Midwest Madness — it's a phrase we've all heard. Used to refer to everything from debilitating snowstorms to swing state election hype, and from baseball to beer festivals, it brazenly lumps together such disparate places as downtown Detroit and rural Kansas.
The House race becomes close in Missouri? Midwest Madness. "Basketbrawl" at a Pistons game? Midwest Madness. After years of being thrown into the same category as the likes of "American Top 40" host Casey Kasem, Kevin Costner in "Field of Dreams" (1989) and Garth from "Wayne's World" (1992), I've decided to own the term that so deftly generalizes 10 states containing more than 60 million people. I, unmistakably Midwestern and more than a little crazy, am taking Midwest Madness back. I am Midwest Madness.
At Tufts, there is a certain dynamic when it comes to divulging one's hometown. About half (yes, I made up that statistic) of our non-international student body is from New York City, "just outside" New York City (read: any part of New York State), Jersey, California or the all-encompassing Greater Boston Area. In general, these people state where they are from freely with no embarrassment or pretense. They grew up where they grew up, and now they are here, in scenic Medford, Mass. Simple. Not so for the other half of us American-born Jumbos.
I hail from Cleveland, Ohio. Population: 438,000. Claims to fame and infamy: LeBron James, Dennis Kucinich, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the spontaneous combustion of the Cuyahoga River and Drew Carey (who, incidentally, falls into the later two categories).
When you grew up "elsewhere," it sometimes feels like you have two choices: You can be overly, defensively, sometimes delusionally proud of where you live (Why not spend two-and-a-half weeks in Kutztown, Penn.!? It's home to the Pennsylvania Dutch Festival!), or you can debase and denigrate your beloved hometown, trashing your old stomping grounds like you did the unpopular kid that you secretly admired in the second grade.
So here I am, trying to find the perfect balance.
I'm afraid that, at the outset of my time here, I fell squarely into the first camp. Fiercely proud of the loveable industrial has-been that is Cleveland and armed with the scars inflicted by my out-of-state cousin asking me at age nine if I was Amish, I proceeded to make it clear to everyone that you don't mess with Cleveland.
Yes, I have an accent; yes, my sports teams never quite come through; and yes, if you left my driveway and drove for an hour, you would see cows but not before passing through the projects. What's it to you?
I like to think I've calmed down a little (though I still sometimes wear my "Cleveland, You've Gotta Be Tough" T-shirt), and I now think of my city as I do my family: with intense, unconditional love but also with an understanding that the rest of humanity does not necessarily, and really has little reason to, share that love. Do I want my friends to meet my family and get to know their endearing eccentricity? Of course. Do I think everyone I know should spend a week with them, getting to know every fact and facet that makes up their beings? God, no. And so it is with Cleveland.
To quote Baby from "Dirty Dancing" (1987): "But if you love me, you have to love all the things about me." So, if you love your friends, love where they're from, no matter how weird or crazy (or even wholly uninspiring) those places may be; it made them who they are. And come visit me in Cleveland. Y'all have no idea.
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Jessie Borkan is a junior majoring in clinical psychology. She can be reached at Jessie.Borkan@tufts.edu.
