Dear Kid,

Did you know that there is a national high five?


Turns out, the state of Michigan is America’s High Five. It’s also the Mitten State, and not only because it’s cold.

Michigan has the nation’s longest freshwater shoreline.

Michigan. America's Mitten State. DearKidLoveMom.comIf you hold up your right hand like you were going to give a small, tenuous wave to someone across the room and then didn’t actually wave, your hand is—according to people from Michigan—in the shape of the Great State of Michigan.

As long as you don’t care at all about the part on top. Which it seems no one does. (I checked; exactly no one lives up there.)

Not only do people from the Wolverine state refer to the state as the mitten, they also use the mitten motion (holding up your hand—see above) as a manual map. This was explained to me with the appropriate hand gesture: right hand up, left hand pointing hither and thither to denote different cities.

Some people believe that Ohioans gave Michigan the nickname (of the Wolverine State) around 1835 during a dispute over the Toledo strip, a piece of land along the border between Ohio and Michigan. Rumors in Ohio at the time described Michiganians as being as vicious and bloodthirsty as wolverines. This dispute became known as the Toledo War. –

Love, Mom