Acme Packing Company
As a Packer fan who lives in Chicago (fine, Chicago-land, but we’ll get to that), this is an extra stressful week. I’ve lived in every city that contains an NFC North football team (yes, fine, except for Green Bay, but I’m old enough to have seen several Packer Games at Milwaukee County Stadium, so I am still technically correct, the best kind of correct), and I can tell you that there is just an entire new level of emotional stakes involved in this situation.
If the Packers lose on Saturday you normal people can just move on with your lives after an appropriate mourning period. For me, this turns into a solid week (or longer should the Bears progress further) of constant reminders. The Doubs onside kick a few weeks ago? I relived that moment like 20 times the following week because every single native around here kept bringing it up in casual conversation.
“Oh, hey der Paul, yer a Paicker fain, right? Looks a like we finerally got something with Cayleb Williams. Nice ter finally have a quoarterback better than a Paicker quoarterback, see what we’ve been missing. Anyhoos, I’m off to grab a sandwich made of meat soaked in grease and Italian spices that wasn’t quite high enough quality to make it in a hot daaag, which you would NAAT be allowed to put ketchup on, if that’s whats I was eating. But I’m naat. Oooh, just gonna layer on that giardeniara. Yous wants to come with?”
Don’t get me wrong because…yes, I totally do want to come with, that stuff’s delicious, but also losing a playoff game on top of that would be so much worse.
And Chicago is the worst. Oh, Minnesota can be tough as well with their passive aggressive little Prairie-Home-Companion-esque jabs, (Retort: Hey, if it wasn’t for the Vikings, the entire NFC North would be above average!) but Chicagoans are bold for Midwesterners. Not “New York” bold, but they are unique among the region for their ability to come out and say it. And it’s especially annoying because, first of all, scoreboard? We have 13 championships, you have 9. We also lead the all-time series 109-97, with 6 ties. Where exactly do you get off saying anything to me?
That said, using team history as a retort to a recent playoff loss is in fact weak sauce, and this is all just one of the small prices you pay when you leave your hometown for the big city. Or in my case, for the suburbs adjacent to the big city, which is honestly almost worse for two reasons. First, I was once a young city-dweller, and though it may seem somewhat counterintuitive, the people you are most likely to meet as a young person in Chicago are not from Chicago, which makes sense when you realize that I am in fact not from Chicago and was in Chicago. I think when I lived in the city itself that I knew more people...
