My favorite season is fall. In fact, I wish it could be fall all year.

Bonfires, cooler weather, the leaves changing to burgundy, rust, and gold, and -even though I could care less - college football.

Despite all the fall things that bring me great joy, there is one thing that has wormed its way the seasonal landscape that makes me cringe: pumpkin spice lattes.

And everything flavored pumpkin spice.

Normally, I like fall flavored things.

Cinnamon, cardamom, clove and nutmeg are some of my favorite flavors.

When it comes to scents, my house smells like fall year round.

But when it comes to my taste buds and particularly my coffee, I just can't do the orange colored concoction.

No, just no.

I tried one once, after one of my favorite baristas suggested it instead of my standard breve.
It was years ago but my taste buds have not yet recovered.

For me to say something is too sweet is rare - but this was too sweet.

I made the mistake of taking the lid off and seeing the orange color. The only acceptable colors for coffee are black and a cream-lightened version of that.

The atrocities of pumpkin spice have spread to other things like a flavored virus.

Candy, cereals, yogurt -everything now has a pumpkin spice spin to it.

Even ice cream.

Mama got the ice cream last year.

The thought of it made me cringe.

The texture alone coupled with the taste would make me gag.

"It's good!" Mama declared.

I told her there was absolutely no way PSL ice cream could be good.

"It's the best stuff ever," she argued.

I reminded myself her taste buds were old and she is a terrible cook so this may taste good to her.
This is also the woman who thinks bologna should be its own food group.

Months later, we went to see her. Mama was pushing her inedible fixings on us yet again.

She ran down her list: boiled eggs, some kind of half-cooked frozen chicken wings, tenders, or nuggets with various types of breading, lettuce she shredded and put in a bowl, thusly calling it a salad (nothing else with it - just lettuce), and something burnt.

She rounded out the list with, "And, I've got pumpkin spice ice cream for dessert."

"You got another thing of that?" I asked.

Mama tensed slightly. "No, it's the same one."

"The same one?"

She nodded.

"Don't you think it may be freezer burned by now?"

"Oh, good," she said. "That will hopefully kill the flavor."

"Why didn't you eat it? You loved it when I first talked to you."

Mama thought carefully. She had sung the praises of pumpkin spice far too loud and a wee bit too early it had seemed.

"Have you ever had something that at first seemed really good? Like the first time you had it, it was delicious?"

I had. But the first pumpkin spice anything was not it.

"The first bowl tasted so good. The second one, was not as good. And the third one...was gross. I think I hit the mother load of pumpkin."

I couldn't imagine how much a mother load of pumpkin would be.

"Why haven't you thrown it away if you aren't going to eat it?" I asked.

"That tub was a small fortune! I am not throwing it away!" she replied. "Are you sure you don't want to try it?"

"Well, after that appealing pitch, I can't see why I wouldn't but I am still gonna take a hard pass," I told her.

She tried to get Cole to try but his mama didn't raise no fool.

And here we are fast approaching pumpkin spice season. Not fall, not football season but pumpkin spice season.

I keep hoping there will be a pumpkin spice shortage but alas, there has not been. At least not yet. I'm sure if there was, it would be the end of civilization as we know it.

We'd have to go back to eating other seasonal things like caramel apples and S'mores like a bunch of savages.

And even so, Mama would still have that tub of ice cream.

Sudie Crouch is an award-winning humor columnist and author of the novel, "The Dahlman Files: A Tony Dahlman Paranormal Mystery."