Sweetness
From a sports perspective, I was blessed growing up in Chicago during the 1980’s and 90’s. Yes, I was in the coveted Class of 2000, and I graduated from Wheaton-Warrenville North High School, which was somehow an academic juggernaut that year. Some people consider my class the first millennials graduating, because we were the first class who graduated after the turn of the century.
Yes, I used computers my entire life, and yes, we had the internet back then. I remember reading ESPN and sports forums in high school. Of course, I was still memorizing box scores, the backs of Donorus and Topp’s trading cards, and how much each and every card was worth according to Beckett. Then one day, I stopped caring and fumbled my card collection like I fumbled my autographed Walter Payton football.
Arguably the best NFL and NBA teams in their legendary histories came from Chicago within a decade of one another; meanwhile, the Blackhawks and White Sox dominated their respective leagues and conferences. I mean the Chicago White Sox were beyond favorites to win the World Series in 1994 before the strike crushed our Field of Dreams. But before Michael Jordan was crowned the greatest basketball player of all time. Walter Payton was crowned the greatest running back of all time.
Was Sweetness the greatest? Barry Sanders? Emmitt Smith? LaDainian Tomlinson? Adrian Peterson? Personally, I don’t really do favorites or greatests of all time, but Walter Payton was as huge as The Fridge. Jim McMahon imprinted me so much that my OSU game day outfit was modeled after Jim McMahon’s headband, aviators, and Eighties shorts. Mike Singletary and the Monsters of Midway were loved everywhere in Chicago, but I lived near Midway. My family was from the Southside of Chicago near Obama’s stomping grounds
Everyone loved Walter Payton in Chicago. Everyone. Why do you think they nicknamed him Sweetness? Before I moved to Mississippi, the only reason I knew where and what Jackson State University was because of Walter Payton. With all the political talk about who’s holding the football, I cannot help but think of the Christmas when my brother Johnny and I received our autographed Walter Payton footballs for Christmas. It was the last Christmas we really spent with our maternal and paternal families before all hell broke loose and we fumbled our Walter Payton footballs, while we were fumbled around Chicago from Barack Obama’s neighborhood to the Rodham’s northwest suburbia.
My book Sweetness is about my life growing up white and privilege in group homes and foster homes forbidden to see my mother or father or brothers or sister or my entire family like a concentration camp fences in a nightmare version of Field of Dreams. Sweetness is about how Chicago sports keep us blind of the Chicago industrial genocide complex like gladiators in the Roman colosseum or Roman Circus.
I just wanted to be like other kids. I just wanted a mom and dad. I just wanted a mom or dad, but I wasn’t allowed to see my father unsupervised until I wasn’t allowed to see my father at all. I don’t remember my mother whatsoever. I don’t think people realize how big of assholes they come off dismissing the Pedo Gate and Pizza Gate accusations when there are people like me who have the exact same descriptions and depictions of childhood ritualistic abuse, rape, torture, and sacrifice in their court documents and just so happened to be taken from his home for the exact same behavior found on Anthony Weiner’s Laptop and the WikiLeak emails.
I didn’t believe my childhood, because my court documents said everything found on Anthony Weiner’s Laptop and the WikiLeak emails, until Anthony Weiner’s laptop and the WikiLeak emails became public. Of course, there’s the Rumplestillskin Podesta shower tape with the girl screaming and Podesta’s Rumplestillskin voice coersing her to call him father, while he rapes her exactly like the description and depictions of childhood ritualistic abuse, rape, torture, and sacrifice just like in my count documents. There’s an easy way this can be fact-checked. Let’s go to Chicago. Let’s go to Cook Country. Let’s go to Illinois and get my court documents. Let’s fact-check Bird’s box’s of court documents.
Did I just say Chicago Illinois Like Barack Obama’s Chicago? Like $60,000 for pizza and hot dogs, Chicago? Well, I was technically born in Oaklawn at 44400 95th Street, which is straight down the street from Barack Obama’s Roseland neighborhood. Isn’t that swell? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have pool party photos from the 1980’s, Snopes and Vice News.
Yes, I was taken away from my family just like Stew Peters CPS transmissions, and take a guess where the State of Illinois moved my brother and me? PizzaGate and PedoGate are conspiracy theories, but they moved us from Barack’s neighborhood to Hillary Clinton’s neck of the woods. Don’t stop there, Van Jones. Don’t stop there. I ended up going to Les Werner’s The Ohio State University. Isn’t that something? But don’t worry PizzaGate and PedoGate are such debunked conspiracies I can take Vice News straight to the Department of Children and Family Services. Let’s fact-check me. Let’s fact-check bird box. #FactCheckBirdBox
Who’s holding the political football, now? I’m Brdman, witches. Pecaw. Pecaw.