After their humiliating defeat to the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday dropped the Chicago Bears to a hopeless 5-8 record with virtually no chance to make the playoffs, Donald Richardson, an obnoxiously optimistic Cubs fan in Naperville, has been going around his office building telling coworkers, “Hang in there! This could be our year! We’re still in this thing!”

Richardson, who comes in to work every April 1st in full Cubs gear excitedly shouting statements such as, “This is our year, I can feel it!” and “I think this is the year that Travis Wood is really going to turn things around!” has been constantly informing his frustrated office mates that “technically, the Bears could still make it!” and “Cutler’s got an arm on him, I’d not count us out quite yet!”

“You know, all we need is the 49ers, Seahawks, and Lions to lose every game while the Bears finish the season undefeated,” said Richardson. “And hoping that Minnesota, New Orleans, and St. Louis all lose more than one game as well, and we’re talking six seed here. I don’t know, I think our boys have got it in them!”

According to his coworkers, Richardson, who often enjoys saying, “It’s such a beautiful morning!” to no one in particular on the elevator, and who repeatedly has said, “Derrick Rose should take all the time off he needs, if we have him healthy in the playoffs, here comes championship number 7!” tends to rub people the wrong way with his impossibly sunny attitude, and lately has been alienating his coworkers by constantly assuring them that “Mel Tucker is just doing the best he can, and God bless him for it!”

Jeff GoodSmith