It only took 13 minutes for my family to call me after the Bears lost the Super Bowl.
""I'm not speaking to your aunt anymore,"" my mom said. ""Do you know what she said to me, do you know?""
I didn't.
""That two-faced sports fan—she's dating a Bears fan now who has season tickets,"" my mom said with all the indignation of someone who has been on the Green Bay Packers season-ticket waiting list for 32 years. ""She said that ‘my' team didn't even make it to the Super Bowl. How can she do that to the family? You should've seen your grandmother's face, and I just thought that your grandfather—""
She sighed.
""I just hope that we can expect more from you. Even if you are one of those 40-year-old unmarried types with a cat, I can't have a Bears fan for a son-in-law. The family just can't handle it. I hope that's one of your dealbreakers.""
Oh, it tops the list.
Everyone has dealbreakers—admit it. They're endlessly useful at eliminating segments of the population with whom things just wouldn't have worked out. There's no way that I could ever see eye-to-eye with a boy who wears Creed T-shirts, has a ""Scarface"" poster on the wall, owns CDs from Scott Stapp's solo career or likes Garth Brooks (or even worse, his rock 'n' roll alter ego, Chris Gaines). But those are just really minor quibbles. There's only two, really big dealbreakers. Ones where there really is no hope for a compromise.
Chicago Bears fans. OK, so they won the Super Bowl sometime in the '80s and came awfully close this year. OK, so they did have a pretty good defense. But I don't think I can ever be convinced that Dave Wannstedt was at one time head-coach material, Rex Grossman at one time was a good quarterback prospect and they don't have a history of choking during big games. It just can't happen—I've been on the Packers season ticket waiting list for 22 years, after all.
Gold Chains. I was sitting alone on the 81 bus once and, just to tempt fate, had left the seat open next to me.
""Is this seat taken?"" I could taste the Fleishman's vodka on his breath. We chatted a bit—he had been out for his friend's 21st birthday, he didn't like rum and cokes very much and he didn't know what direction the bus was going in.
His voice dropped to a whisper. ""I'm in the business school, and that means I'm going places."" He cocked his head to the side, and that's when I saw it; the flickering neon bus lights hit the chain, and the golden glint blinded me.
Tucked under a shirt it's relatively harmless, but it's when the shirt comes off that questions arise. Are you responsible for taking the chain off? What if the boy wears one, takes it off and lets it rest on a hook near his bedside? Besides, a gold chain is never alone. An open shirt, tufts of chest hair, grease and a bad-ass attitude accessorize it.
There are other things that I just can't deal with—political apathy, smoking, criminal convictions—and this just makes it easier in the end.
It's not like an opinion change is impossible. For example, the Superbowl—by the end, going against my season-long ""I hate Peyton Manning"" mantra, Manning and his abnormally large forehead and laser-rocket arm were looking kind of attractive.
Besides, I think I saw Rex Grossman sporting a gold chain.
To tell Caitlin what you hate most about excessive bling-bling e-mail her at cfcieslikmis@wisc.edu.
