For the purposes of this blog, I will refer to my three sisters in this order:
2. Running Bear
3. Hermana Bear
4. Panda Bear
Today’s post is a contribution from Running Bear. She’s a highly successful, good-looking, marathon-running phenom. Obviously, she takes after me. I limit my runs to beer-runs though. Hey-ohhhhh.
Well here it is…
As my older sister didn’t really take the origin story seriously (for real, her half-assed account brings shame to the Bear Pack), I felt it incumbent upon myself to explain the whole of the story for you. To that end…
(I just hadn’t gotten to it yet. Sheesh.)
Picture it. Sicily 1920. Four girls entered the tent, four women exited. Actually, I won’t start it exactly like Sophia Petrillo would.
Picture it. Harrisville 2011. Where is Harrisville, you ask? Take your left hand. Hold it up like a mitten, round about the first knuckle on your pointer finger. Harrisville is a lovely little town on Lake Huron in the Northern Lower Peninsula in Michigan. This is the site of our family’s annual reunion weekend which is hosted the first weekend in August every year since 1992. What was so special about 2011? It was the year of the great tent caper. Was it really a caper? No, we immediately realized why we were missing a tent. Blame it on our Dad for only packing the tent poles and not the actual tent. Thankfully we had a back-up. Unfortunately for my soon to be future brother-in-law, this meant that the three of us who were planned to sleep in the missing tent would be bunking with he and our sister. Lucky him.
For some additional background, there are four girls in our family. No boys. We are all within 6 years. That’s a lot of estrogen, and as our mother is wont to say, a lot of potential for riza-riza-rella. Alright, enough climbing into the way back machine.
(Riza-riza-rella is a Bear Pack term referring to childish mayhem, foolishness, and horseplay).
Picture it. Harrisville. 2011. We had eaten and drank to our hearts content. We were camping, so we were all wearing our Up North finery. As you can imagine, this included hoodies, elastic waisted sweatpants, and one rather unattractive bear sweatshirt. I mean this is the equivalent of the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt that Zack Galafinakis wore in “The Hangover” in bears. The eldest and allegedly wisest of us was the one wearing this sweatshirt – with screen printed bears literally wrapping around her midsection. So. Hot.
(Case in point: oldest, wisest, and HOTTEST).
So there we were in all our glory, and then 5 grown up people climbed into one tent. Not surprisingly, I was the only one of us who had remembered to bring a pillow, which was the coveted accessory of the night and was commandeered by my asshole sisters a couple of times. We immediately fell into the giggles and started the riza-riza-rella that had been the bane of our mother’s existence for the 18 years we all lived at home. The only problem is that our mother wasn’t there, our sister’s boyfriend was there. He was soon to be out future brother-in-law so thank goodness we didn’t scare him away. Anywho. I think it was after the farting commenced that he really lost it. Yes. Farting. Four adult women. Farts are still funny. And this was the moment that the bear pack was born. Poor Jose, in all his camping virginity and Spanish swarthiness came unglued and yelled at us. It wasn’t really a yell, but I think for him, that’s about as close to yelling as he gets. Anyway, so his little Spanish accent from the silent corner of the tent rang out “Oh for God’s sake Bear Pack, I am trying to sleep.” (Or something like that.)
(Although I think he had been equally fed up by the stirring, yet repetitive, rendition of “We’re the Four Best Friends That Anyone Can Have”).
Well clearly, given the world’s ugliest sweatshirt and the fact that he literally stunned us into silence, the name stuck. Seriously. We all now regularly shop for bear themed jewelry, home wares, etc. I am sure that it’s not as funny in writing as it was in real life, but I don’t GAF what you think. It was hilarious when it happened and as far as inside jokes goes, continues to crack me up now.
Da bears.
Thanks, Running Bear.
Grin and Bear Pack 