And that's what people do. They send me e-mails like this:
I'm watching the Vikings-Saints game. So are the guys in the apartment next to me, only my TV is running 10 seconds slower than theirs. I just heard Favre's pick before it happened. And now they're going to OT, where the Saints are sure as hell gonna win the toss. The girl I love won't talk to me. Please give me a reason not to kill myself.
-- Nick, Minneapolis
As a lifelong Vikings fan, son of a lifelong Vikings fan, and grandson of a Vikings fan the day the team came into existence, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that tonight's game would end the way it did. Eight months ago I had my tonsils removed. Two percent of people have issues with the incision bleeding when they have a tonsillectomy. Again, as a Vikings fan I knew without a doubt that it would happen to me. It did. They tried to cauterize the wound with me awake, gagging and burning the back of my throat. I lost so much blood I needed an infusion of two pints. I would gladly relive that day every day for the rest of the year over tonight's game. Stomach punch?? Please, this was a groin kick followed by an uppercut to the chin followed by another kick to the nuts. Welcome to Minnesota.
-- Peter D., St. Paul
The Vikings loss is giving me bad flashbacks to breaking up with my prom date in high school. I knew it would probably happen, yet I still feel like I want to throw up and have a strange urge to listen to Richard Marx.
-- Rachael T., St. Paul
I don't know where this falls on your levels of losing rankings, but I can tell you I'd feel a lot better if somebody had just punched me in the stomach. I definitely feel it in my stomach, but it feels more like a virus, like a big, painful empty hole in the pit of my stomach, accompanied by throwing up, irritable bowels, shaking ... I just feel like curling up in a dark bathroom for the next 48 hours. I've been a Vikings fan my entire life, and I find myself questioning why. I'm not a religious man, but I imagine this is what a crisis of faith feels like.
-- Ryan K., Bloomington, Minn.
Please tell me it'll be OK. There are real problems in the world. Why do I hurt this much? A two-hour walk in the freezing cold didn't make me feel better and didn't make me feel cold. Why do I do this to myself? There are people in the world with real problems.
-- Dan, Salt Lake City (via St. Paul)
There really is no category for Vikes-Saints in your 16 Levels of Losing, so I vote for "The Banana Peel." I'll explain. Despite the constant fumbles and plethora of massive hits Favre took, I refused to be a victim and kept my hope alive -- just like the main character in a melodramatic Lifetime movie about someone battling some rare infectious disease. After fighting the whole way, it looked like the victim (me) was going to be OK (the final drive, especially Favre hitting Rice at the 50 and Taylor's run to the 33). And out of nowhere, because some hack director thinks it will infuse "true emotion and irony," a freak accident happens in which the disease survivor slips on the proverbial banana peel and cracks his head open on the one rock in a beautiful field of grass (read: 12 MEN IN THE HUDDLE!!!!). Of all the losses I've endured, this one falls into a whole new category, right?
-- David P., New York
