When I was in high school I took a job at the YMCA one summer working at their summer day camp. From day one I fell in love with the job. The kids were fun, my coworkers were great, and I basically got paid to beat little kids in basketball. I am terrible at basketball, but little kids are much worse. I continued to work there for the next five years or so but then things started to turn a little. The people in charge were slowly changing the image of the camp, making it more Christian and wholesome, and staffing the camp with super nice people that loved to sing about Jesus. Not that there's anything wrong with all that. I mean I love me some Jesus singing and all but I missed the old days. I missed tethering children to the back of the makeshift golf cart and driving through mud puddles. I missed pointing out the female counselors in training that would be most likely to get us arrested. I missed the irony of showing up to work hung over only to lead devotional with my campers an hour later. Yes those were some good times.
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So anyway, one night while trying to impress a fellow female counselor, I decided to bring back the past a little. I grabbed a can of paint out of the art supply closet and proceeded to vandalize the camp with YMCA friendly graffiti. Unfortunately, I made a small mistake with what I thought was a harmless prank; I involved the female counselor. She was the second person grilled about the incident, I of course the first. Well moments after I had just finished polishing off my watertight alibi and schmoozing the big man, she ratted out both of us. So now we finally get to the part of this story that matters.
Called back into the office moments after lying my ass off, I had to face the big man again. By the way big man isn't some corny slang I use, my boss was literally a very big man. Normally this kind of thing would have been open and shut. "Hi Jason, you just lied to my face about vandalizing a Christian camp, I think you know where the door is." But, I wasn't just some schmo who was hired off the street. I was a hardy veteran who was fully entrenched in the YMCA system.
I had won countless awards for leadership and pottery making and all other counselor related superlatives. I even was inducted into a special club for YMCA badasses. That's right, if I hadn't smeared tomorrows arts and crafts project all over the bathroom door, I might be wrangling dodgeballs in a gym in Akron right now.
But there I was, surprisingly relaxed for a man who knew he was getting the boot. My boss and I casually talked about our mutual love for Wolfpack basketball, and just reminisced about the years past. My proverbial career was flashing before my eyes. We both knew the end result: you're fired, we're moving on. Moral of the story: don't ever commit crimes with women. But the reason this story from the past surfaced today is not because of some female hating agenda, but because of our dear friend Brett Favre. (Woah, did he really just turn a quaint little piece about his youth into yet another Brett Favre story? You bet your ass I did. Suck on that ESPN.)
When I read about the meeting McCarthy had with Favre and the eventual outcome, I was taken back to that wet, hot, American summer, and the meeting with the big man. I imagine the five hour meeting with Mike McCarthy was very much the same. Two men with mutual respect for one another chatting about the good ole days, talking about nothing really, but all the while just wanting to have one last goodbye.
Both men knew going into this meeting what the result was going to be. I mean do you really think Favre went in there and told his coach "I want my job, but I'm not willing to beg for it." Or do you think McCarthy told Favre, "Were willing to let you compete for the job only because the press is killing us and you don't really stand a chance." No, of course not. But one last formality was required and thus the awkward man hug that is firing a legend began.
McCarthy and Favre respected the decision that each other had to make, as my boss and I did ten years ago. But the one tiny little difference between the scenarios is that I never won the YMCA Super Bowl and didn't set every statistical record for camp counseling. Plus, I was on the down slope of my career, realizing that when a bunch of first graders beat me at four square.
So, once again and for the final time, I promise, I really hope the Green Bay Packers know what the hell they are doing. Because once he walks out that door, he'll never step foot in that YMCA again, no matter how good the catering in the five hour meeting was. I found my next gig at the Bennigans down the street, and my guess is Favre won't have to drive too far either. Although I looked terrible in Bennigans green, Favre is gonna look pretty good in Vikings purple.
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