Today, I will try to get off work early, rush to pick up my two children, Sophia and Brewer, and hurry home to catch the beginning of the Vikings-Packers game on Monday Night Football.

The meetings between the Vikings and rival Packers is big stuff in the Williams household, much to the chagrin of my wife, Heidi.

It is biggest for me and my 7-year-old daughter. She's a diehard Vikings fan, taking the lead of her father and both grandparents. (Oddly, my 4-year-old son is only a sometimes Vikings fan, pledging allegiance at the beginning of last season to eventual Super Bowl champions New York Giants. Obviously, he wasn't born with the curse.)

I know, it's tantamount to abuse for football fans. It's like raising your child to be a Chicago Cubs fan. But it's tradition.

I should know better. The Vikings history is littered with unbelievable failures, brutal upset losses and downright miserable mistakes. But optimism springs eternal for those willing to cheer for the purple and gold, and I can only hope that Sophie's Vikings will be oh so more successful than those of me and my father's youth.

Here's a quick glance at five moments that essentially define the Vikings franchise, one which only the most hearty can overcome and still wear the horned helmets with pride.

5. Opportunity knocks, but the deaf Vikings don't answer the call

There is only one Super Bowl featuring the Vikings I can really remember. It was 31 years ago, and the decade long dominance the team from Minnesota had over the NFC was beginning to evaporate.

Fran Tarkenton was getting old, as were the Purple People Eaters. That being said, there was more optimism going around Minnesota over hopes for a Super Bowl win since their first loss in 1970 at the hands of the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs.

It seemed to surge even during the game. An early game blocked punt against the Raiders - the first of Ray Guy's illustrious career - put the Vikings deep in Oakland territory.

Two plays later, their surging hopes were put six feet under as Brent McClanahan fumbled the ball - and the Vikings hope for Super Bowl - away. The Raiders went on to trounce Minnesota, the last time the purple and gold would make it to the big game.

The odd thing about the blocked kick and ensuing fumble is that it happened in the biggest game. Usually, as history has attested, the Vikings choked long before the big game.

4. The most hated man in Minnesota

Under normal circumstances, the Vikings keep their disasters limited to the playing field. But in 1989, they pulled off a tour de force of front office mismanagement when they traded away five key players and six draft picks - a number of them first and second rounders - for running back Herschel Walker.

The man behind the madness was Vikings general manager Mike Lynn. To be fair, there were more than a few in the House of Purple that believed the Vikings were one good running back away from sustained success. They had spent the previous two seasons being held back by their offense, and a star running back certainly would have helped their cause.

However, that back was not Herschel Walker.

The trade essentially gutted the Vikings solid core. There were still star players left, but they gave up a stable of veterans to the Cowboys. Some of them quickly returned to the Vikings; some didn't.

Walker, meanwhile, floundered in the Vikings scheme where the passing game often set up the running game. After 3-1/2 years, the Vikes cut ties with the running back, who eventually found his way back to Dallas.

What really hurt was the first round draft picks with which the Cowboys used to build their 1990s dynasty. As the Vikings' fortunes plummeted, Dallas used the picks to build the nucleus that would include the likes of Emmit Smith, Russell Maryland and Darren Woodson.

The facts were not lost on the purple faithful, who quickly vilified Lynn and eventually ran him out of town. I once interviewed Mike Lynn's brother over supper at the Franklin Hotel in Deadwood in the early 1990s. He alluded to the fact that although his brother likely didn't deserve all the blame for the Vikings fortunes but that it didn't surprise him that the Vikings' executive found himself in that position.

There are those who argue that Mike Lynn is the worst executive in Minnesota sports history, which is really something considering the current lots of the Twins and Timberwolves.

I argue just the opposite. Mike Lynn is one of the most successful GM's in National Football League history. It's just too bad it was all the Cowboys' success.

3. Cardinal sins

The thing about most Vikings disasters, they generally happen against fairly good teams. Not so with the 2003 (corrected from earlier version so acutely pointed out by good samaritan reader) season finale against the dreadful Arizona Cardinals.

The Cards were 3-12 heading into the game, had lost seven games in a row and were simply awful. Minnesota was enjoying a season similar to the 2000 year when they had made it to the NFC Championship Game before getting rubbed out by the New York Giants.

On paper, it didn't look like the Cardinals - whose defense was at best average and its offense just putrid - could put up a fight against the high scoring Vikings offense, with quarterback Dante Culpepper and receiver Randy Moss leading the charge.

Besides, Minnesota had everything to play for, which, in Vikings' fans catalog, proved to be the perfect recipe for one of those perfect Vikings moments.

In an odd moment of Vikings fan optimism, I had predicted before the game that they might lose to the Cards but that like the final game of the 1987 season (which they had lost to the Cards), they would lost the game but still back into the playoffs. I was wrong.

At the two minute warning, the Vikes led 17-6, basically a insurmountable lead - unless you're playing against the purple and yellow, that is. On a fourth down and two, Cardinals QB Josh McCown found Steve Bush in the endzone to cut the Vikings lead to 17-12 with 1:54 left to play. A two-point attempt failed, but the Cardinals recovered an onside kick, which they took advantage of until with seconds to go, it looked like the Vikings would win and capture the NFC North title.

Arizona drove down the field but looked like they were out of it after a pair of sacks by Vikings stalwarts Kevin Williams and Chris Hovan. Then, with no time left on the clock, McCown floated up a 28 yard pass to Nathan Poole on a fourth down and 25 to score the game winning touchdown. Poole's feet never hit the endzone, but he was forced out by the Vikes' Denard Walker and the win went to the hapless Cardinals.

So the Cards won, and the Packers went on to defeat Denver later that day and prevent the Vikings from making the playoffs.

To this day, I have one word for Vikings fans who claim to be optimists: phhhhhhttttt!

2. The Miss

Many modern day Viking fans - and by modern day, I mean fans that are younger than 30 - consider this to be the most shocking loss in the annals of the 47 year old Vikings.

Those of us who have been around a little longer know better.

When the Vikings blew a 10 point lead in the fourth-quarter to the upstart Atlanta Falcons in the 1998 NFC Championship Game, a pair of friends that accompanied me to watch the game on the big screen at Diamond Lil's remarked to me when Morton Andersen kicked the game winning field goal for the Falcons, "Can you believe that? I can't believe it!"

Not only could I believe it; I had come to expect it.

I remember telling them, "Yeah, I figure'd they blow it. I just didn't know how. It was pretty creative."

The creative part was that with just over two minutes left and the opportunity to put the game away, the Vikings kicker Gary Anderson lined up for a gimme 38 yard field goal to basically put the game away.

It was a gimme because Anderson had set the NFL record for perfection that season, never missing a field goal or extra point. It was a gimme because he was at home with no pressure and kicking in the kicker friendly confines of the Hubert H. Humphrey Dome.

Of course, he missed. The rest is history.

1. The original Hail Mary pass

I think the main thing everyone needs to know about the original Hail Mary pass from Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson in the 1975 seminfinal playoff game between the Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys.

In describing the play, the entry reads that "as the ball came down Pearson stopped and pushed (cornerback Nate) Wright. Pearson caught the ball pinned slightly against his right hip and ran into the end zone for the winning touchdown.

The pass got its name from a post-game interview with Staubach in which he told reporters he closed his eyes and chucked the ball, saying a Hail Mary prayer. Needles to say, the Cowboys won the game.

It is the defining moment in my tortured career as a Viking fan. Up until then, I actually believed that the Vikings would one day win a Super Bowl - probably even before I reached adulthood.

I can remember watching the end of the game, listening to my father curse at the screen a little (and then recoil a bit when an a drunken fan plunked the referee with the empty whiskey bottle) and then going outside to relish in my gloom.

It was winter in Duluth, so it wasn't like there were a lot of people outside. But I remember my best friend, Kip Greotteum, who lived next door walking out onto his porch, slamming the door behind him and bursting into tears.

That pretty much sums up the experience of being a Vikings fan for me - it's a long, cold winter with glimmers of hope interrupted by sudden, sharp bursts of tears. But hey, there's always next year.