One night, when I was married, during the first year of Crystal Palace in the Premier League, I went to a home game that we won. I came in around midnight and woke my wife with an enthusiastic shake. “Oh my God, what's it?” She cried, maybe she imagined that the house was on fire. “We are 15th,” I said.
It is proof of the priorities of most people that we do not choose our football club because we think they will win. We become part of the club because of where we live or our family connections.
Fans of Walsall or Plymouth do not end every season with the thought: “Oh no, again, we didn't win the Champions League, I wonder if I should have chosen another team.”
When I was 18, I moved to Crystal Palace because a friend lived there in a road of filthy squats and it seemed exciting to go with him.
I went to watch the local team and learned the rituals, from singing happy with the players, the other songs, wearing red and blue and moaning over the players.
On a week, during a terrible game, Palace equalized with an accident shot that bounced from someone's back and just bobed the ball over the line.
The man behind me shouted great. I have always said that football is better if both teams are s ***. '.
Since those days I have written, knocked on, grins, roared and twisted me in inscrutable forms, according to whether my team has admitted a penalty, hit the post, scored or a decision had referred to VAR.
I first took my son with me when he was four. About halfway through the second half he complained that he was bored and wanted to go home.
Then he said in a week: “I'm tired of it.” I said, “There is only 20 minutes left,” and he said, “It's not that, I want us to score.” I knew I had brought all this.
Since then we have been to hundreds of competitions throughout the country. Other families can go to therapy to learn to express affection, but we hug each other because Jean-Philippe Mateta has just been leveled against Brentford.
Most football clubs maintain the same feeling of quirky local pride that I feel in every city I visit for my radio series. The local population loves the crazy idiosyncrasies that make their place unique, without believing that this makes them better than other cities, their clubs or their fans.
Unless you are a fan of one of the top clubs that you do not expect an annual glory, you celebrate the joyful sense of community of a shared journey of hope and disappointment.
Twice Palace almost went bankrupt, the current owners who save the edge of bankruptcy. A side that consisted of players who could not come to the Second Division teams for which they played, together with Wilfried Zaha – who was raised next to the ground – the team was promoted in the Premier League and we have been there since then. We play among top clubs that are no longer owned by rich business people, they are owned by economic regions.
So the majority of the country supports the smaller club when they get a final because they loved the Premier League title of Leicester or the FA Cup victory of Wigan. It was small memories that obscene wealth does not guarantee a victory in football or in life.
This year it is Palace's chance to break the rules, while we compete against Manchester City in the FA Cup final.
It would be so much easier to cope if we had almost no chance, but we have a team that excites even the best experts, which is compiled with a huge vision, by gathering beautiful previously unknown players and a glorious calm and astute manager in Oliver Glasner.
So for me every moment is more nervous than the previous one. I imagined that Palace was able to win, including a 5-4 victory after being 4-0 lower, a 1-0 victory of a last-minute own goal of Erling Haaland, a volley of our goalkeeper Dean Henderson who is trapped in a Freak-Storm and drives 100 Yards in the goal or a 97-96 victory.
This game doesn't matter too much for city fans. In 20 years, many of them will not be able to distinguish it from their other 20 trips to Wembley around this time.
It will just be another day out, no more memorable than the day they came to the home base for some shelves.
Their fans will arrive on their seats five minutes before the start and chat over the road works on the M6.
But the Palace End of Wembley will be packed an hour earlier, everyone's guts and intestines run like the spinc cycle of a 40-degree wash.
We will roar like a jet motor, insist, willing and screaming while we wear the memories of thousands of hours, rickety -like tournics and rush by Croydon to come to games, and loved ones who had to tolerate our love for a team that never won a trophy, but now it might be possible.
And if we do that, we will all go back to South London on a wave of eloquence and wake everyone in the world who sleeps to let them know that we have won the FA Cup.