One Christmas I was at Mayfair mall, just outside of Milwaukee, WI, looking for a phone case for my mom.
I stopped at one of the mall kiosks, every inch of it filled with phone cases, all variety of model and size.
I zeroed in on the sports section, seemed like a quick win: my mom had always been an intense Packers-game-watcher growing up.
Dad said she was more into the Packers than him. On a visit home in the before times (pre-2020) she reminded us how we used to yell, “mom, go away” when she would get too negative about a turn the game had taken.
I still feel bad for that one.
Now? I’m the same as my mom, catching myself yelling louder at a drop pass than I intended, more animated than anyone in the room when certain members of the special teams unit spontaneously decide that they should be on the hands team when, as they immediately go onto prove, they should not, in fact, be on the hands team.
Jayme likes to say I call games “over” too early, which I do. Not for a lack of fanhood, but rather, to let myself down slowly, a usually futile attempt to avoid the emotional cliff toss of hope held out confronted by (season after season) disappointing defense.
My mom would regularly turn the game off when things were going wrong and didn’t appear to be turning around. I suppose my “calling it early” is my way of doing the same, albeit leaving the television on.
So this might explain why, in the middle of a mall in the middle of a holiday shopping season, I found what the phone case purveyor said next, so hilarious.
I had found a Packers case I liked, but it appeared to be for a (who knows what model but I’ll just say) Iphone 6, and I needed it for (no idea but maybe an) Iphone 7.
Kiosk Guy said something like, “ah, we don’t have that case for the 7, will this one work?” and showed me a (could’ve been any team but let’s go with) Indianapolis Colts phone case.
My reaction was visceral, and likely, physical. My brain sputtered, unable to understand or react in a polite way.
With my face pruned I probably got out a, “nah, that’s ok” before Kisk Guy stopped me, “yea” he said, “that’s not how it works”.
We shared a laugh before I walked away with nothing. I chuckled (“chuckling” is a thing all white men start doing after a certain age) every time I remembered the encounter, for the rest of the day.
That day I didn’t buy a Packers phone case for my mom, but I did come away with the Best Mall Kiosk Encounter of my life. A very, very short list, despite a very, very low bar for entry.
Ever since, whenever the story comes to mind, I have the same reaction, “that guy gets it”.
He knew, you can’t just buy a phone case for any team, and he knew, you have to deliver your phone case based humor with a dead pan bordering on British.
So…Are You Still a Packer Fan?
The Phone Case Kiosk encounter was the opposite of most encounters I’ve had on this topic of hometown fandom.
More often, the reaction to my now-living in Minnesota, was to ask me the confounding, “so… are you still a Packers fan?”.
Someone who asks you if, because you moved to a new city, you are still a fan of your hometown team has never grown up with a hometown team.
There is no choice.
Not that I would make different choices if it was an option, but who you are a fan of is not something you choose. It is a decision handed to you, like religion or what you put in your chili (small elbow macaroni noodles please).
It isn’t even entirely the parents choice to pass it down to the child: they didn’t choose to be born in Southeast Wisconsin.
I’m part of an entire generation of brain-draining Wisconsinites who are now living 28 miles into purple country, and will be raising any and all potential children as Packers Fans. We will raise them to not like their hometown team, because it’s not our hometown team.
If moving away from home was a choice, being a fan of the greatest sports franchise in history, was not.
Why?
We take it for granted, but why is the thought of staning a team other than our own so completely abhorrent to us sports fans?
For over a decade now, my friends and I have been planning weekends around getting together for Packers, we are unified in our love of our land-based uniforms and symbols.
My dedication to making Sunday a weekly day of observance to the Lambeau altar, became stronger the longer I lived outside of Wisconsin: I became more dedicated to my Packers fandom the longer I lived outside of the place where I could take for granted the idea, that at any given moment, most of the people around me were on my side, rooting for the team I was rooting for.
America doesn’t have Cathedrals of Trier, we don’t have ancient ruins. We don’t have anything that connects us to the land we live on that goes beyond our idea of ourselves as a nation. Our land tells no stories of its history because we systematically eradicated the people who had that history of the land in their stories, in their language, in their peoplehood. Though their trails turned into our streets, we gave those streets our own names.
We’ve had our Toledo wars (which we kind of turned into one of the biggest college football rivalries?) over scraps of land, and our Kansas Civil Wars, and our family feuds.
Testaments, them all, to our attachment to the land we live in, in a very White American way: no story of who came before, just a cynical interpretation of, “this land is our land”.
Instead of wars among us Whites, we do all of that through Football now.
Our stadiums are our Colisseums, and we identify with the land we are from based on the teams that populate them.
My Packers fandom is my connection to the land I was raised in, a connection more noticeable every continued year of living in enemy territory.
Italians and Milwaukeeans
I find it almost impossible to comprehend what it must be like to be Italian person living in Italy. I think about it a lot. How solid that idea of identity must be.
The language you speak is named for the land you live in.
If you live in a large city in Italy, you probably pass by buildings many centuries older than any buildings I’ve ever seen, on a daily basis. Buildings that have watched societies come and go.
Espresso, pasta, wine, gelatto. No wonder they invented the ferrari.
In Italy, your your language is your food is your country: the history of your land spans millenia. Pasta was passed onto your people (or stolen?) via the silk road from China.
And my interaction with that lineage? Putting tiny elbow macaroni in my mom’s chilli.
I grew up and lived my entire life up until 18 years of age within 2 miles of the Miller Brewing Headquarters in Milwaukee, WI. To this day my go to is Miller Lite or High Life.
In America, your team is your chili is your beer.
In America, we erased any reminder of the history of our land. We paved over roads and renamed them, burying their stories along with their people.
And so, if some type of connection with the land you’re from is the basis for how humans throughout history have thought of themselves (read: identity is your tribe and your tribe originate from a certain land), and all culture created was historically, in some way dependent on a peoples interaction with the land they’re from (the food you eat being based on the crops you can grow, the art you make defined by the materials you can gather), it’s no wonder we Americans have such a connection to one of the only things with any land-associated history in our country: sports teams. In America, our sports teams are some of our oldest institutions.
Not to say Italians aren’t crazy about their form of Football, it’s just that they have other things to point to when asked about the land their family is from. I can point to a picture of a family farm in Norway that hangs in my parents hallway, but that’s nowhere near where I was raised.
And that might explain why, that kiosk guy and I could laugh so heartily in agreement, over the idea of anyone being able to buy a phone case with the logo of a team other than their own.