Let's Make Up

If you're anything like me, you've never wanted to be yourself.

When I was a kid, I'd make believe I was a astronaut, or a ninja, or a game-winning QB. No kid goes outside to play the role of kid. We want to be someone else, and oppose someone else. Cowboys need Indians. Cops need Robbers. Game-winning QBs need Greg Robinson an opposing defense loaded with poor tacklers and safeties that will always bite on play-action. Or Greg Robinson.

The problem for most kids and especially only children like me was that there wasn't anyone there to oppose. I couldn't be a hero without a villain. So I made some up. Imaginary bad-asses who's sole purpose was doing some dastardly shit that I had no choice but to stop them from doing. Thus I learned the importance of completely made up things. They exist for no other reason than because we say they do, but we create them because we need them to exist even though they actually don't. There are a lot of people that don't understand that, but then again there are a lot of people that don't celebrate Sweetest Day either.

It's a great holiday. Who doesn't look forward to a chance to spend a moment, an evening or even an entire weekend showing the special somone (or someones... I see you, player!) in your life how much they mean to you? Why wouldn't you look forward to the third Saturday of October every year just like I do?

Because you're a jaded asshole, that's why. The number one reason people tell me they hate Sweetest Day is because it's a made up holiday. A Hallmark Holiday, as they like to call it. This is partially and completely false. Hallmark didn't create this Holiday at all. In fact, Sweetest Day actually originates from the modern cradle of national celebration at the time: Cleveland.

Back in 1921 a group of Candy Barrons in Cleveland needed a reason to sell more candy. They didn't have one. The Great War was still fresh in everyone's mind, banks were beginning to fail and Prohibition was in full swing, turning America's streets into the battlefields of a Not-So-Great War being fought on the doorsteps of people who had previously only seen that kind of violence in the headlines. The seeds of the Great Drepression were being sown. People were not happy. And unhappy people do not buy candy. They don't have a reason to.

So the Candy Barrons did what any enterprising American would have done: they completely made one up. Like most things that originate in Cleveland, it did not go as planned. Most cities failed to buy in to Sweetest Day, as chocolate is a poor substitute for the bootleg booze and Canadian whiskey most Americans wanted to get their hands on at the time. However through the efforts of Sanders Candy, one other city did catch Chocolate Fever: Detroit, which is where I learned how to celebrate Sweetest Day the proper way.

In my last post I talked about the growing sense of optimism here in Michigan and how in some ways that sense is directly tied to the success of the local sports teams. This week has only added to that success. The Lions, exiled for a decade for their last embarrassing perfromance on such a stage, put on a show for Monday Night Football during an electrifying win over Chicago. The Tigers, a banged up MASH unit of a team, is grinding their way through a tough series with a the defending American League Champion Texas Rangers with the sort of grit and resolve we all like to think the city embodies. The Michigan Wolverines are not only winning games, they have actually tackled people in the course of doing so.

Each of these teams have something to atone for in their own way. The Lions for being so pathetic for so long. The Tigers for having a history of not being able to finish the season as strongly as they started it. Michigan for not being The Program That Lived after the hiring of He Who Must Not Be Named. Those failures stung and left stains that we couldn't be sure would ever wash away. But the stains of those failures are being washed away, in wave after refreshing wave of progress. With every win the bitterness of the tortured fanbase here dissipates a little more, replaced by an enthusiasm tied to the realization that not only do we no longer suck, we're actually pretty good. How good? We don't know yet, but it's possible we are not only good, but the best of the best. Time will tell, but regardless of how things shake out this weekend is going to cap an epic yet exhausting 10-day run of sports the likes of which I've never seen.

This weekend also kicks off the beginning of the 60-day Occupy Detroit movement/demonstration happening downtown. I have no idea why these people feel as though Detroit needs to be occupied, but I'm all for anyone spending time in the city even if it's in tents. I hear that this whole Occupy Wherever movement is the left's answer to the Tea Party. I have no idea if this is true. I'm kinda numb to politics right now, mostly because I have a life I'd like to enjoy living until the next election in 2012. These Occu-Teas are clearly not anything like me.

If they were they'd be celebrating Sweetest Day instead of blaming one another for whatever it is they're blaming each other for, and they'd be a lot happier for it. A cursory look of Washington's approval ratings shows a lot of dissatisfaction with our leadership, and it's easy to see why. Bickering and childish antics make for wonderful ratings and terrible progress. And progress is the only way to improve what ails us as a nation. And if the Occu-Teas are both serious about what they want for our future, they're going to have to find a reason to start working together instead of against each other.

And if they can't, what better day than today to completely make one up. I think that'd be pretty sweet.