You might think, following UVA’s loss in the Sweet Sixteen, that I no longer consider my orange pants lucky. But you’d be dead wrong.1. The Lucky Orange Pants have allowed you to witness firsthand my utter and obsessive three decades long love for my Wahoos. It’s always been there – I’ve just kept it a secret because I want us to stay friends.
2. But the power of the Lucky Orange Pants extends far beyond my ridiculous and complex superstitions. They have co-opted friends and family into doing bizarre things, including but not limited to, wearing a pillow as a hat, rooting for our opponents, and almost naming a newborn after members of the team. The power of the Lucky Orange Pants even got a Tech fan to wear orange pants on Friday night.
3. The Lucky Orange Pants can take partial credit for UVA’s most exhilarating season in 25 years. 30 wins. 18 straight ACC home wins. Regular season champs. Tourney champs. Sweet Sixteen. ‘Nuff Said.
4. The Lucky Orange Pants took the girl inside them on the trips of her lifetime to games at JPG, the ACC Tournament, and 2 NCAA games. They even made it on TV. They watched as Wahoo fans totally dominated Greensboro Coliseum, PNC Arena and Madison Square Garden.
5. The Lucky Orange Pants were brought to you in part by my patient and understanding husband, who didn’t blink an eye for three consecutive weekends when we roadtripped to every post-season game. Even when I said we needed to sell one of the kids to buy tickets. Even as I wrote my 300th post about Tony Bennett.
6. The Lucky Orange Pants touched Tony Bennett, Joe Harris and the rest of the team. Frankly, that makes them the luckiest fucking pants in the world.
7. The Lucky Orange Pants are categorically and emphatically proud of the Wahoos and their season. For those of you with perennially successful basketball teams, the LOP say whoop-de-doo. We are truly happy for you and in awe of your success. But your years of accomplishment have made you jaded and slightly entitled. On the other hand, when your team excels at mediocrity and disappointment instead, your fans are so innocently giddy at success that their excitement rivals that of a 5 year old on Christmas morning. And that is amazeballs.
Being in love is hard. You can’t eat or sleep. You get your heart broken. And you cry.
But the upside…well, the upside is that you’re utterly and hopelessly in love.
So no, friends, these pants aren’t just lucky. They’re magic. And they’re ready for next season…
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