Who Moved My Cheese?

"Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football." John Heisman

I was going to title this post "Pack it in," but -- just guessing -- that phrase might have already been overworked and underpaid for the past few weeks by small daily papers across Wisconsin. I know that ESPN is just about hyperventilating at this moment (3:09 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time), as Chris Mortensen reports that Brett Favre could be meeting with Tampa Bay any minute now.

Whatever.

I didn't have anything against the Packers until the turn of the century. That would be the 21st century. And, it wasn't even their fault. I remember it like it was yesterday....

Between 1995 and 1999, I worked for Potlatch Corporation. My marketing duties for the Consumer Products Division took me to "metropolitan" Green Bay for visits to paper converting machine engravers. I don't know how engravers came to settle on the northernmost edge of the United States. It probably has something to do with water. Really, really cold water. But, sure enough -- they are clustered there. And, representatives from every big paper company in the country have been there to talk about engraving over the years and eat at one of the 10,000 sports bars in the town limits. By the way, engravers make enormous steel rolls for paper converting machines. Those machines transform the really big "parent" rolls of paper into the people-sized rolls you use in your house. The engraving puts the pattern that (we) paper people call "emboss" on paper towels and bath tissue. The lead time for a new engraving is about 100 years, and it costs about $100 million. Well, not quite; but -- really -- even though we put men on the moon about fitty years ago, it takes almost as much time to get a new engraving and almost as much money.

I WAS NOT surprised to land in Green Bay for the first time and witness all manner of orange foam-constructed anything-you-can-think-of for sale in the airport gift shops. I coulda had little cheese earrings. I coulda had a cheese bra. I coulda been a contender. But, I resisted the urge.

I WAS surprised to find that my hotel was directly across the street from the airport. I had rented a car, but the tribe-operated casino/hotel appeared to be "The" place to stay in GB. I imagine that has not changed. I WAS surprised to learn that the drive from the casino to my business appointment "down town" was about half the width of Wisconsin. I had thought that a town of about 95,000 people wouldn't involve great distances for anything. The following evening, I went the other half of the width of Wisconsin for some obscure restaurant that wasn't even in Green Bay. Someone in our group had to check off the 97th heavy ale tour of his year in that exact spot. The food was awful. The enormous, bright orange cheese wheel on the salad bar, that appeared to be made of the same substance as the little earrings in the airport, didn't do much for me either. But, apparently, the chocolate brown ale that smelled like fresh-baked wheat bread was the bomb.

The NFL season was over. It was really early March, but it looked like really late February. The streets were lined with about seven feet of snow. All the little white-frame houses on the sidestreets had either bright yellow or forest green shutters. Or, both. Some had bright yellow concrete floors for front porches. Streamers and flags sagged from every lightpost. Actually, from anything vertical that was also stationery. And, the Kohl's parking lot was full of rigs festooned with Packers flags. People honked all over town at each other, like they had just won the Super Bowl or something.

Well, they had. Won the Super Bowl. After we concluded our business, we all decided we would go over to Lambeau to see the trophy. In some sort of out-of-body experience, I spent almost $100 for Packers paraphernalia to take back to my husband and daughters. Which made no sense then and makes less sense now. We lived in the San Francisco East Bay at the time. So, the only place they could really use any of the stuff was in the privacy of their own home. It was just too dangerous elsewhere.

I reserved a soft, warm spot in my heart for Green Bay, the Green Bay Packers, and Green Bay people. I learned how to spell "Farve." I mean, "Favre." I thought he could pretty much make the Pig fly.

Suddenly, I found myself working with a tightly-knit group of expatriot Green Bay Packers fans, who had tranferred out to San Ramon, California from a famous consumer packaged-goods company. From Wisconsin, but not from Green Bay. They had come to "save" the one I had been hired to help "save." I'll spare the sordid details. Suffice to say, it became the Ex-Del Montes vs. the Green Bay Packers Ex-Pats, and it didn't end until I cleaned out my office.

These particular Cheeseheads possessed many insufferable characteristics. It took about a year; but, eventually, I couldn't help but confuse their individual insufferabilities with Packer Time. And inflatable Cheese Cushions.

I know that the good people of Green Bay and Wisconson as a whole would be as shocked and dismayed as me about their terrible behavior, if they knew what I knew. So, while I'm sorry that the former are enduring this current onslaught of embarrassing publicity about the Packers, I'm not sorry for the latter. The only time I think about them at all is when I hear something on ESPN about the Packers or Brett Farve, er Favre. So, that's been a lot of thinking lately.

Too much thinking. It's some thought I would just as soon forget. But, ooh, here it comes again. Packers news conference coming up any second now......