The Wisdom of Numbness

"Wow, no needle?" I asked my dentist on Tuesday, lying in the chair. I've never been a big fan of needles, and having two wisdom teeth pulled had me wondering about the process of pain-depressors.

So I was relieved when my dentist told me she was going to numb my gums with a large Q-tip, more or less rubbing a numbing agent on each of my top gums where the teeth would come out. This was wonderful news!

"No," she said. "This numbs your gums for the needle."

But to my delight, that Q-tip numbing agent was powerful. To my worried eyes, the needle looked like a Pulp Fiction-level injection was coming. I had left my sunglasses on in the chair and stared straight to the ceiling. Her hand approached. She pulled my lip back. The needle was there. It must be in by now. I can feel... something. Like a knuckle pressed against your thigh. Pressure. A lot of it. But not a needle plunging into your gum. No stab or prick.

No pain.

That's how I feel watching Chicago sports these days, and it's how I felt watching our beloved Chicago Bears fall 21-16 to those treasonous Indianapolis Colts . At 22, a loss like this would have sent me spiraling for a week. At 32, I would have been disturbed all night and gritting my teeth until Wednesday. But at 42, I've seen enough, and I know enough that my emotions run parallel to my actual expectations. Not to be confused with my optimistic expectations , a piece of my fan personality that to this day thinks seeing Caleb and Rome link up for a first down means a Super Bowl is nigh.

My realistic expectations are the result of having watched sports for 42 years. Realistically, with this offensive line and a rookie quarterback, I didn't need Mama to tell me there'd be days like this. My goal (if you can call it that, coming from a fan) is making the playoffs. I think that's reasonable and nothing that's happened these three weeks has changed that. We have 14 games to go and we're 1-2. Lots of football left.

So I can watch a game like this and simply take pleasure in the highlights. Let's start with our defense: they played their hearts out. The pass rush wasn't dominant but they kept pressure on Richardson, intercepted two passes and kept us in the game despite our offensive deficiencies.

Oh those deficiencies. Offensively, we were largely offensive. My colleague Jacob Infante called us "lifeless" and, overall, I don't disagree. But age'll flatten a man, Wendell, and with life's novocaine keeping me calm moment by moment, letting me find joy in in the positives, namely Caleb Williams throwing for a Bears rookie record 363 yards and tossing his first two touchdowns, including one to fellow rookie Rome Odunze.

Those 363 yards were also the 6th most a Bears QB has had this century — we haven't hit 400 since Jim Miller in 1999, lest you forgot — and the most since Brian Hoyer tossed for 397 in 2016 (weirdly, the last time we played in Indy). More broadly, after three games, I still feel like I'm watching the quarterback who will one day bring us to the promised land.

Look, the bar is low. We know that. And like my friend Scott Lewis said after the game , Bears fans have to have higher standards. But with no offensive line and a questionable offensive coordinator, Caleb Williams hitting for 363 in his 3rd career NFL game is nothing to sneeze at. I know the bar is low but this is a promising floor.

...if you're older, that is. This mindset doesn't do anything for younger fans, nor should it. If I was 22 I'd be pissed about this Bears team. I'd be pissed that facing a choice between retaining one of the worst coaches in franchise history or interviewing in a loaded head coaching pool, our GM retained the head coach. I'd be pissed that we then scapegoated our quarterback and potentially placed a new quarterback into our destructive cycle of giving a number 1 QB a new head coach in year two.

I'd be pissed that the head coach hired an offensive coordinator who today executed, if you can call it that, a 20-play point-free drive , running two 4th-and-1 plays out of shotgun, barely converting the first and getting smashed in the second. And I'd be pissed that the GM gave that quarterback and that offensive coordinator a porous offensive line that has the QB forever on the escape.

But I'm an old sports fan and what I've learned is that bumps in the road are just how roads go. The hills aren't alive with the sound of music because when you levitate above the fray there are no hills, only vistas, stretched from a QB's rookie year to the day he hoists the Lombardi and sets us free. "Open a bit wider," she says, and what looks like pliers flashes in my vision. I turn my eyes back to the ceiling and can hear the forceps scrape my teeth, looking for a grip. I can feel her twisting, turning her wrist, tugging these teeth, but there is no pain. There is no fear. I grimace and grin and with swift clarity, think, Do this today and your future will be better.