Dear Brett Favre,

For decades you have been the glue that held this backwoods cow town together, the only reason anyone has ever had to visit this godforsaken stretch of frozen tundra located approximately 100 miles and six venison steak sandwiches from the North Pole.

We have lived and died (sometimes literally) with your every move. We’ve made it through the good times, like when you beat those up-and-coming Patriots in Super Bowl 31 (sorry, can’t do the Roman numeral thingy), and the bad, like the painkiller addiction/alcoholism that nearly derailed your life and career, the death of your father, and the cancer scare your lovely wife Deanna went through.

Oh, and the three zillion costly interceptions you’ve thrown.

Without question you have brought us more good times than bad, though, making this place into a ghost town every Sunday for the last 16 years and turning the parking lot at Lambeau Field into the World’s Largest Cholestorol, High Blood Pressure and Heart Disease Festival for 17 hours a week in the fall.

Heck because of you, Brett, 40-something, overweight men like me have tried to grow Don Johsnon-like stubble and wear XXXXL NFL Pro Shop jereseys with ole’ number 4 embroidered on the back (well, except for Jimmy, who had to settle for the cheesy $75 knock off, pardon the pun) for the better part of a decade and a half.

But enough is enough. I mean, this “I’m retiring, no I’m unretiring” shit is getting pretty old.

Once was okay. You were coming off a lot of personal hardships and had lost a little bit of the desire to suit up for the preseason and tedious summer workouts. When you decided to come back in ‘05, we celebrated by slaughtering every small and medium sized animal we could find, well within all county hunting guidelines, of course.

Even though you sucked it hard in 2005, the second time you unretired wasn’t so bad either, cuz we were just thrilled to have you slinging the old pigskin around the stadium again for another season. So we finished 8-8. You were back and here to stay, and all was good up here.

And then you tried to do it again after the 2006 season. By now the teary press conferences, the wishy washy wavering, and the daggum uncertainty that you wanted to lead the greatest franchise in the history of pro sports was starting to rub some of us God fearing American football fans the wrong way.

But, as usual, you decided to come back in 2007, and we welcomed you back like the sheep welcomes the farmer who arrives bearing chocolates - with open arms.

And thank the Lord we did because in 2007, after years of irrelevance and insecurity, you made the Packers important again (outside of the state of Wisconsin, we mean), by breaking every conceivable quarterbacking record you didn’t already own and taking the team to within one game of the Super Bowl before another one of your infuriating as hell interceptions cost the team its first shot at a championship since 1996.

So when you announced your umpteenth retirement after that stellar season, we couldn’t believe it. “Here we go again” we thought. This routine was getting to be as predictable as every child from this area growing into adults with sausage-sized fingers and barrel-sized guts, women included.

But then suddenly it hit us why you did it: having established yourself as one of the greatest competitors that ever lived and wanting to go out on top and in style, not as a broken down, washed up QB with more INTs than TDs after another mediocre .500 season, the great warrior was riding off into the sunset as a winner and hero in every sense of the word.

It made perfect sense.

We came to grips with the reality that our #4s had instantly become throwbacks, we are ready to hand the reigns over to perrennial bridesmaid Aaron Rodgers, and we’ve come clean with the notion that we will never see another player like you on the footbal field ever again.

And now this.

Unfortunately Brett, after so many years of “is he or isn’t he?”, “will he or won’t he?” and “should he or shouldn’t he?”, all we’ve got to say to you is this:

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why
It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

Good riddance!

Sincerely,

Fed up Packers fan.

(Just kidding, Big Fella. My wife put me up to this. Please don’t play anywhere else. I’ll kill myself if you do. Seriously, I will. I friggin’ hate Green Day, by the way.)

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