Sounds like the name of a breakfast cereal, doesn’t it?

I probably need to proceed carefully here, since I didn’t secure permission to tell this story – so let me just say that I was visiting a certain good friend of mine who used to be a pastor at Holy Communion – and this story involves him and his family and some precious Green Bay Packers tickets.  I should also mention that this family used to be a nice, normal, Lutheran family – but now they seem to be members of a new religion called Packerism.  They even have a little shrine in one of the bedrooms that nearly had me breaking out in a rousing bit of Gregorian Chant.  They are SERIOUS Packer fans – and of course they’re not alone in these parts.

They were fortunate enough to be able to purchase tickets to the first playoff game at Lambeau – the one played this past Saturday in which the Packers made the Seahawks look like they had 7 guys out on the field instead of 11. . . the game that concluded in that amazing snowstorm which made it all the more exciting and unforgettable.   They were there, and a  wonderful picture of my friend and his son – I’ll call him John – is on their computer to prove that they were there.   And if the print on the screen seems to have a slightly greenish hue, it’s because I’m very very jealous.

Anyway, at the time they purchased these tickets, they were also able to reserve tickets for the second playoff game at Lambeau – that is, if the Packers won the first game and if that second game ended up being played at Lambeau.  But several weeks ago,  when the Packers looked like the Green Bay High School Chess Club while being obliterated by the Chicago Bears, they ended up losing what would have been homefield advantage throughout the playoffs.  (Only if certain teams were victorious would the Packers get to play the playoffs at home.)   Well, my friend’s wife apparently misunderstood this to mean that the Packers would not be playing more than one playoff game at Lambeau, rendering this second quartet of tickets worthless. . . and she piled them on the family paper shredder along with everything else that was to  be shredded.   And a few days ago, another friend was over to their house to help out, and one of the tasks he was dutifully performing was the shredding.

To make a long story short (sort of) one the the four tickets went through the shredder before my friend’s friend said “Hmmmm. . . Maybe we shouldn’t be shredding these after all”  . . .   and of course, he was right.  And here we are with the Packers about to play a second playoff game at Lambeau Field (thanks to the NY Giants’ victory over the Dallas Cowboys) – and suddenly these four tickets are very very precious.  And they are hoping that one way or another, that shredded ticket in the ziplock bag can still be redeemed.

Wish them luck . . . and save a little for our beloved Packers, who will need it against the resurgent Giants.