Your Favorite Bears Memories, But You Have To Read Mine First
With the biggest Bears news of the day being terribly depressing, let’s try and focus on more happy times. Feel free to put your favorite Bears memories in the comments; FIRST, you get to hear and read mine.
I could lie to you and say the 1985 season, but I was two. I could say the 2006 NFC Championship, but Sexy Rexy would piss it away in Miami two weeks later, so none of those work. No, my favorite Bears memory(s) happened in 2001.
2001 was quite the surprise for all of us Bears fans. With the incredible duo of Shane Matthews and James Allen (who?), and Urlacher and Brown being relatively new to the league, no one was expecting much. Plus, we had a coach with all the intensity of a white dove (have fun Buffalo!), so a 6-10 season wasn’t entirely out of the question.
After an opening day loss, the Bears rattled off a few wins only to mail it in for the first three quarters against the 49ers. Then, all of a sudden, the Bears went nuts in the fourth quarter to tie it. In overtime, Mr. Mike Brown returned a tipped pass off of T.O. (who had alligator arms cause #54 was about to drill him) and returned it into the end zone for a ‘walk-off’ TD. I remember screaming in my dorm at school, and a bunch of us had a celebratory pile in the hallway and then pounded beers ’til we passed out.
If that wasn’t enough the very next week we put up 59:00 of terrible football against Cleveland only to have the immortal combination of Shane Matthews to James Allen save us at the end of the game to send it into overtime. Lo and behold MB30 ended the game again with an INT for a touchdown. I’m embarrassed to say that I left my couch to go get Mexican (mmm…. burrito) because I was so mad. I can remember walking back and my buddies running towards us and yelling about how awesome the end of the game was. Naturally, we had to go out and get slammed because of the improbable win(s).
Your move.
(Editor’s note: Video here, stay until end for bonus clip!)
I refuse to fall for your ‘show me yours, I’ll show you mine’ bullshit… again.
Ok, I cave–I’ll never forget Super Bowl XLI and Devin Hester’s opening kickoff return for a touchdown. I had just started seeing this girl–my first “real” girlfriend; I’m 48–and she hadn’t yet seen the go-apeshit-scream-at-the-tv side of me.
Alright, so only part of that is true. But, basically, myself and a group of my closest buddies–only one other a Bears fan, but almost all Bears apologists–went fucking wild; jumping up and down, beer spilling on white carpet, bodies flailing from wall to wall.
It was the culmination of one of the most involved years I spent following the Bears and it couldn’t have been better. Well, except, you know, if they had won.
Lovie’s first year where we beat the Pack soundly. Favre having a horrible game in 2007 at a below zero Soldier and the Urlacher interception that game, 2008′s Sunday night Bears Packers game, crying after Super Bowl XLI not for the team, but for Urlacher because he deserved a ring for the way he played all season, and of course, the Halloween Monday night throwback jersey game October 31 1994. We got creamed, Favre rushed for about 50 yards, it was awful. I stuck by the Bears in that darkest moment of my life, and realized right then and there that being a Bears fan ain’t always easy. I remember that loss before I remember most wins.
Favorite Bears memory hmmm…
I remember being about 3 or 4 years old. My parents were smoking some sweet, but skunky-smelling incense, and they put a shot of whiskey into my milk. Then they danced to the SuperBowl Shuffle. This went on for four days. After the VCR ate the tape, they were so mad that they went out (without me, apparently) and got a tape from my uncle Barney of the actual SuperBowl footage.
After roughly a week of their (what I now know as) coke binging, free loving, wife beating episode, they noticed they had a kid in the apartment. They cleaned up the buckets of offal that was my crib, wrapped me in a “Tomczak” Jersey (“They were out of McMahon ones”, my died cried that night)and rocked me to sleep.
When I woke up, I was graduating high school, and never really knew how I got to that point of my life.
I love the Bears!
Bears vs. Cardinals on Monday night in ’06 blew my F’ing gourd. I was living with a couple of friends in college at the time and we settled in to watch the game with my yellow lab Chip, who was in town for a couple of weeks.
We came back from a 20 point deficit without scoring an offensive touchdown….You gotta be kidding me. My buddies and I proceeded to go absolutely nuts with each fumble return for t.d. and Hester’s shake ‘n bake.
When it was over, we donned our Ditka era navy blue BEARS sweaters with the orange bands on the sleeves and ran over to “the strip” in beautiful Carbondale. A small mob was already forming, chanting and wearing some great, albeit terribly outdated Bears apparel. On a side note, I very much respect the way Bears fans refuse to get rid of their gear, even if it is a too small Starter jacket with the white stuffing protruding from broken seams.
Remember the Dennis Green explosion after the game? I replayed that clip again and again for days after, laughing until I experienced considerable pain in my stomach. I’ve seen posts and heard people ask, “what did he mean by ‘the bears are who we thought they were’? I think real Bears fans know EXACTLY what he meant. The Bears, whether in 2001, 2006, or now, are a team that can be beaten by ANYONE. We can definitely BEAT anyone as well, but over the years we have seen great defenses play pretty vanilla, with a “bend but don’t break” mentality, giving up lots of underneath stuff to Leinart and others. The offense has also shown great ineptitude at times. If the right combination shows up, we can notch one in the “L” column anytime. Didn’t we almost lose to the Lions that year?
My other great Bears memory was watching Mike Singletary’s last game. I don’t recall what team we played, as I was 9 years old. but I vividly remember seeing his eyes light up big and full before making his last ever tackle. After that I was one wound up kid, trying to make tackles on my lil sis and even the babysitter, resulting in at least two stern verbal warnings.