Just outside of one of the most heartbreaking shrines in all of Chicago sits a single brick with more heartache seemingly etched into it than in the entire stadium it sits in front of.
“Still Single Because of You Amy Bergseth”
One can argue that Wrigley Field is itself the largest ode to heartbreak ever erected in the modern world. Its ivy covered brick walls have seen generations worth of anguish, the grass fertilized with tears shed over failure after failure as the boys in blue fail to get it done year in and year out. But the saddest brick of all on the property actually sits just outside the stadium, one of thousands lining the walkway in front of the entrance. It is there, lost amid memorials to Cubs fans who never saw it their beloved nine win it all and tributes to those whose lives are just beginning, slightly to the right of the marquee and about 150 feet away from the turnstiles that a lifetime of anguish is etched in a single red piece of dried earth.
For as many agonizing losses as the Cubs have suffered, all of them put together don’t encapsulate near the amount of despair that seemingly went into crafting the message on that brick.
“Still Single Because of You Amy Bergseth”
Every man who has ever lived has his own Amy Bergseth. She’s the one who got away, the one who liked sports and cooking her famous chicken parimigiana for you every Friday night after work…the one who told you “we need to talk” one night. Nothing good ever comes after that. Never. And nothing good came of it that night either. In true Forgetting Sarah Marshall style, your Amy Bergseth moved on about five minutes after the fact while you sat around in your underpants for three months not showering and eating Cocoa Puffs out of a flower pot as you checked her Facebook page to find out if she was thinking about you. She’s not, for the record. Not that I’d..er…know anything about that.
But who is Amy Bergseth? And why is someone immortalizing her in such fashion?
The above brick became the talk of the blogosphere after actor Jason Segel tweeted about it to his 600,000+ followers on Saturday. How it went undetected until then is beyond me, especially given the fact that I was able to find it with relative ease myself on Sunday morning during my normal walk to the park.
Segel’s tweet left people wondering — who is this girl? And how horrible must she have been to her former beau to inspire him to proclaim his heartache for all the world to see in what we presume was one of his favorite places in all the world? Who would sully their shrine in such fashion? It’s impossible not to read that brick and discover your inner Peter Bretter (that’s Segel’s character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall), a broken hearted shell of a man for the first 45 or so minutes of that movie after the woman he thought was the love of his life left him for a rock star. As stated above, we’ve all been there.
Or was it in fact a brilliant form of revenge? This Amy Bergseth who had broken some poor young soul’s heart…he was going to show her by letting the world know that she wasn’t at all like Kristen Bell’s easy, breezy movie star character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. No, that Amy Bergseth…she’s a cold hearted ruiner of lives and by God, all the world needed to know that. And while Amy Bergseth won the battle, Peter Bretter — er, this anonymous gentleman — was going to have his revenge for all eternity for all the world to see. Men would lionize him for getting back at his ex, women would sympathize with him as being a nice guy who got his heart broken. He was going to win.
Much like these flights of fantasy though, the story we cook up in our head is much more romantic than reality.
You see, that brick wasn’t bought by some scorned lover looking to exact revenge in some tiny, permant fashion. The real Amy Bergseth isn’t — near as I can tell — a cold hearted heartbreaker who leaves former suitors in ruins. In fact, she seems like a perfectly nice young lady who’s a little bit surprised about all the attention bestowed upon her since Segel’s tweet.
This is the real Amy Bergseth. She’s the one on the left in the picture and if looks are any indication, she does have a little Kristen Bell in her. LinkedIn tells us she’s a successful professional in Chicago with a solid education just like the rest of us. Only now, there are a lot more people are aware of her existence than there were 72 hours ago.
Bergseth took to — what else — Twitter the other night to explain the story behind the brick. Turns out it wasn’t some vindictive ex who immortalized her for all eternity in Wrigley Field lore, but rather another man. Her father.
@amybergsethAmy BergsethYes, that is my brick…my dad got it for me because I go to Cubs games and drink beer instead of settling down and moving to the suburbs.
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One tweet later, she’d admit that it’s not quite the romantic story we were likely all hoping for. But on some level, that’s actually not a terrible thing. This story has no Peter Bretter but rather a doting father who did something really cool for his daughter.
There’s no guy somewhere out there in the world sticking pins in an Amy Bergseth voodoo doll, pining away for the day she’ll come crawling back to him…or the day a TV camera catches his brick on TV and broadcasts his revenge to the entire world. The pain seemingly contained in that small brick is all in the eye of the person seeing it for the first time.
Bergseth herself is happy, single and likely at the game if there’s one going on that night. And who could blame her. There’s always next year, right?
