Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.

The air still has plenty of summer in it, but fall is just around the corner.

Fall is the first of our two crunchy seasons. Winter is the second.

We are having beautiful weather. I’m not sure if it’s summer weather or fall or winter or spring weather.

Fall is the time of year when we are happy that falling leaves don’t scream. If they are meant to be raked and moved, why are they called leaves?

Each year makes room in its fall lineup for autumn. It’s a screen test for winter. Daylight saving time ends in the fall. Daylight saving time is like sitting down. What you lose in the front, you gain in the back.

Fall is when the world becomes pumpkin-flavored. It can be as gold and yellow as a Van Gogh painting.

Before fall hit, I visited the clinic. No, I didn’t have a fall. I’ve been lucky on every tumble I’ve ever taken. The ground has broken my fall each time. I went there to have a physical. It was the special of the day. I was as nervous as a clam in a chowder factory.

I grew up during a time when athletic teams offered a free health plan. Any time there was an injury, we were told to walk it off. The only bone specialist I knew was named Rover.

I’ve spent months in a hospital, so I know that good health isn’t a permanent condition. I’m glad that I was a fixer-upper, but I realize that aging is incremental loss.

As I walked through the clinic, I encountered a number of friends. One shared with me the fact that he had Blue Cross, Blue Shield and pink eye. He was going through the 10 Symptoms or Fewer Lane. He’s not good at being a patient. The last time he visited the clinic, he got his first prescription. He was supposed to take one pill three times per day. He complained that the pill was gone after the first time he took it. The drug’s side effects weren’t much worse than the condition he suffered from. He knew that one little pill wasn’t going to solve all his problems. It would take at least five pills to do that.

I sat down in the waiting area, trying not to make eye contact while reading a Cat Fancy magazine from 1999. I have no issues with old magazines. Someone seated in the chair next to me, after stating that we were nearly related, gave an organ recital. His internal organs. His descriptive account of his loose stools will haunt my dreams. By the time he left, I was convinced that if he’d had good health, he’d have nothing to talk about.

His spot was taken by an old teammate who asked if I’d be interested in joining his senior softball team. I thought he was kidding. I asked him to stop pulling my leg. Those things come apart. He was serious. I declined. Who wants to hang out in an emergency room after a softball game? He asked a second time, causing me to pull a hamstring.

He was there because of back issues. He hadn’t thrown his back out. He’d recycled it. He’d hurt his back while putting the recycling into a big bin. He didn’t mind getting X-rays as long as he didn’t have to smile. He said the clinic could run the X-rays through Photoshop and add a smile.

The physical went pretty well despite the fact that I hadn’t studied and none of the tests were multiple guess. The MRI showed that I had my underwear on inside out. The electrocardiogram was a ticker tape without the parade. I asked if they could make a backup copy of my brain. One of the medical professionals examining me, assured me that if he saw something he’d never seen before, he’d hit it with a stick. I was told that I should lose a few pounds. When a tree decides to shed some weight in the fall, it drops its leaves. Trees are smart. They are regular Socratrees.

The doctor summed up my visit this way, “Well, we can rule out normalcy.”

I tried to test positive for being positive. I hoped that I hadn’t caused too many of the good folks who had to deal with me to regret their career choices.

As I am each fall and in every other season, I’m happy to still be able to fog a mirror.