.

Who wants to do a potato sack race? Kids, back when I was your age, I was the LeBron James of this event in Field Day. Let me show you how it’s done. On your mark, get set. Go! I’m winning! I’m winning. I’m—oh my god, my lower back! Honey, get the Tylenol. 

OK, enough of that. Should we check out the corn maze? The advertisement on Instagram said it spans two zip codes! You lead the way, kids, let’s see if all that time playing Fortnite can help us navigate a labyrinth.

Wow, another wrong turn. And another one. Kids, where are you taking us? How long have we been in here, anyway? I could sure go for a funnel cake. We haven’t seen any other people for a while now. Are you sure we’re still in the same county?

Oh look, the farmer has placed a few plastic Home Depot skeletons in this corner of the maze as Halloween decorations. What, honey? Those aren’t fake? Where the hell are we!

OK, thank god, you found the exit, and not a moment too soon. Kids, go up to those plywood face cutouts and let me get your photo. This one is of a dog and cat. This one is a farmer and a cow. Ooh, this one is of a homicidal purple alien chainsawing my child’s head off. I think we found our 2025 Christmas Card.

Great, let’s wait in line for the hayride. Here comes the tractor pulling the hay cart. Climb aboard! Finally, this is relaxing and not stressful, and I can see the entire farm from up here. It looks like the farmer is driving us over to the pig pen. Ah, we get out here? Oh, the farmer is handing us pitchforks and shovels. Oh, you want us to scoop up the pig manure and move it to the other side of the pen? Why are you handing me this 1099 IRS form? Kids, don’t fill that out!

OK, I’ve kind of had it with the pumpkin patch. This is awful. Let’s get the heck out of here.

Alright, arlight, I’ll calm down. You’re right, we haven’t picked out our pumpkins yet. There they are, all arranged nicely in a field. No, I don’t see any pumpkin vines anywhere. My guess is they just trucked these pumpkins out here and now we’re supposed to pick them up and carry them back. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense, but oh well. Nothing about this place does, right?

Hey, that’s a great pumpkin you’ve chosen, it will carve up perfectly. Yours is fabulous too, honey. Oh, you want me to carry it. OK, sure. And this one, too. Oh, that’s a big one. And that one, and this one? Oof, my back hurts even more. I wonder if there’s a chiropractor’s office back at the plywood boomtown. Guys, wait up for me!

OK, let’s settle up with the cashier. We have four pumpkins, six mini pumpkins, and three winged gourds. And four cups of cider. Wait, how much? Can I pay in installments?

Well, I’m pooped. And dirty. Did you guys have fun? Great!

Yeah—I can’t wait for next year’s pumpkin patch season, too.