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}

I have nothing against cornfields, per se. I would maybe even like them if corn on the cob was less expensive this summer. But I don’t especially like working amongst them as I have this past week at the Chicago Bears training camp.

Training camp, spring training, Draft Day. To many sports fans and sportswriters, this is fabulous, compelling stuff. I would sooner spend the day scrubbing floors.

There is a reason they do not sell tickets to attend these events, though if they did, I am sure people would shell out the cash no matter the price. More than 11,000 people showed up the same day I did on the campus of Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., most of whom at one point or another yelled at me that I was in their line of sight as I paced along the sidelines waiting for it to be over.

After telling one man – in my nice voice with no swear words – that he didn’t have to scream at me, I surrendered to the accepted etiquette and took a knee.

I looked around to see if anyone else was excruciatingly uncomfortable and it was hard to detect. I tried sitting but was soon reminded that was not allowed. The reason they make you take a knee on the sideline of a football practice is so you will not get killed by a runaway tight end, the logic being that if you’re standing or kneeling, you can easily jump out of the way and avoid getting run over.

I tried to assure the Bears official that I could not possibly avoid on oncoming rush from a kneeling position any more than I could from a sitting one, and I work out regularly (see: yesterday’s blog). But they weren’t really interested in discussing  the matter.

It briefly brought back memories of one of the first major-league baseball games I ever covered when I innocently hooked a finger in the netting of the cage as I watched batting practice.

“Do you like that finger?” a coach asked me.

“Excuse me,” I responded cleverly.

“If you want to keep it, you might want to unhook it from there,” he said.

I barely had time to thank him when a foul tip came speeding back into the net at precisely the same place my severed finger would have been.

I realize that when I cop to things like this, or admit to being bored watching football drills, that I risk the chance of sounding like a dumb girl who has no business covering sports for a living if I can’t appreciate the beauty of a tackling dummy.

But I do not think this is a gender thing. I suspect many of those taking a knee around me to be faking their enthusiasm, that they are really not having fun going down the 76-man roster and counting each player on the field to see who may be missing, and that their knees hurt just as much as mine do.

I suspect they are also bored on Draft Day watching a clock tick down on a television screen for two days straight, and are, like me, tempted to switch channels to a good movie, but will never admit it.

If you spend more than seven minutes at home doing this, I simply have nothing to say to you.

And to those thousands of people in Bourbonnais who arrive hours early in order to situate your lawn chairs to just the right angle in front of the tackling dummies?

I’m taking a knee. Shut up already.