A lot of good sniffing happened here today, gentlemen. A lot of honest sniffing.
Before we talk about where we are now, though—and more importantly, where we're going—I think we should take a moment to reflect upon where we've been.
It goes without saying that when you've sniffed wax with as many husbands in home décor stores as I have, you tend to get jaded. After a while, all the candles start to smell the same. Just last weekend at Crate & Barrel, I could hardly tell the difference between a Teakwood Tobacco and a Maui Sunrise. And what's worse, I didn't care.
But being here today with you all reminded me why I got into this business in the first place. It took me back to a simpler time—before all the groupies, private jets, and mountains of cocaine. Back when I was just a kid out in the driveway sniffing candle after candle long after the sun went down. To this day, I can still hear my mom shouting at me to come in for dinner through our screen door.
“Ah, c'mon, Mom, just a few more sniffs!” I'd plead with her.
“Fine, five more minutes—but that's it, young man!” she'd finally concede, smiling to my Dad all the while, as if to say “What on Earth are we going to do with this boy of ours…”
You were doing something different here, not just elevating the game but reinventing it entirely. It was brash and irreverent, a middle finger to a matriarchy that had forgotten about you long ago.
One-handed jar holds, two-handed cradles, nose-first-no-handers—there was no way any of it was commercially viable. Hell, I don't even think the critics would get it. None of that mattered to you, though. The way you each defiantly told the saleswoman, “No thank you, just looking!” made it clear you weren't buying a goddamn thing from anyone: be it the candles in your hands or Washington's bullshit promise of The Middle-Class American Dream. There was a message to your sniffing, and it was coming through loud and clear: we don't like you, either.
As for me, I couldn't help but feel drawn to this unfiltered punk rock energy like a moth to a—well, I think you all know how the rest of that one goes.
You had carved out your own little utopia here, untouched by the horrors of war, disease, direct eye contact, or famine. It represented the promise of a better future, one without oddly impassioned arguments over who spends more time on their phone where it's, like, alright, clearly, this isn't just about the phone. One without “suggestions” of ordering two different entrees at dinner so that you could both have a “bit of each.” No, we all get our own entree here in the candle section. And what exactly is that entree, you might be asking yourself? Love.
That entree is love.
We must remember, though, that our time together today is as fleeting as our time on Earth. Soon, just as death will inevitably claim us all, so too will our wives. And when that moment comes, and you feel the cold, hard steel of my casket on your shoulders as you carry me to my final resting place, where the worms will soon consume my decaying flesh and brittle bone, I ask that you shed no tears. No, instead, I ask that you smile and remember what it was that we accomplished here today—that for a moment in time, no matter how brief it was, no one could hold a candle to us.