20061021

The heart-break. The HEARTBREAK!!!

I was leaning forward so far on my davenport during that final drive last Sunday afternoon that I thought I might just fall right to China. Sure enough, I was on the edge of my cozy little seat, Pabst in hand, ready to go nimbly bimbly bonkers.
“Here we go Brett!” I was thinking. “Whiz one on them touchdown laser-beams into the waiting mitts of Mr. Franks, and we’ll be heading into the bye week two and three, with a good chance to get back to five-hundred against the Dolphins in Miami on October twenty-two.
“Then, in a glorious return to Lambeau, we can grab our fourth win against Denny Green and the lowly Cardinals! Oh, boy, the sky’s the limit, we’re really turning a corner here...”
And then, with my enthusiasm mingling about the strato-sphere, the Ram-Horned Sheep Defense stabbed me in the gut with a cruel dose of slap-paw reality. Those scrappy river-valley scoundrels! The heart-break. The HEART-BREAK!!!
The wife says to me: “That’s no good.” And I hanged my dizzy head and replied: “That’s about as bad as it gets, sweety.”
Oh sure, looking back on this scene it is pretty clear that I was very much out of control, but using that same retrospective, we were an inch or two away from this season going a whole other direction.
It’s like them choose your own adventure books I used to read the kids. The ones about gem-stone mines and crazy robotic gorillas in the jungle and space stations filled with alien ghosts. Wind the clock back a few ticks and freeze it on Brett Favre’s eyes surveying the defense on the eve of his 37th birthing day. What do you do?
A: Move the middle linebacker with keen eye deception towards the slant route and hit the tight-end for the go-ahead score. The End.
B: Leave the ball out in the open for a split second too long, let the D-end swipe it from your kung-fu grip, watch Rookie Colledge slippery-hog the ball, game over. Season over. You lose! The End.
All of life is a game of inches. But so it has gone for The Green and Gold this year. Dropped balls, missed blocks, botched tackles, poor decisions all around. During the game, these types of minor gremlins leave me frustrated, but in the carpet-staring, heart-breaking sorrow of defeat, I find the reality terribly difficult to accept.
But then again, it is only football. Well ... no. That is not accurate. It is only The Packers. I guess when you’ve invested as much time and faith into a football club as I have, it does become more than a game. This is evident in the way I spent the rest of that Sunday, in the way I feel right now, pecking away at this here word-processor.
But shoot, you folks don’t read this little column for to listen to me unravel from the inside out. It’s just the state of mind I’m in at the moment.
Like The Packers, I am going to need the off-week to rest up the body and mind. But don’t you worry yourselves. I’ll be back in your sporting pages following the game against the Dolphins. Although I have no reason to think we have a chance down in that spicy neck of salt-water swamp they call Florida Tropics, I can’t bring myself to go against The Green and Gold. Plus, Miami features two of the league’s most rottissimo quarterbacks in Culpepper and Harrington. Green Bay - 23, Miami - 17. Until next, next week, then.