A crying Bills fan has gone viral, and I can’t stop thinking about it. The whole country, it seems, is laughing at us. Laughing at our latest misfortune. Another heartbreaking playoff loss to the Chiefs. Quite the turn of events, because like everyone in Buffalo, I was flying high on vibes the past couple months. What an improbable journey the Bills took to even get into this position. I sincerely thought it was our year. Mahomes wouldn’t win this time.
I was wrong and it was, in fact, not our year. And I couldn’t quite figure out my feelings about everything. You sort of get used to this sort of thing in Buffalo. It doesn’t make it any easier though. But then that’s when I saw him plastered across social media. An uncomfortable closeup of a Bills fan breaking down and crying. Already a meme mere moments after the game. Shock. Disappointment. Heartache. Everything you want in a good old-fashioned tragedy. It was all on that young man’s face. Tears that seemed to jump out at me from whatever screen I was staring at. Like little tentacles digging into my brain and heart forcing me to peer inward.
And in spite of my defense mechanisms, I did.
Just before Christmas, I was walking down Hertel and saw a fire hydrant wearing an ugly Buffalo Bills Christmas sweater. Something you don’t see everyday but, you know, Buffalo’s a weird place, so I wasn’t completely taken aback. However, I couldn’t look away. I was transfixed, hypnotized almost, and the more I stared, the more I thought there’s a deeper meaning here. And not just somebody’s idea of a joke or an exercise in Mafia fandom. But what?
So I Googled “fun facts about fire hydrants” to jumpstart a forced epiphany and learned that a fire hydrant can cry up to 1,500 gallons of water per minute. Pretty crazy right? While I found this fact to be interesting, what could I really do with it? Also, the fact that a neighborhood fire hydrant is a big Bills fan provided me some sort of poetic uplift, but other than a barroom yarn, it wasn’t like I accidentally stumbled upon the gospel or universal truth about the human condition. I threw it like an errant pass into the sideline of my subconscious. There it sat waiting.
After scrolling through social media for an uncomfortable amount of time, I saw a couple tweets with the photo of the crying Bills fan and the captions said, “When you shoveled all that snow for nothing” and “When you shoveled snow for 8 hours for a little over 100$ after taxes just to watch the Chiefs win.” And I’m thinking enough is enough. Why bring weather and New York State taxes into this? Sure, you can point out things on the field, but now you’re putting a target on our spirit and way of life. It’s a domino effect of grievances: lake effect snow, bad luck, blue-collar, no money, the things we carry every day of our lives.
Like being struck by lightning, I realized it was about more than just football and I began seeing our crying compatriot as someone not upset over another Bills loss, but someone so thankful to be alive. In other words, this poor dude is a symbol of everything that Buffalo has suffered and survived through. He is our patron saint.
We may not have Taylor Swift and the adoration of pundits all across the nation, but what we do have is our thick-skinned vulnerability. Then it appeared in my mind, a vision of that fire hydrant wearing that ugly Buffalo Bills Christmas sweater. It made so much sense to me because every Buffalonian is a fire hydrant.
How we bottle up a lot then throw on a blue and red Band-Aid over everything. We wear it with pride, but know it covers up a wound. A big gaping pit full of hurt and it’s personal and communal and familial all rolled into one. It goes where we go. But it doesn’t drag us down and it doesn’t make us gloat. But the moment we see smoke anywhere in the place that we love, we turn into fire hydrants and spring into action. We use what we’ve been through and make sure to pull our neighbors out of the rubble or through any storm. Because we know how it feels and you don’t. How many fires do we put out every day of our lives? Too many to count. Because we’re built for this and you’re not.
See you next season…
Lead image: Image created by Buffalo Rising using an AI program developed by OpenAI.
Tyler Fields is your internet guru, delving into the latest trends, developments, and issues shaping the online world. With a focus on internet culture, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies, Tyler keeps readers informed about the dynamic landscape of the internet and its impact on our digital lives.
