The Halloween of 1991 will go down as the most humiliating of my childhood.

Why? My cheerleading costume.

Sure, it sounds innocent enough, but my mother, in her non-sports-minded costume shopping spree, had made me … a Seahawks cheerleader.

I’ll never know what the people who answered their doors that night thought when I rang their bell, but I bet they wondered what sin I’d committed to deserve my mother putting me in that costume.

After all, the Seahags … Shehawks … Seahacks … whatever you wanted to call them, were the blackest of sheep in a city that knew disappointment like it knew the difference between Starbucks and Seattle’s Best Coffee. No one went to their games, no one bought their merchandise (except, clearly, my mother) and no one dared keep a stiff upper lip while holding back tears and saying solemnly, “Next year … there’s always next year.”

No if ands or buts about it, the Seahawks were the ugly girl with braces who did her best to attract the attention of the prom king, to no avail.

Now, it’s 15 years later, and that ugly girl with braces has turned into the Playmate of the Year. And wonder of wonders, she still wants Seattle’s love and attention.

Though I spent the fall in Seattle, I didn’t go back to the city I grew up in – the city that paid more attention to the salmon spawning season than it did to its teams losing in the playoffs … if they were lucky enough to get there in the first place. In the space of a season, Seattle had turned into a blue and green bleeding, feather covered, 12th man sort of city that you expect to find on the East Coast or the heartland of America. My brother’s 4th grade class all wore blue on Fridays, restaurants showed the games on their TVs while their patrons dined on “Seahawk Specials,” and people even stopped complaining about the monorail project long enough to scream their heads off when there was another brilliant play. Seattle, the city that sent out a memo kindly asking World Trade Organization protesters in 2000 not to riot in the city, has effectively flashed its tail feathers at Texas A&M, which officially copyrighted the “12th Man” slogan a few years ago and has been pestering the Seahawks to cease their usage of the slogan.

For once, the rain didn’t dampen the spirits of people on game day, and not even the snow in early December put their hopes for a playoff berth on ice. Even Paul Allen who rarely makes any public appearances (would you if you owned the biggest joke in the NFL?) came out to raise the 12th man flag and wave his white towel with the 80,000 plus fans that sold out Qwest Field for the first time since it was built.

It may not be the prettiest stadium in the country, but it was built for noise. There were more false starts by visiting teams in Qwest this season than in any other stadium in the NFL.

What can I say? That coffee gets us all riled up.

The insulting monikers are a thing of the past, at least for now. Catch phrases like “Superhawks” and “Birds of Prey” cover the sports pages, only adding to this team’s mythic dark-horse reputation.

Names of the players have become almost holy. Hasselbeck: The God with the Golden Arm, Alexander: God of Swiftness, Holmgren: God of Never changing Facial Hair.

Will they soar over the Steelers on Sunday, or come crashing down like Icarus, who dared fly too high only to plummet to the earth? Only time will tell.

But if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that the seats at Qwest will be much fuller next season because Seattleites don’t throw anything away. They recycle.

Meredith Griffin is a history senior from Seattle.