10-0, 'Nuff Said

We are all nuts over the Saints. None of us can really believe this fantastic winning season -- we're on Cloud 9. We hardly know what to do with ourselves.

On Saturday, a woman from New Orleans called into the "Wait-Wait, Don't tell Me" radio game show on NPR, and after she identified her hometown, the audience applauded -- not something I remember happening regularly -- and the host asked solicitously, "How are things there now?" And the woman burbled, "Things are wonderful! The Saints are 9-0!" The studio audience went crazy laughing and one of the panelists, Paula Poundstone, asked in an unbelievable tone, "You've got levee worries, and you're not finished recovering from a major disaster, but things are great because your football team is winning??" The woman from New Orleans was not fazed one bit, and replied back brightly, "Oh yes, we love our boys!"

We do love our boys. Big Man and I ate in a hibachi restaurant on St. Charles Avenue (Myako, go, we recommend it) last Sunday night, with a table full of strangers, and we all got to talking about the Saints, and one person had to download the touchdown song they play at the Dome (for some weird reason, it's an Atlanta hip-hop song called "Let's Get Crunk") and then we all together were making the beat sound ("ernt-ernt") of that ubiquitous song. Pretty soon, we were passing plates around and urging each other to eat off our plates. It's the Saints -- they're pulling us all together.

Quarterback Drew Brees has become a kind of secular saint to us. The Times-Picayune had a front-page story recently about how Brees was visiting a little local girl sick of a serious disease, and how he and his wife's foundation have given away tons of money to a New Orleans public school. My niece E forwarded us an email showing a picture of an altered icon, turning Jesus's image into Drew's (it was called "Bree-sus" and while sacrilegious, it WAS funny). Another relative forwarded an email joke about how God is a Saints fan. (What's wrong with that? we want to know.)

If you are not from here, you too might find it all hard to believe. But Drew Brees and the Saints have given us something to cheer about weekly, excellence to applaud, and have renewed our bruised civic pride. With all we have to deal with -- and believe you me, it really is A LOT, still -- the Saints have brightened up our prospects and united the whole damn city in a frenzy of hopeful Saints-mania. People who hate professional football have caught the fever -- Big Man said seriously to me the other day (when we were "only" 8-0, mind you), "We need to go get some Saints jerseys." "Why?" I asked. It's not like we have Saints tickets or go to a bar or something; we watch the games at home, usually just the two of us. "We need jerseys to watch the games *at home*," Big Man said, totally deadpan and serious. (On Sundays, he's taken to saying, "Who dat!" to strangers on the street when he's walking the dog.) My sister L's husband, who's from England and doesn't even *understand* American football, is now a big Saints fan -- that's how it's gotten.

It's an amazing feeling. Thank you, Saints, and Sean Payton and Drew Brees and Gary Shockey and Darren Sharper, and all the rest of the "Bless You Boys" for what you're doing for us, and how you're making us feel.

[PS: We went to Academy to, yes, buy Saints apparel to watch the games in, and an employee told us they had completely sold out of Saints T-shirts and jerseys the Friday before the game. What we were looking at on Monday was the reorder, just delivered. In the same way that Academy moves hurricane supplies up to the front of the store when a storm is in the Gulf, they had moved all the Saints merch up by the door and there was a big crowd of New Orleanians picking over the goods.]

[PPS: Big Man says that for Monday's game, we have to put on our new shirts and go to a bar to watch the game. The man's in *AA* for pete's sake! But we got to have the communal experience.]