Super Bowl week has had many expected highlights. We interviewed Deion Sanders, Justin Jefferson, Jayden Daniels, Joe Montana, and many other current and former stars of the NFL.
Sunday morning brought an unexpected I-think-I-just-shit-my-pants moment.
My wife, my brother-in-law, his wife, and me went out for breakfast at a spot near our hotel in the French Quarter. I wanted a second cup of coffee but I didn’t feel like standing in the line at the bakery again. So when I got back, I walked over to the coffee shop in the hotel lobby. The line was about five deep, and it stretched out the door to the phone-booth-sized store.
I stood to the right of the entrance. Someone else was waiting to my left. Low key. Incognito. Unassuming.
I glanced over. It was Samuel L. Jackson.
The pulse quickened. The nerves on the back of the neck tingled. The mind raced.
I wanted to do the fanboy thing and start gushing. But he had the force fields up, which I respected. That’s entirely his prerogative — especially since he surely gets mobbed wherever he goes.
But, man, it was Samuel L. Jackson. He was Stacks in Goodfellas. Jules in Pulp Fiction. Ordell Robbie in Jackie Brown. Stephen in Django Unchained. Major Marquis Warren in The Hateful Eight. Five of my all-time favorite movies, featuring the guy standing literally two feet away.
I kept wrestling with blurting something out and respecting his desire to be left alone. I kept trying to come up with something.
“Make that coffee to go, right?”
“Are you ordering some serious gourmet shit?”
“I hope nobody poisoned the coffee.”
But I knew he didn’t want to be bothered. Especially not by some schmuck like me. I still wanted to talk to him. I mean, it’s the one time in my life that I’ll have a chance to speak to Samuel L. Jackson. I had to say something.
So after he paid (I didn’t notice if his wallet still said “Bad Mother Fucker”) and started to leave, I mustered the nerve. Gathered my thoughts. Opened my mouth. And out came this: “I’m not gonna bother you, but we love you.”
Which probably made him wonder who in the fuck “we” is, since it was just me. (The “we” was supposed to mean my son and me.)
Of course, there’s a decent chance that what I think I said and what I actually said were two different things. It might have been even more gibberish-ish than I recall.
Regardless, of all the unforgettable moments from a full week in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX, that’s the one I’ll always remember.
And if I ever run into him again, maybe he’ll recognize me and say, “Yeah, you’re that dumbass who said ‘we’ while you were standing there all by yourself.”
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