I am sitting in the Soldier Field press box right now, not afraid to admit I’m looking forward to the halftime tribute to Walter Payton more than the Bears playing the Cleveland Browns.Today is the 10-year anniversary of Payton’s death from liver disease at 45, and I am filled with memories.

As a young sportswriter in 1984 covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a central Florida newspaper called Today, I once encountered Payton’s particular brand of charm as I found myself trying to navigate the Bears’ lockerroom for postgame interviews.After the first player I approached gave me a difficult time about being a woman in the lockerroom, Payton came to my rescue. Though inexperienced, I felt I had the situation under control and that I could handle it myself. But Walter was going to help and I was grateful enough not to argue.Besides, this was Walter Payton, for crying out loud. To call him my favorite Bears player growing up seems superfluous. You didn’t sneak in a trip to the kitchen or bathroom when the Bears were on offense in the 70s and early 80s lest, God forbid, you miss a single Payton carry.

It did not matter which team they were playing, the weather they were playing it in or the situation in which they found themselves. Payton was capable of breaking one at any point and sure as that sandwich you had to go make yourself, you would miss it if you dared look away.My mother was the most devoted Payton fan in our house and you weren’t allowed to so much as talk when he was carrying the ball. I remember thinking of her as Payton motioned to me, how I would later describe every second of the exchange.“Go Sweetness,” she’d always holler. She loved that he was called Sweetness, she loved that he was sweet. She loved that he ran up garbage hills during the off-season and that he so thoroughly thrilled us during the season. She just loved him. Apparently believing I was uncomfortable, Payton led me out of the tiny visitors lockerroom and told me I could interview him outside. Then he told me he’d get me other players to interview and invited me onto the team bus.

Now I might have been young, but I knew enough about being disappointed by players I had idolized as a kid. I also knew enough about Payton’s reputation as a joker that I suspected he might be leading me onto a Bears’ fan bus. Or worse, as my mind started to wander and I began to panic, that I’d get on the bus and everyone would be in on the joke and none of the players would have pants on. Something horrifyingly embarrassing like that.Instead, he introduced me to his teammates on the bus and told them to talk to me, which I did in about as cushy a postgame interview environment as I had ever experienced before or since. Fortunately, they were all in a good mood after a 44-9 drubbing of the woeful Bucs.I turned to thank Payton, but he had jumped off the bus and I didn’t get to see him again. I had the chance to interview him a couple times after that in group settings but I was too shy to ever introduce myself or thank him for his kindness.When he died, a piece of so many of us in Chicago did as well.

There are only so many heroes you have as a child. He gave Chicago Bears fans a sense of pride and something to look forward to each Sunday, when frankly, there was little else to feel good about. He made our house a happy place during football season.In later years, there were times during my parents’ struggle with Alzheimer’s when I was somehow grateful they were not capable of understanding certain things. I remember being glad my mom never knew that Sweetness was gone.ESPNChicago.com, Melissa Isaacson — Sweet memories..AOLWebSuite .AOLPicturesFullSizeLink { height: 1px; width: 1px; overflow: hidden; } .AOLWebSuite a {color:blue; text-decoration: underline; cursor: pointer} .AOLWebSuite a.hsSig {cursor: default}

Her name was Sharon. Few of us know her last name or each other’s for that matter, but that has never been important.

We meet most mornings dressed for combat, little or no makeup, hair uncombed in my case, and that’s why I love it there so much. It’s the neighborhood “Y” and if your shorts are too long or your outfit outdated, no one cares.

Few of us are close friends, we don’t call each other on a regular basis and it’s little more than a wave if we see each at the grocery store in town. And I’ve always kind of liked that too, in an anti-social sort of way. We come together for an hour each morning and then we scatter, no heavy conversations, no commitments.

Sharon always stood in the front left of our cardio and strength classes, always took a bike a little closer to the door in spin. I did not know how old she was exactly and for a long time, like everyone else, not much at all about her.

Then one day when we were standing around making small talk before class, she mentioned that she had read something I had written. And on another day she casually mentioned that her husband had been in the radio business (never bothering to tell me his professional name, which would have tipped me off seeing as he is a legend in Chicago broadcasting).

We talked more and more after that, before class, standing in the parking lot afterward. I told her about my children and she told me about hers and her grandchildren.

I’ve always admired the women older than me in our classes, sweating along with those in some cases 20 and 30 years younger. I’ll look at them and wonder if I’ll still be coming at their age, if I’ll still be capable of keeping up. They all look terrific but you can tell they are long past worrying about their abs or their thighs.

Part of the reason I don’t talk much at the “Y” is because I am such an awful morning person, stiff and sleepy and in no mood for chatter. But I think I’ve gotten better over the last few years since meeting Sharon. In fact, I probably bug people now, asking who has seen the latest “Biggest Loser” and other important questions.

And maybe I’m imagining it, but I’ve noticed much more of a community feeling around the place over the last few years. I stand around before class and in the parking lot after a lot now. I groan with the others in the middle of a particularly excruciating hour. I look for my pals and notice when one of the regulars is not there.

Whenever Sharon missed a week or two, I never thought much about it because she and her husband enjoyed some wonderful vacations and always filled me in when she returned. And then her good friend Peggy told us Sharon was sick, that it was leukemia.

I kept meaning to get her phone number, to do more than send a group card. But Peggy gave us updates every so often, enough that were optimistic that I went on my way after class, immersed in my life, sure I would see her soon, front row, left side.

And then I saw Peggy this week and she was crying. It wasn’t good. Sharon’s condition had been deteriorating rapidly.
She passed away on Wednesday.
And I realize there’s no such thing as casual acquaintances.
Not at our “Y,” anyway.

Blogs pause, but life rarely does.
How to catch up?

Homecoming dances and choir concerts, soccer tournaments and family visits, lots of work, a good thing. Balloon Boy, a bad thing. An evil germ this week that had me searching a website on “Common Cold vs. Swine Flu – How to Tell the Difference.”

An entire website inviting me to analyze my every symptom? I mean, what could be better? My family wouldn’t do it with me, which annoyed me greatly; my husband Rick’s response to my every sickness from runny nose to coma, “You’re fine.” But it would be fun for me, give me something to do to distract me from my suffering.

Fever is rare with a cold but usually present with flu, it told me. I reached 100.0 once in the middle of the night on the little plastic digital thermometer we were forced to buy when I dropped the good one and had the fire dept. out to scoop up the mercury (another day, another blog).  So that’s pretty bad, and surely that cheap thermometer was wrong and I was much sicker.

Next I analyzed my cough – productive or non-productive? We’ll move on as even I did not wish to ponder this.
Aches – slight with cold, severe with flu. Moderate, I decided, and possibly due to my ‘Y’ class but I’m no doctor, they could have been severe.
I definitely had chills, which are flu-like. Sixty percent of people with chills have the flu, it read. Sixty percent, wow. I didn’t like my odds, I told my daughter, who ignored me.
Tiredness – mild with a cold, mild to severe with the flu. Come on. That’s a gimmee. Of course, I’m exhausted.

Headache, check. Rapid onset, check. Sore throat, check. Oh wait, that’s for a cold. Very confusing. Chest discomfort? If I coughed hard enough.
Turns out Rick was right, after one day of mild suffering and one day of major suffering, I was pretty darned close to fine, even I have to admit.

I’m thinking my resistance was low due to Homecoming, even though I didn’t actually go. But if you don’t think that watching your firstborn child get dressed up for her first formal dance, ask her date’s mother to pin a boutonniere on her son’s lapel, and then board a bus last used by strippers at a bachelor party is not heart-wrenching, you’ve never done it.

I admit up front that making fun of this is not unlike when journalists criticize “the media.” I was a willing participant in this extravaganza that would put most proms, wedding weekends and coronations to shame.

I’m pretty sure they went to the Homecoming Dance, although my nephew Daniel participated in his Homecoming festivities without actually going to Homecoming, which I’m told is quite common with upperclassmen too cool to participate in the very occasion they are celebrating.
Amanda, being a freshman, was not too cool. So she and the other girls dressed up – most transforming into 35-year-old women – put on very high heels that made me wince just to look at, and paired off with their dates, most of whom were fortunate enough to come up to the girls’ shoulders.

Then they took pictures (except for Rick and I because our camera was broken), went to dinner, to the dance, to the “after-dance activity,” where they ate again, to girls’ and boys’ sleepovers, where they snacked and visited each other’s houses because they had only been together the last eight hours, and then finally, had a lavish, 12-course breakfast, bringing the grand total of the weekend to the price of a medium-sized, used car.
Kidding. That would be inappropriate and lack all sense of common decency and perspective. It would probably be closer to a small, used car.

But Amanda was happy and after all, that’s the important thing. If your child is happy, you’re happy.

Even when you’re really sick with something that could very well have been a new strain of the flu and no one cares.

First week on Weight Watchers, lost 3.9 pounds and I’m thinking very seriously of applying to be their spokeswoman.

I mean, if Jared can do it for Subway . . .

I am not a diet person, I mean, other than being born female which naturally predisposes me toward such things. In my first 40 or so years of living, I was unfamiliar with all the various dieting options and never considered altering my normal dietary regimen, which encouraged regular servings of ice cream and the occasional Twinkie and Double Stuf Oreo.

But over the last few years, I have visited the other side, relapsed, re-visited and am now, officially, what I believe is referred to as a yo-yo dieter.

I’m not sure there is a clinical term for it, but I am the opposite of anorexic. That is, when I look in the mirror, I have the ability to stand at precisely the right angle so as to think I look pretty good and thinner than I actually am. But occasionally, I will notice subtle changes like my clothes no longer fit, and I feel forced to do something about it.

I tried Jenny Craig and lasted a week. No way can I eat freeze-dried and frozen food in a box and pretend it tastes normal . I tried Suzanne Somers’ plan, but in order to make that work, you have to either give up real sugar for life, or spend the day creating Baked Alaskas from one of her cookbooks with her secret non-sugar sugar, and there was no way either of these were happening.

 If I understood the Zone diet, I’m sure I could give you a good reason why I don’t like that either.

As a child, my mother baked all kinds of wonderful desserts and at all times kept a full stock of Baskin-Robbins Rocky Road and chocolate chip ice cream as well as a stash of Milky Ways in the freezer. My dad liked his desserts monochromatic — Sara Lee pound cake, Nilla wafers, vanilla ice cream – often combined into one big dessert.

In other words, sweets were not in any way forbidden, I had the metabolism of a housefly and yet I still allowed 18 years to go by without fully appreciating any of this. In fact, I rarely ate dessert at all, which , in addition to the metabolism, probably explains why I had to put rocks in the pockets of my jumper in first grade so that I could avoid embarrassment and hit the 30-point mark when Mrs. Bunce, the school nurse, wheeled the big scale into our classroom and announced our weights in front of everyone.

If that happened now, a class-action suit would surely be forthcoming.
Forty-plus years later, I am back to where I began, standing on a scale in a storefront of our local strip mall, only this time wishing it wasn’t illegal to be naked in full view of the Dominick’s parking lot. If one less layer of clothes guaranteed a better weigh-in, I dare say the place would be filled with naked women.

As it is, I kick off my running shoes, pull off my Nike Dri-Fit – which combined, weigh maybe 10 ounces – and step on the scale. I resist the urge to thrust my fist in the air.

I must say, I was not so confident going into the weigh-in, coming as it did the day after Yom Kippur. That’s because Jewish people traditionally observe the New Year by giving ourselves massive hunger headaches before gorging on bagels, lox and Aunt Elsie’s chocolate coffee cake.

I looked up Aunt Elsie’s coffee cake in my new Weight Watchers Complete Food Companion, but the closest thing I could find was worth more points than I am allotted in a day.

So maybe I would have done even better in my first official week on my new regimen if, you know, I had tried even harder on Yom Kippur, maybe fasted past 2:30 in the afternoon and had a little less generous piece of coffee cake.

But I’m also thinking, hey, 3.9 pounds including the bagel and coffee cake. This diet isn’t half-bad. Next week, I may have to work it in again. Atoning for my sins is working out nicely

Finished my class. Caught up with Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame speech. Taped the Emmy’s, which I’ll never watch. Joining Weight Watchers tomorrow (are you required to tell them that you plan to stick around only until your pants aren’t so uncomfortable? Is there a special membership plan for this?)

Of course, now I need to carve out an extra 10 to 12 hours a week for the new season of “Dancing with the Stars,” which could be a problem, but I can fast forward through at least eight of those hours, so I think I’m OK.

I am back in blog land because without my touchstone, I feel like I have been dreaming this last week. Weeks?

At some point during this time, I also gave a library talk on my book, “Sweet Lou – Lou Piniella, A Life in Baseball,” which, if you enter my website in the conventional manner, you have been assaulted with for the last five months. This was my plan.  But ever since Piniella’s Chicago Cubs have been out of the pennant race (I believe sometime in mid-June), the talks have, well, lacked a certain punch.

The book is about Piniella’s life, a biography, and as such it should not be important that he has bombed with his latest team or that most Cubs’ fans would like to see him on the next bus to St. Pete. But because he happens to be wearing Cubbie blue on the cover, I get the distinct feeling that Lou, sweet or otherwise, is not necessarily a person of great interest.

For my next book project, I am thinking of perhaps something on the cast of “Dancing with the Stars,” as I believe this would be truly timeless.

In the meantime, I want to call back every radio show, acquaintance and anyone else with whom I have chit-chatted about Michael Jordan over the last few weeks and take back what I said.

For those of you who may be unaware, Jordan has been roundly and almost unanimously eviscerated for his recent induction speech at the Basketball Hall of Fame. People are not supposed to be criticized for their Hall of Fame induction speeches. This is like being booed while doing a eulogy. This was supposed to be a festive moment in which Jordan joined his other inductees, thanked everyone from his kindergarten teacher to the Bulls equipment manager (Johnny Ligmanowski, a really nice guy) and, if all went according to plan, cried while doing it.

Jordan did cry. This was the best part, according to most. I only saw the last few minutes live, which included a very nice, sentimental little passage that sounded like he took it from a collection of old athletic proverbs about limits, like fear, often being an illusion.

I liked that part, don’t get me wrong. But if he wrote those words himself, then I was the ghostwriter for all seven Harry Potter books.

The rest he wrote himself. And after reading bits and pieces and then passively agreeing with most that Jordan was inappropriate in his comments, I have now seen a tape of the speech in his entirety and I officially take it back.

It was neither inappropriate nor mean-spirited nor worthy any of the other silly critiques people have given it.

I covered Jordan and the Bulls throughout the 1990s and traveled with them as the Tribune’s beat writer during their early championship years. I liked Michael, but I do not pretend to be his friend nor to know him as, say, a psychoanalyst would.

What I do know is that the speech was quintessential Jordan. It was also as sincere as any of the speeches that night and not even close to him trying to be nasty. I’m not going to repeat everything he said. If you’re interested and haven’t heard it, there are about five million copies on U-Tube to replay.

I doubt most people really listened to it – the way he said what he said, exactly what he said. It was genuine and from the heart. It probably did require a passing familiarity with the man to appreciate it and for that, it might have been worth getting someone to at least proof it.

But he is a public figure, open to our probing and to our criticism, even for a Hall of Fame induction speech. It is the price he must pay. He knows this better than anyone. I’m just glad on this night anyway, he didn’t seem to care.