July 19, 2002 | 10:26 AM

Oh I want it to be autumn again.

I want to smell it in the air and feel the chill turn my cheeks rosy. I want to wear a wool scarf and sit on a bench in Harvard yard watching the leaves blow by.

I want to drink hot tea and make Christmas Lists.

I have decided that I officially dislike summer.

Don�t get me wrong�I would like to like summer.

If I had the kind of summers I had as a kid, or the kinds of summers happy fun times people have in romantic comedies and bad TV shows, I would be happy.

Lots of time off. Swimming in the ocean. Capture the flag. Coolers full of cheap beer and long lean tanned legs. Making love outside. Reading library books on the front porch. Air conditioned movie theaters showing Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Barbecues and pool parties and amusement parks and rose bushes bursting into bloom.

But that�s not how my summers are. Ever.

And this summer just quite frankly sucks.

Last summer sucked, too but not as much as this summer.

This summer is just sweat and oil and tears and blood and shit and defeat and waiting for it to just be over.

And I really do think that when the summer finally heaves its last sighing breath and collapses, life will probably be much much better. In a way, it will sort of be like going off to college again.

For me, summer ends on August 9th. Then as far as I am concerned, it is officially Fall.