Last night, somewhere in the middle of the fourth quarter, I
looked at the man I was standing next to and said “I think we could win this.”
A smoker walked in from the front stoop to report that she’d
seen an enormous, tough-looking black guy in a football jersey standing on the
neighboring porch. “He can’t take the
pressure!” she cackled. Moments later,
he knocked on the door asking for Tylenol.
He was tearful and shaky. “My
father’s whole life, my whole life, my son – we been waitin’ for this. All we got is Tylenol PM, man, my head, it be
killin’ me.” Our host gave him a bottle
and a hug, and he made his way back to watch the final two minutes on an
enormous screen projected on the side of his double shotgun house.
When the Saints took a knee for the last forty seconds, we
all gathered up our sleepy children and our beers and poured out onto the street,
where every household was collecting in clusters, shouting and laughing. We could hear fireworks, honking cars,
screams from the bars a few blocks away.
We screamed – “Woooo-oo!” and “Yeah!”, and Jack said “woooo” in a tiny
voice, and smiled when we slung him up in our arms and cheered along.
On the drive home, I slapped a guy five through my open
window. Everyone shouted “Who Dat!” as we
paraded down the crowded streets. We
turned down Saint Charles, where
hundreds of people were whooping it up on the streetcar tracks. All was black and gold, and beads, and
feathers and masks and those umbrellas they carry for the second line. The young ones stuck out their thumbs,
begging for a ride to the Quarter, and we cheered and honked and passed them by,
taking our sleepy son home, where we would have to watch the French Quarter
madness on our tv. Two little old ladies
toddled out of their nursing home to stand in their bathrobes and slippers,
bare wrinkled knees and bare waving arms exposed in the chill, and we honked at
them, too. They hopped up and down and
cheered as we drove by.
This morning, a lovely spring-like day, I loaded Jack into his
wagon and pulled him and the dog on a long walk to Audubon
Park and back home. Everyone we met was dressed in black and
gold, dozens of people wearing Super Bowl Champions shirts, dozens of cars with
champion flags fluttering. A few blocks
from our house, we were stopped by a parade, a long line of elementary school
kids in homemade costumes representing The Tropical Forests of Brazil. Wearing colored feathers, paper crowns, neon
plastic ponchos, and clicking tap shoes, the kids marched in rough and tumble
lines, shepherded by busy teachers. They
were followed by a middle school marching band whose rockin’ beats urged my son
to dance and my dog to lose his mind with fear from the booming bass drums. A little boy threw purple beads at Jack, and
he clinked them on the side of his Radio Flyer as we followed the parade down
the streets toward home. Parade watchers
shouted “Who Dat!” and “How ‘bout
those Saints!” over the heads of the kids, and others stood on the porches of
their homes to see the costumed kids go by.
Nobody is at work today.
A woman saw pregnant me pulling Jack in his wagon and the
dog on his leash, and said “You totin’ three at once, ain’tcha?!” I smiled in reply, and said “Luckily at least
one is pretty well-behaved,” pointing at my belly, and she laughed. “Been there, baby, done that, you doin’
great. Who dat!” “Yeah Saints!”
Sometimes we feel a bit like poseurs, getting caught up in
this jubilation as if we’d earned it somehow.
The big man looking for Tylenol had waited his whole life for this,
meaning he lived here in 2005, meaning he came back. But division and exclusion are not what this
city is about this week, and that’s why it’s so easy to be wrapped up in the
joy. Anyone who happens to be in the
city right now is part of the Who Dat Nation.
And, too, the thousands who aren’t in the city, but long to be. It’s their victory more than ours, but I
don’t think they begrudge us a “Who Dat” or two.
Tomorrow we’ll cheer Shockey and Bush and Brees and Colton
and the rest of them when they parade down central city to a screaming
crowd. They aren’t the folks in Houston
and Mississippi and Alabama
and other far-flung states, coming home at last, but the city will welcome them
nonetheless, with one hell of a party I guarantee. New Orleans neophytes though we may be, you’d
better believe we’ll be howling along, catching beads, shouting Who Dat, and
hugging perfect strangers in a moment of pure, sweet, jubilant celebration. Tomorrow, Brees is as much my quarterback as
if I’d lived here my whole life, and I can’t wait to cheer my hero home.
Our team won, ya’ll.
WHO DAT!
:o)