Ready, Aim, FIRE!

Winter in Madison, Wisconsin wasn't for sissies.  It was out and out frigid and getting through it every year was something of a small miracle.  With such an unforgiving winter season, preventing things like frost bite was a preoccupation among parents of school age children and my mother was no different.  She was ever vigilant in protecting me and my little sister from the brutally cold weather as we made our way to and from school every day.  If we actually arrived at school without any of our extremities freezing off, my mother figured that she did her job and that's pretty much where her concern ended.

What my mother didn't quite understand is that when the merciless winter fell heavy upon Madison my sister and I walked amid a virtual sea of green and yellow.  Everyone (except for my mother) knew that this was Packers territory and practically everyone in the school proudly wore their Green Bay Packers jacket to hammer home this very point. 

As a concerned and semi-involved parent, my mother should have had, at the very least, a cursory understanding of the traits that define the average Green Bay Packers fan.  The steadfast loyalty, the resolute dedication, the deep rooted, almost obsessive love that these people hold for their team. And perhaps more importantly, from my viewpoint, the equally obsessive hatred that these folks harbor for their arch rival and division competitor; the Minnesota Vikings.  

Indeed, this profound animosity is, in large part, the glue that binds these people one to the other and defines their very existence.  It's what drives them to sit in a wide open stadium in the bitter cold and proudly wear yellowish-orange, triangular shaped hats on their otherwise bare heads that resemble great big slices of cheddar cheese. This alone should tell you that these folks aren't quite right.  Evidently, this escaped my mother. 

Drugs.  It had to be.  Looking back, the only thing that I can come up with is that my mother must have been taking some serious mind-altering drugs. Drugs that profoundly interfered with her perception, skewed her sense of reality, and caused her to make absolutely scary parenting decisions.  It's really the only explanation that I have for why an otherwise rational woman would send her two unsuspecting children out into what is clearly Green Bay territory in bright purple and yellow jackets with the word "VIKINGS" prominently plastered across the back. 

And if that wasn't enough, we also had equally subtle purple and yellow hats with "VIKINGS" screaming across our foreheads.  If she really, really  didn't like us, it would have been far less painful for her to take us to the edge of the street and shove us directly into the path of an oncoming bus and gotten it over with quickly.  But instead, my mother opted to take the slow and excessively painful route.  She would have done just as well had she painted big red bulls-eyes on our backs and handed us two little signs that read, "We are your enemy.  Please pelt us every single day with as many snowballs as you possibly can before we reach the safety of our school!"

The venomous fervor with which these kids assaulted us on a daily basis was totally mind boggling.  To this day, I don't have any idea how they managed to stockpile and unload so many snowballs upon every last inch of our person before we reached our school.  What's worse is that these kids rarely, if ever, missed.  The walk home wasn't any better and complaining to our mother actually did less than nothing.  

Never mind that I would have rather removed every stitch of clothing and walked naked to school in the blistering cold, my mother wouldn't hear any negative commentary about the purple jackets.  My mother proudly informed me, in no uncertain terms mind you, that these wonderful coats were on sale, that they kept us warm on our journey to and from school and that they were so durable that she couldn't see having to buy us another winter coat for a very, very, v-e-r-y long time and that it was not only a tremendously shrewd investment on her part but also a gift straight from God and didn't we know that there were freezing children somewhere in the world that would be eternally grateful to have these warm jackets that we so selfishly took for granted thankyouverymuch.   

Before I could ask for a freezing child's address, my mother went on and with a stern wag of her finger only inches from my nose advised that I should ignore anyone who made fun of my brilliant purple coat because they were probably just jealous anyway.  No, no.  Today, I can say with absolute confidence and one hundred percent certainty that they were not.  The collective sentiment hovered somewhere between mildly pissed and downright homicidal.

Thirty years later it's crystal clear to me why these particular coats were on sale. Anyone with even a passing understanding of football would very quickly realize that the rivalry between the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings runs long and deep.  And it seems to me that if you live in one of these states (for 9 years) you ought to be aware of these significant matters because as I see it now, the only way that a parent would send a kid out into the searing cold wearing a Minnesota Vikings jacket with a matching Minnesota Vikings hat deep in Green Bay territory is if that particular parent harbored a secret and abiding death wish for that kid. 

Thanks a bunch mom . . .

 

 

 

 

  
 

   

Comments

[N]

You have such a gift for writing...your article is
so entertaining...your mother gave you good writing material!

[rebecca]

The is SO damn funny! Great story- I'm sorry for laughing about your daily peltings. (not really)

[Cori]

Oh my God...that is hysterical. It wasn't funny at the time though. Apparently the Vikings gloves weren't on sale...hence the oversized mittens I'm wearing.

[Laurie]

That was so FUNNY! Thanks for making me smile this morning. Keep on writing Christine. You are talented.

[Christine]

I am glad that everyone enjoyed.

And yes, my mother gave me a LIFETIME of excellent writing material. She was quite a character and my little sister and I simply adored her.

[Elizabeth Rackover]

"Please pelt us every single day with as many snowballs as you possibly can before we reach the safety of our school!" Doubtless this was the beginning of your concept of how to train your victims at the gym.