Please Win, Because It’s My Birthday

The girl in Section 22, Row 1, Seat 18 has never been to a Boston Celtics game. And it’s her birthday. And she’d really like them to win. So goes the paragraph of word-processed, hand-cut, glued on text coating both sides of her makeshift sign. Or, rather, the manila file folder coated in Google images that she holds by a taped-on comb from school picture day. The first three rows are speckled with grateful gift recipients. Across the court, a sign written in three-inch sparkly blue letter stickers rises from the third row every so often to proclaim, “BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER! Thanks Mom and Dad! ARMY STRONG!” In the second row of Section 1, the next section over, a woman turns around to defend her husband from the cackling green-shirted beer drinkers in Row 3.

“It’s his birthday!”

“Ohh . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY!,” they all shout in drunken unison.

“That’s why he’s got such a tall, fruity drink,” she adds, indicating the two-foot-high, weakling’s-dumbbell-shaped novelty glass of strawberry daquiri clutched in her husband’s hand.

“And my twin’s over there!” He points to a man standing at the other end of the row, “Over the Hill” birthday hat slightly cockeyed as he finishes off his plastic beer cup. The joke falls flat, but the point is clear: in the first three rows, it seems like it’s everyone’s birthday.

But the girl in Section 22, Row 1, Seat 18 – her sign says it’s her birthday four times. It’s really her birthday, and she wants the world to know. At least, she wants the man with the Jumbotron camera to know, and Celtics #41, Kelly Olynyk, if he happens to turn around and see his shoulder-length hair and headband featured five times on her file folder. Each time the buzzer sounds to announce the end of a play, she’s on her feet, desperately hoisting her sign in one hand and waving the other, first at each player who looks her way, then in all directions of the arena, green eyes flashing from the Jumbotron to the sections and rows of full seats, in search of the man with the camera.

Play after play, she reclaims her seat, posts an update to Facebook or checks for new likes and comments, maybe a couple last minute birthday posts, devours a spoonful or two from her melting pile of chocolate ice cream, glances at her phone again, checking for chocolate smudges in its reflective surface, and, finally, scoots to the edge of her seat to watch with mouth open the game taking place only four feet in front of her. In the last audience pan, the Jumbotron man skipped over her color-printed Google images for the girl in Section 13, Row 1, long, straight hair falling over her cell phone and black dress, ignoring both the game and the grubby little boys to either side of the fringes of her fur-lined coat. One boy took a bite from the remnants of a hot dog, the other stared at the floor – none of the three realized they’d been put on view as a dysfunctional Norman Rockwell for approximately 17,000 spectators.

In Section 22, Row 1, Seat 18, the dedication to green is uncanny. She’s lucky with the eyes, the tight, green Celtics T-shirt is a given, but in her green nails, beads, and braces, she’s a spectacular eyesore to the sparse gathering of Oklahoma City Thunder fans in the audience. And she’d be even more so if she could get on screen.

“Where’dya get your glasses, Scottie? Westbrook give ‘em to ya?” Row 3 directs this outburst at the suited man in Atticus Finch glasses at the end of the court. And maybe they’re right – Scott Brooks, Oklahoma City’s head coach of six years, joined the team the same year as point guard Russell Westbrook, who turned out to be something of a “fashion pioneer” when he garnered attention at a press conference with his thick-rimmed, lens-less red glasses and patterned polo, colorful fish-hook design suggesting an intention to capture every one, and two, of Dr. Seuss’s red fish and blue fish. When asked why he chose to wear glasses without lenses, Westbrook responded, “I see better without ‘em.” Today the glasses have their own Facebook page, Westbrook has the attention of high-profile designers, and even the Thunder’s head coach seems to be getting into the trend. Maybe the Jumbotron is looking for fashion statements, and in Section 22, Row 1, Seat 18, unless her braces lack wires because, “her teeth get straighter without ’em,” green just isn’t cutting it.

There are fifteen seconds left and the Celtics are clearly losing.

“Siddown, Scottie!” from Row 3, as Brooks jumps up to debate the results of another foul on the part of Olynyk. Meanwhile, down Row 1 from Seat 18, a man complains about his seats “in the penalty box.”

“What’s wrong?” simpers his wife, “I thought I got you guys good seats. Next time I guess I’ll take you to the Knicks.”

The Celtics lose 83-101 and the girl in Section 22, Row 1, Seat 18 lowers her manila folder for the final time. She shrouds her green in a black Northface and enters the aisle all of her birthday “twins” and the drunken spectators from Row 3. The mass exodus breaks apart onto the frigid streets of mid-January Boston and into the North Station trains beneath the arena. It was only her first Boston Celtics game. Maybe next time she’ll earn her 15 seconds of fame. And maybe next time they’ll win.