My wife is from Green Bay and even though my sons were born and raised in Virginia, they grew up as Packer fans.  My middle son, who is now sixteen, didn't know any other quarterback besides Brett Favre and he was a serious fan.  There were Brett Favre posters and bobble heads and four different colors of jerseys.  At six foot two and two hundred and twenty pounds, it's hard now to remember him wearing his Brett Favre 'one-sy' pajamas, but he did.  There were Brett Favre jig-saw puzzles and magazine covers and...football cards. 

   From about the age of four or five, Brett Favre football cards was all he wanted for his birthday and Christmas presents.  His mom scoured ebay.  His grandparents and aunts up in Wisconsin searched the card shops and, by the time he was fourteen or so, he had a notebook with 1200 different Brett Favre football cards.  Now, this doesn't count doubles or multiple cards...there are six cards on each side of a plastic sleeve...twelve per page...and his notebook was a hundred pages deep...about two inches thick.

   This notebook was a major source of entertainment over the years.  He would take all of the cards out and arrange them in chronological order.  He would separate the 'passing' cards from the 'running' cards, etc.  Showing the notebook to his friends was his pride and joy.

   On the day that Brett announced that he was going to play for the Jets, my son threw the notebook in the trash.  My wife, who was in total denial and swore that it wasn't 'Brett' who was disloyal to the packers, but his evil twin 'Jet Favre', went out that night and saved the notebook from the trash can.  She claimed that it would be worth a fortune someday and hid it up in the attic.

   A few months ago, when Brett was first playing with the idea of going with the Vikings, my wife went up to the attic and threw the notebook into the trash herself.   Without telling her, I saved it from the trash myself before the garbage men came the next morning.  I thought that both she and my son would thank me some day. 

   Last night, I threw it out.