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 A small mob was already forming, chanting and wearing some great, albeit terribly outdated Bears apparel.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.

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!

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.