Strange Feelings

Sometime around the second week of August, the first of the NFL preseason games will begin. When preseason news and predictions start going around, I'm sure the thought will pop into my head, "Who won the Super Bowl last year?" I'm going to have to think for about a beat and a half before I remember, "Oh yeah, the Saints won!" At least that's how it's gone so far. I'm still in a state of disbelief that it actually happened. I can only figure that it hasn't fully sunk in for me yet. It's just so utterly unimaginable that I can't really wrap my mind around it. It's like believing in leprechauns or unicorns.

I hadn't planned on going to Mardi Gras this year, but when they announced that Drew Brees was going to be the King of Bacchus, I started thinking about it. Then when the Saints won, I had to go. I watched the parade from the corner of St. Mary and St. Charles. He looked good in his outfit, but he was just tossing beads underhand to people closest to the float. I was hoping that he'd show off his arm a little and throw them to people 30 yards away. Several other players, coaches and management people from the team rode in parades, including the owner Tom Benson, his daughter, Reggie Bush, Sean Payton, Will Smith and Jonathan Vilma. Those are just the ones I saw, and it doesn't count the Tuesday parade after the Super Bowl they had for the whole team. They used twelve floats from some of the big krewes like Bacchus, Endymion, Muses, etc. Crowd estimates were around 800,000 people. As a point of reference, New Orleans currently has about 400,000 living there. I couldn't get over how happy everybody seemed. I know New Orleans is a party town and a lot of people are happy for various reasons, but I've never seen such a strong sense of joy coming from everywhere. It was like nothing would ever go wrong again.

One of the most important consideration when going to watch the parades is to have a place to go to the bathroom. In recent years we've had some friends who had access to an apartment, but that wasn't the case this year. So managing--how should I say this--input and output became a major issue. I had a bowl of gumbo Saturday around 2pm, and then didn't eat again until around 12:30 Sunday. I went with two cousins to the Camellia Grill on Carrollton, which is a great place to have breakfast. Since I was just a tad hungry, I had some ice cream from Cold Stone while we were waiting in line outside. Once inside, I had a ham and cheese omelet with fries, and a New York strip steak with fries. I had a lot of fries. The staff there are lively and entertaining, and the people sitting next to us were really pleasant. A good time was had by all.

By far the most surprising thing about Mardi Gras this year was the amount of love my cousin's husband got from wearing his script A Alabama hat. We couldn't believe it. "Roll Tide!" "Alabama!" "Roll Tide!" all over the place. Guys on floats would point at him, throw him a bunch of beads, then point at his hat or at their head, signifying that they liked Alabama. I can only assume that there's a surprisingly (disturbingly) large contingent of Gulf Coast Alabamians who have made their way to New Orleans and joined krewes.

NOTE: the word editor on this thing underlines "Mardi Gras," "krewe," and "Carrollton," but leaves "Alabamians" untouched.

I used to ask myself which I would rather have happen: the Cubs to win the World Series or the Saints to win the Super Bowl. I think I came down on the side of the Saints, because it was a Louisiana team and it had never happened before. I made the right decision. The sheer elation and long lasting joy that took over the state was really amazing.