Believe in Now.

Driving to the game yesterday, my husband Charlie and I saw a big red truck with, “I’m driving the bandwagon,” written on the side of it.  We laughed, because we were jumping on the bandwagon.
“Have you been to a Cardinals game,” Charlie asked?
“Sure,” I laugh again. “I use to sell souvenirs like t-shirts, hats, and pom-poms.” My first job, when I was in 8th grade, was selling t-shirts at Park-N-Swap. "I was pretty good at it, too. I sold a lot of t-shirts!"
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, when I was in college that was the only way I could get into the game. I rarely got to see the game, but I was there. You wouldn’t believe how many people bought shirts year after year.”
“Did you make a lot of money?”
“Nah, I didn’t make a single dime. The money went to non-profit organizations. I worked for Young Life and the American Hydrogen Association and they earned a certain portion of the sales. I don’t know how much. All I know is that working in the concessions is a lot of hard work. But, I have to be honest; the fans remained hopeful all of those years when the Cardinals weren’t doing well. This is huge for Arizona.”
“Yes, yes it is.” Charlie agreed.

Later on, when we were trying to park the car, I checked out all of the banners. There were two that stood out in my mind.

Believe in Now
Shock the World

I had to pinch myself …this was Arizona and we, the fans had made it, and all of those people I sold t-shirts to were wearing them! It was a sea of red.  You could feel the excitement in the parking lot. Everyone was hooting and hollering.  I saw two people wearing green ….they were little rebel teenagers.  I might have done the same once upon a time, but now I was part of a bigger group, grateful to be there.
Charlie’s blackberry kept buzzing with friends asking where his seats were. He would punch something in and I would ask too.
“You have to tell me.” I would beg. I wanted to daydream about the view from our seats. Anything had to be better than being stuck behind the stadium, where you could only hear the noise.
The minute we got out of the truck, we began searching for friends tailgating. We must have walked the entire parking lot, but we found several who had been there since early morning. Eventually we made our way to the long lines of people trying to get into the stadium.
“We don’t have to stand in that line,” Charlie said.
“What do you mean?” My heart nearly stopped. “Don’t we get to go inside?”
“Of course, but we get to go in this line over here.” Charlie pointed to a very short line.
“What kind of tickets are these?”
“You’ll see.”
Before long, we were sitting with the folks of KTAR, the voice of news radio, in their bird’s nest where we could see everything. I grew up listening to KTAR, not because that was the station I chose, but because my parents listened to it every morning. The announcers voice would crackle trough our home while mom got us ready in the morning.   Thinking back on those days and reflecting through the years to now, I know I’m the luckiest person in the whole entire world.
The stadium was red with fans waving white towels. The cheerleaders on the field were jumping up and down. There were two boxes a blazed with fire and a football team running through all of it, pumped to win the game. Out comes the biggest American flag I had ever seen …it was the size of the entire football field. Tears run down my face as I sing our song with seventy-five thousand grateful fans.
The goose bumps didn’t fade until the third quarter when my stomach turned into a knot. When we lost the lead, I told the guy next to me, “This is going to be bad if Arizona looses. “
He agreed. "It's not the Cardinals that would loose, it's Arizona."
I’m not sure what happened after that. The crowd went wild. It was so loud and everything was happening so fast that I felt like I missed all of the brilliant moves.  Everyone was high-fiving and I was screaming, “Let’s Go Cardinals!”
Somehow we won.  We shocked the world and everyone was a believer in now.
I feel like we have already won the game with going to the Super Bowl. How lucky are we that the Cardinals get to play the Steelers?
Thanks KTAR for letting us be a part of it and thank you Cardinal fans for buying so many t-shirts and believing.