I never met a Packer fan I didn’t like, although I find a good many of them annoying. Being a logical person, I have entered into my computer all the Packer fans I know and categorized them according to annoyance. A few of the several hundred categories are as follows.

Methodical Person: Boy, this guy really gets on my nerves. You’re already late getting started on a tailgate trip, and he will say, “All right, now let’s make sure we have everything.” He pulls out a checklist four feet long and begins checking off items: “Toothpaste, okay, toothbrush, okay, mouthwash, okay, toothpicks, where are the toothpicks? Anybody seen the toothpicks? Okay, Dental floss…” The guy will spend ten minutes checking off items related to oral hygiene, never mind that once he is at the tailgate he brushes his teeth with a finger dipped in paint thinner and then only ten minutes before the game begins. His breath kills trees. His is the acid rain of bad breath. I once saw a dressed-out elk get up and run three hundred yards just because this guy breathed on it. But he insists on being methodical. Finally, we, his tailgate companions, throw his junk into the trunk and him and his list in on top of it. “Toilet tissue!” he cries. “I didn’t check off toilet tissue!” Someone then makes a crude remark about his list.

Easily Annoyed Person: Some little thing will go wrong during a tailgate, such as forgetting to bring any toilet tissue, and the guy will say, “Really, I find this very annoying.” Or he will say, “All right, who’s got mud on his boots? Who is tracking mud onto my authentic Lambeau sod piece? Boy, is this annoying!” While he is thinking up new annoyances, he forgets to not overfill the turkey fryer with cooking oil and flames roar into the early morning ruining our breakfast and charring our respective eye-brows, and he says, “Complain, complain! All you guys do is complain. It’s really, you know, annoying.” I find persons who get annoyed easily particularly annoying.

Graduate of the Will Rogers School of Philosophy: Three hours into a tailgate with this fellow and you’re ready for the intensive-care unit of a psychiatric hospital. In real life, he wears a three-piece suit (very, very rare for a Packers fan) and speaks like John Houseman “making money the old-fashioned way.” At the tailgate instead of wearing the Packer approved blazer orange he wears a sloppy old Stetson and turns into Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher. “I just never met a man I didn’t like, but those Viking horns going ‘baawooh, baawooh’ are shore puttin’ me to the test,” he will say. Almost nothing occurs that he can’t direct his cowboy philosophy at:

“If we could somehow feed some of this coffee to the Packer offensive line we’d get by that Kevin Williams real fast.”

“What they need in Minneapolis is a class in gun safety. Hardly a day goes by that some Vikings fan don’t shoot off his mouth about your season record.”
“If you ask me, the Packer fan base is like this here elk steak. The more we chew on it, the larger it gits.”

And so on and on and on. Tailgating with a cowboy philosopher is like….is like…Well, I can’t think of anything it’s like, but it’s real hard on the nerves. I guess cowboy philosophy is something you have to be born with.

Explainers: Packer fans that feel they must explain everything to you easily annoy me. “The reason we eat cheese is we have dairy cows in Wisconsin.” Oh? That never would have occurred to me. “You know why those coals won’t start? They got wet from the last time we tailgated.” Gee, I would have never guessed. “The reason we smear paint thinner on our coat sleeves is….” Half their sentences begin, “The way that works is…” Explainers apparently assume you have spent your entire life inside a paper bag and therefore have not the slightest notion of the reason for anything. But wait until you actually need something explained, such as why their team won’t be in the playoffs again, or better yet, how they expect to get into the playoffs ever again. “Beats me,” they say. “You expect me to know everything?”

Fixers: You notice a loose screw on your Vikings grill and start to tighten it. “Here, let me do that,” says the fixer, prying the screwdriver out of your hand. Or you start to adjust the idle on your power generator. “Here, let me do that,” the fixer says, shoving you out of the way. Fixers are of the belief that you are totally incompetent to perform the simplest task. If you’re buttoning your Vikings jacket, they say, “Here, let me do that for you.” Fixers are basically good-hearted chaps and really don’t annoy me that much. I’ve noticed that when it comes to wading into an icy Minnesota lake up to my armpits to retrieve a football thrown by a Favre-wannabe, a fixer will always step forward and say, “Here, let me hold your coat for you.”

Impressionists: You are up to your armpits in icy water trying to ret retrieve a football thrown by a Favre-wannabe, and the impressionist yells, “Hey, Brian, look! Here’s my impression of Bart Starr talking to Reggie White.” I was once on a tailgate trip with an impressionist who got stuck in a John Wayne impression and couldn’t get out of it. “Pass me the salt, Pilgrim,” he’d say, “and don’t be all day about it neither.” I finally had to stuff him in the turkey fryer.

Stand-Up Comics: These guys tell jokes end to end, always beginning, “Did you hear the one about…?”

“Yeah, we heard it,” you say.

“But probably not this version of it. Ahman Green, Brett Favre, and a hippie are on this plane together..” There is no way to stop stand-up comics. After the fourth joke in a row bring out the back-up turkey fryer and stuff them in it.

Take-Charge Guys: Every outing of more than one person has a take-charge guy: “Okay, the way we’re going to do this is, Pat, you do this, Fred you do that, and Arnie, you do the other thing. Everybody knows what he’s supposed to do? Good. We’ll meet back here ten minutes after the game.” The take-charge guy is a born leader. Unfortunately, as we all know, born leaders often have the IQ of a rock. That’s what makes them so easy to follow.

Whiners: The Packers lose again and the whiner says, “I knew this would happen! Now what are we going to do? Why do these things always happen to us? I’m not going tailgating again until we get a new coach.”

The only fit punishment for a whiner is to lock him up inside the vehicle with the Explainer, the Cowboy Philosopher, and the Impressionist. Sure, it’s cruel and unusual punishment, but it serves the wimp right.

Posted by maasx003 at November 13, 2004 07:38 AM