The Lunch Report: Leaving Who Dat Nation

Apologies for taking so long to share my lunch experience with you. Usually I like to write about my lunch when all the flavors and tastes are still fresh on my tongue. The tastes from recent lunches were so overwhelming that it's taken me two weeks to make sense of them.

I spent the last two weekends lunching in Who Dat Nation. No, I am not mocking anyone's speech patterns. "Who Dat Nation"* is a legitimate reference to the community of New Orleans Saints fans, a community that has had good reason to celebrate lately.

Unruly and unbridled passion—my own or others—has always scared me. Yet, passion was exactly what I was hoping to find down there. I found passion, someone else's passion—another city's passion—but not my own.

This was not for lack of effort. On January 16th, I attended the Saints game against the Arizona Cardinals, my first NFL game ever. For goodness sakes, I wore a body length gold lamé unitard with a Drew Brees jersey on top and screamed myself horse in the New Orleans Super Dome. I even participated in Bobby Hebert's* live post-game radio program held at Deanie's Seafood Restaurant. To my surprise, the experience far exceeded my expectations.

So I prolonged the effort. I spent a second weekend in New Orleans and even hosted a Saints party at a suite in one of the French Quarter’s historic hotels (a bit redundant considering you can’t spit in the French Quarter without hitting an historical landmark). I watched the Saints defeat the Vikings in over time while dining on fried chicken and sharing shots with my new best friends, most of whom I’d never met.

They weren’t all strangers. A male friend hosted the party with me. Even well before the 5:40pm kick-off, he had been transformed by Who Dat delirium. Throughout the game he was a black and gold storm of energy leaping from one room to another, opening beers, hugging male friends and glaring at the TV, daring the Vikings to try to take his team down. The only time he sat still was when Hartley prepared for the final kick that made the whole Who Dat fantasy real.

Then the craziness really began. All the NYTimes' accounts of the revelry that followed the Saints' victory against the Vikings on January 24th are true. City-wide high fives, an early Mardi Gras celebration on Bourbon Street, and the Who Dat chant* reverberating throughout the Quarter. I wished I could have immersed myself in it but it turned out not to be my style.

A part of me wouldn’t let myself be swept away by their joy. If I were the protagonist in my own life—and sadly I usually am not—my inability to cede to passion would be my tragic flaw. I wanted to know what it felt like to want or need to hug strangers.

Maybe I knew deep down that there is always a dark side to every passion. Like when your male friend—the Southern gentleman who allegedly has nothing but the utmost respect for all his female acquaintances—begins pawing a tired bar tendress at 2am, tells her she's the most beautiful waitress he's ever seen, and then shoots an icy stare at you and snaps "Don't be jealous."

Yes, despite all of the bohemian freedoms of the Crescent City,* where even the water meter covers boast "Love, Faith & Strength,"* they still try to tell you what you should feel and lash out at you when they think you're feeling the wrong thing. Ironically, I was not jealous at all—I was perversely intrigued by how properly inspired "passion" can manifest itself as recklessness, thoughtlessness and immaturity, the dark side of passion.

Maybe I'm just a spoil sport. After all, I saw two of the most exciting football games in NFL history. I witnessed firsthand a tangible surge in New Orleanians’ morale, as the entire nation focused its attention on their city and their team.

Despite all of that, I felt sad, inadequate and irritated. Sad and inadequate because I did not want to run down Bourbon Street, hug strangers or kiss the ground. Sad and irritated because even a "good" friend thinks excitement is a fair excuse for insulting behavior. Maybe I just digest things differently. I'm beginning to think I like reading about Who Dat Nation in the NYTimes much better than I do spending time among its citizens. Maybe it's time to leave Who Dat Nation and revoke my citizenship. Maybe. I’ll watch one more game this weekend and then decide . . .

Notes
*See http://www.whodatnation.com; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Dat%3F

*Bobby Hebert, Jr. is a retired quarterback for the New Orleans Saints who works now as a sportscaster. The "Cajun Canon," as he is known, holds a live radio show after each Saints game at Deanie’s seafood restaurant and responds to questions called in to the program or, in my case, delivered live at the restaurant on the mike. Granted, I could have come up with a more probing question rather than throwing Bobbie a curve ball (sorry to mix sports metaphors) and ask whether Reggie Bush was single. If I took the time to read Page Six more often, I would have known that he has an on and off thing with Kim Kardashian.

*New Orleans is also known as The Crescent City because of the way the Mississippi flows through it, creating the shape of a crescent.

*The water meter covers in New Orleans are so artistically noteworthy that people would steal them as souvenirs. Many souvenir shops in the Quarter now make pendants and rings featuring the water meter cover, its stars and "Love, Faith & Strength" motto in the hopes that people will purchase the souvenirs and leave in tact the few water meter covers that remain.

*Who Dat chant refers to the Saints’ cheer: "Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?" I wish I could provide an audio link to the entire Super Dome chanting this. Without that, it’s difficult to appreciate this cheer.