Bear stuff with Danahey on the Loose

 

 

Bear weather?

I guess cold doesn’t really bother rams, at least ones from Los Angeles. As the kids text, IYKYK.

I never really understood how the phrase “bear weather” applies to an NFL team handling cold weather, anyway. Aside from polar bears, most bears sleep through a good portion of the winter.

“Some scientists prefer to call it the season of lethargy,” is how the Bear Vault website puts it.

“While (bears) are inactive, they enter into a deeper than normal sleep that allows them to conserve energy and survive the winter,” is what the National Forest Foundation says.

I can relate. Here in the Chicago area, this winter we all can, given it’s been more of an old school winter than the mild excuses we’ve had for winters the past few years.

 

 

Take for example, Thanksgiving weekend. That Saturday we had a record-setting snowfall. It prevented best fest buddy Tom and me from trekking to Chicago TARDIS, the Doctor Who convention in Lombard. That day’s special guest was actor Christopher Eccleston, who played the ninth incarnation of the time-traveling Time Lord.

While we did hit the sci-fi fest Friday, not having a time-traveling device of our own, a drive south to the event Saturday might have been a little too much for my old car to bear. More like, how long the drive would have taken would have been a bit much for my patience to bear.

So we watched old Doctor Who episodes at Tom’s house. I probably fell asleep.

Flash forward to Christmas Eve. A combination of pre-holiday eating and drinking and the norovirus making its rounds left me homebound.

Whatever the cause, the results were the same as if I had chugged the prep drink for a colonoscopy. When I wasn’t  resting, I was pooping. But hey. I lost weight. Not many people do that during December, right?

My next bear-like, unintentional hibernation happened just after the new year started. I hurt my ankle to the point I slightly rearranged furniture so that I could hold onto it as I hobbled about my house. Having no cane or walker, I also moved about by using an old mop.

Tom lent me a walking stick. Walking sticks come to a point, which make them great for walking on lawns, maybe on deep shag carpeting and for poking somebody in the eye.

Luckily, another buddy had a metal cane for me to use. Luckily, my wiring is up to code and lightning this time of year here in Illinois is very rare.

As the pain remained close to unbearable, I wound up going to the doctor. She gave me some medicine. The hobbling lasted for about a week-and-a-half.

At this point I was beginning to feel like the third wheel in my own life, or the spare tire. Not one of those big, cool spares like on the back of Jeep, but the little one hidden under all the crap you keep in the trunk.

Helping me break my hibernation habit, though, is that Tom’s granddaughter plays for her school’s fifth grade basketball team. My semi-retired schedule allows me to attend her games, which have been a hoot.

I don’t mean that in a mean way. Attending merely reminds me of how awkward we all are/were at that age.

So far, there’ s only been one jackass parent, and that was before an away game. He was heading into the school talking really loudly on his phone,  blathering on about 10 to 12 hour work days. It was so of the town where this happened, which is to say, Barrington.

The phone gave me an idea, though. To make a basketball game more relevant to fifth graders, they should be allowed to use them while they are playing. Scoreboards should feature emojis, memes, the current abbreviations and vernacular.

 

 

To that point, Tom’s granddaughter dons the number 67. Good for her for trying to be funny – even if nobody really understands what the “word of the year” means. Then again, what does anything really mean these days, anyway?

Anyway, the other idea I had from watching the girls play is that the rules they have for their games would make good rules for a league for old guys like me.

That is, as long as you dribble a bit, you can travel as much as you want. This would be a sort of modified NBA rule, come to think of it.

Passing would be encouraged, but mostly optional. Fouls would only occasionally be called – like when a bigger person pummels into another big player.

You’d be assigned to sort of guard one player and one player only. At the start of each quarter, the ref makes you turn around so you can see that player’s name and number – and vice versa. This would be a good memory exercise for people my age, too.

There would be two games of four, 9-minute periods, played back-to-back. Or maybe one game of six periods, which seemed to be the case at one of the schools.

Teams would have 20 members. Each group of five would rotate into the game every four-and-a-half minutes. No full-court pressing would be allowed. These rules would be to help prevent heart attacks.

Free throws would be kept to a minimum. The clock would rarely stop.

Matching t-shirts would be required, but leg gear could include jeans, cargo pants, sweats, shorts and even skorts.

Everybody would get a chance to play, because it’s just for fun and exercise anyway. And everybody would have a cool water bottle, a backpack and snacks.

If I could figure out a way to incorporate pickleball into my idea, I would really be onto something.

Past kids’ basketball, during these times of torpor, there have been trips to the gym and one visit to Costco. And I’ve watched way too much football, mostly at home by myself – so I can change the channel during commercial breaks or boring parts of games.

I headed over to Tom’s to watch the Bears play the Rams, though. If I were superstitious, I would say it was me changing my solo viewing habit is why the Bears lost.

Which reminds me in a sideways way. What must it be like to try to watch the game at Soldier Field sitting in your $600 + seat behind the big dude who wears a bear’s head on top of his head? He seems like a nice guy, but still.

Alas, with the loss I’ll have to save these story pitches until next season.

• Find a pet spa that paints dog nails the same colors that Caleb Williams uses. All the better if one of the dogs getting their nails done is a three-legged amputee.
• Find a blind twin brother and sister combo who have made Bears-themed creations with Lego, including a 6-foot tall bear and a mockup of a proposed new stadium.
• Have AI write songs in various genres about the Bears.
• Find a group of elderly folks knitting Bears-themed blankets for homeless veterans.
• Interview experts for tips on Bears-themed body painting and body jewelry.

Either way, the Seattle Seahawks look like the team to beat and head to the Super Bowl. Seattle can embarrass the Rams with this video from 1986. It’s a Village People-like ditty called Ram It.

I probably will be watching some of that game this coming Sunday night. As I cut way back on streamers, there’s nothing good on TV then. Plus, football can lead to hibernation and dreams of warmer weather. I’d settle for March, even.