Peter Diana, Post-Gazette The president greets royalty. Click photo for larger image.

I've loved the Steelers my whole life. But it wasn't till after I moved out of Pittsburgh that I'd say I actually became a fan.

Like any disgruntled teenager, I spent a lifetime wanting to leave my hometown behind.

It took a while. But when I finally did leave three years ago -- in a jet-set exploration of New York, San Francisco and Boston, finally settling on Washington, D.C., when I got a job with ABC News -- I realized something so perverse and unexplainable, it was hard to believe: I missed home. I missed real pierogies and bars that always had Yuengling on tap. I missed my neighbors and their sturdy inner cores of golden Pittsburgh friendliness that you couldn't seem to find anywhere else in the world. I missed Pittsburgh local news. And I missed the way that obnoxious, outspoken Steelers yellow looked against overcast, drizzling game days.

		Nitya K. Venkataraman is a researcher for "Nightline" at the ABC News Washington bureau. She grew up in Murrysville and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2001 (nitya@alum.bu.edu).

But come every Sunday, among the Steelers fan who embrace their right to assemble in bars across the nation, it was like there was this one sliver of time where I got to go home.

I made friends whose real names I never knew and who I never saw outside of the season. We'd talk endlessly in Pittsburgh drawls about where we'd be if we were home, and use the words "slippy" and "worsh" as frequently as we could. We always agreed that the people who lived in whatever city we were living in just didn't get it.

The playoff games and the Super Bowl seemed almost too good to be true. And then the whole season faded into a blurry, happy memory of black and gold.

Until my sister forwarded me a Post-Gazette article on May 14: "Porter Expects to Jaw at the White House". And, even though I knew he couldn't possibly be serious, the spray of national headlines that resulted thanks to Joey Porter planted a beautiful idea in my head: I was going to be there.

I begged Sara Just, a senior producer at the Washington bureau, to let me go, and happily accepted her assignment to write a piece for ABCNews.com.

My tiny Indian mother was over the moon that I was going to go to the White House, convinced finally that a career away from the sciences had paid off because I would get to stand 15 feet away from the president. Everyone else told me to take as many pictures of our beloved Steelers as was humanly possible.

The excitement built in a way that is hard to explain in words. It was like the anticipation of a thousand Kennywood Days. Only better.

In my overactive imagination, the fantasy of what would come of my interactions with the Steelers at the White House spiraled out of control: I was going to talk to the Bus about our shared asthma condition, praise Troy Polamalu for his thick, billowing locks that earned the approval of even my picky immigrant mother, and invite Hines Ward and family to my parents house for a home-cooked Indian dinner.

The reality was a little bit different because I think every non-Steeler in attendance had some permutation of my fantasy in their heads. Plus I had to stand behind velvet ropes with the press corps, permagrin, digital camera and all.

And then, like one of those really great dreams that feels really real, the Pittsburgh Steelers floated in to that historic, gilded room in a single file, snaking line and took their places.

But the part that made it seem like it was really there and really happening was the Rooneys. And Coach Cowher. And a sunglass-wearing, banished-to-the-back-row, as-far-away-from-the-president-as-humanly-possible Joey Porter.

And, of course, the fans.

Because Steelers fans -- no matter where you put them -- are always true to their team, to where they come from and to who they are. Filling the audience and press corps alike, they raised Terrible Towels and their voices in a few rounds of "Here we go, Steelers, here we go" -- two things I'm sure the grand opulence of the East Room hadn't witnessed in over 20 years, if ever.

In that moment, among the excitement and Steelers yellow and hometown pride that swelled and filled the East Room of the White House, it was sort of like we'd never left Pittsburgh and rather, just invited the president to Heinz Field. And to his credit, he even noticed, teasing all of us, "It sounds like some people have been drinking some Iron City beer here."

And in a way, it's safe to say that we were all drunk on something. For me, it was the euphoria that comes when the dream that gives you roots and belonging finally becomes a reality.