March Madness

So far, two days into this grandest of spring rituals, I am 25 out of 32 games on the NCAA bracket. If I was mathematically skilled I could tell you my batting average, but, as established earlier, I am not. So, I'll just say that I think this is one of the best first rounds I've had. But, as they say in sports, the game is yet young and I have many more games to lose.
I've thrown myself into March Madness for 27 years. I haven't once in those 27 years missed filling out a bracket. One year, I won. For the last three years I ran the Republic NCAA pool and named it after my father, The Mike McGaw Memorial NCAA Tournament Pool. My friend's husband did the stats. We thanked him in wine. The first year of that pool I told the winner that I had donated his winnings to my father's Elk's Lodge to restuff the heads that hung in the Isaac Walton lodge hall. For a moment he believed me. This year, someone in sports is managing the event. Lucas called the night before he and Melissa took off for London to check my picks. His friend Brian had made him promise to call him if my picks were wildly different than his, such is my reputation for serious bracket-selection.
For a couple of years, March Madness was one reliable form of distraction while one of us in the McGaw clan was healing. In 1999 it was me from a masectomy and reconstructive surgery. My mom, dad and Ken and I all had brackets and we watched while I sat hunched over a pillow trying not to cough, sneeze or laugh b/c I hurt so much. Another spring, I coaxed my dad into filling out a bracket while we kept track of the games long distance. He in Kokomo fresh from learning he had Stage 4 lung cancer and me fresh from hearing the diagnosis. My mom may have put an entry into tht one too. Always Lucas has entered. And one time we drove into Prescott to Murphy's Bar and Grill knwoing that we could catch some of the games at their grand, old-fashioned bar. It's there that we discovered they had great wings and where over a glass of wine and beer we watched one of the great rituals of spring.
(I had Siena over OSU. That was this year's upset. Although at the last minute I betrayed my state and put Utah over UofA, so disappointed have I been in those boys this year. I missed Wisconsin and Michigan and was wrong about VCU. I still think when I'm 90 I'll play this b/c it's such cheap fun for the price of getting into the nearest pool.