Don’t Harsh My Buzz!

Haters gonna hate. But I wish they wouldn’t, at least when it comes to personal preferences.

At this time of year, there is one major group of haters: those who hate pumpkin spice, who think it ought to be abolished. Who make fun of the people who enjoy a nice pumpkin spice latte.

I don’t get it. I love cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves. I’m especially fond of cinnamon and ginger. In fact, I love them so much that I believe all pumpkin pies should be made with more of the spices than are called for in the recipe so as not to be overwhelmed by the pumpkin, which is, after all, not all that flavorful.

And yet some people hate on pumpkin spice “everything.” I don’t often drink coffee and never lattes, so I don’t know exactly how a pumpkin spice latte tastes. But my bet is that it doesn’t contain any actual pumpkin flavor. It’s got to be doctored with only the spices. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Obviously, there’s a market for it, or Starbucks et al. wouldn’t be offering it. And offering it in September is totally legitimate. September is the gateway to fall.

(Except this year, of course. September is meant to herald the onset of sweater weather. This year, it’s still the month of boob sweat rash. But I digress.)

There are lots of other things made with pumpkin spice that are delightful as well. There are cakes and cookies, candy and cereal, bread and pancakes, soup and cheesecakes, muffins and doughnuts, macarons and popcorn, protein shakes and yogurt. But if you hate pumpkin pie spice, you can simply not buy them. You don’t have to declare how much you dislike them. As some of my friends say, “Don’t yuck my yum.” (We old hippies say “Don’t harsh my buzz,” hence the title of this post. Other formulations include “Don’t harsh my mellow,” and “Don’t be a buzzkill.” But I digress again.)

There are other things that people hate on. Country music. Rap music. Superhero movies. Horror movies. Romance novels. Science fiction novels. Et endless cetera.

Some of these impinge on me personally. I love country music (at least classic country and what they call Americana these days). Yet when a person says that they love country, people assume they’re an ignorant, racist redneck. I love science fiction, but I’m not a teenage, basement-dwelling geek. Those are stereotypes. Like most stereotypes, there’s a reason they exist. And also like stereotypes, they don’t apply to everyone.

Basically, I think all this hate would lessen if more people understood Sturgeon’s Law, which says, “90 percent of everything is crap.” (Sturgeon is Theodore Sturgeon, a science fiction author. One of the Big Names, at least of the old guard. But I digress some more.)

What Sturgeon meant is that 90 percent of anything you’d care to name is crap: 90 percent of country music is crap; 90 percent of rap music is crap; 90 percent of science fiction is crap; 90 percent of romance novels are crap; and so on. And 90 percent of coffee drinks are crap, I suppose.

That leaves 10 percent of everything that isn’t crap — indeed, it may be extraordinary. But the catch is that you have to wade through the 90 percent of crap to get to the 10 percent of great. And most people aren’t willing to wade through the crap to get to the non-crap. It’s much easier just to dismiss the whole 100 percent as crap.

All I’m really asking is that you leave the pumpkin spice lovers alone. Don’t yuck their yum. If you don’t like country music, you don’t have to go through the 90 percent to get to the 10 percent that I love. Don’t harsh my buzz.

Life would be a lot more pleasant if everyone would simply refrain from yucking yums and harshing buzzes.

Is that too much to ask?