What can I say about the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games Opening Ceremony that you and 3,499,999,999 others didn’t see on TV last night? Especially since the TV audience probably saw more than I did (note to self: bring opera glasses next time, even in the “good” seats).

First what we all saw: It was amazing what the Opening Ceremony designers did with light and fabric in an indoor stadium under a bubble dome — the Northern Lights, the polar bear rising from the Arctic Sea and falling back in when the ice broke up, the flaming autumn leaves under the Harvest moon, and those giant rainforest trees.

And the Cirque-du-Soleil-like aerial acrobatics made the audience gasp.

Equally amazing was what came out of the stadium floor — the Welcome Poles for the four Host First Nations, all the fabric, and at the end, the icy cauldrons. Well, three of them, at least. There should have been four — something I didn’t know until I consulted the massive media kit after the Ceremony. As the four torchbearers stood there awkwardly waiting for the cauldrons to rise from the floor, I worried that their torches would go out.

But here’s what’s not conveyed on TV. First, the roar of the crowd. When Wayne Gretzky was introduced as the final torchbearer, I thought the bubble roof would pop from the ovation.

In sharp contrast, the minute of silence for Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who had died in training just hours before and to whom the Ceremony was dedicated, seemed to pull all the air out of the stadium. And when the grief-stricken Georgian team bravely walked into the stadium, the audience stood in unison and clapped.

But what’s really not conveyed on TV is the pulse and energy created by the music and drumming. It’s palpable. Reverberating around the stadium and off the bubble roof, it felt like it connected to your heart.

I can see why most Olympic athletes say that the Opening Ceremony is one of their favorite parts of the Games. They say that walking into the stadium makes them finally feel Olympian.

It even made me feel Olympian. Except I was sitting there in section 4 under an ice blue cape that resembled a hospital gown.

Which leads me to something else that you don’t see on TV. You don’t see the audience kits or the hour-long practice that we all sat through.

Our audience kits were octagonal cardboard boxes containing a Canadian flag, drumstick, candle-looking light, and LED flashlight. The box itself, we were shown, would serve as a drum, and we were told to watch our audience leader, a perky person wearing a white sweater and red hat with a huge pompom on top. Pompom Head would alert us to which prop we needed and when.

The four Russians seated in front of me didn’t seem to notice. Or care. Another guy across the aisle was drinking a beer during instruction time. Many stared indifferently at their laptops, while others were more concerned about not dripping ketchup on their hospital-gown capes (that would be me). We were clearly the slacker section.

When the performance started, I was never clear on when we were supposed to bang the drum, and most in our section — stage left in the corner — usually grabbed the wrong light. Our pompomed leader scurried up and down the aisles scolding us but to no avail. Don’t give us slackers a fun little blue LED light and tell us we can’t play with it!

In the end, it didn’t matter. The rest of the stadium was full of people whose exuberance — and ability to follow simple directions — welcomed the 21^st Winter Olympiad to Vancouver with style.

Let the Games begin.