Method to His (March) Madness

This March, before the male of the species on the Ark became oblivious to much else other than basketball, I made a feeble, sports-challenged and yet-opportunistic-attempt at turning our couple of lemons into a fine, family-style serving of lemonade.

After divulging my plan to The Boy, he set straight to work. Selecting and printing out eight copies of this year's NCAA bracket; he went about labeling each paper with the name of each family member from Dad down to two year old Baby T. At dinner, a few nights before the fun began, I shared my plan to create family unity through the literal madness of college basketball. Looking back, probably there should have been a few handicaps worked into the scoring. Things like--unable to write (let alone read) the picks, second language English speakers, still wearing diapers and limited exposure to basketball in general should have counted for something, right? Well, maybe for me it would have. But the rest of the crew just plugged along, carefully selecting teams under the watchful eyes of their older and wiser and basketball-obsessed sibling. Using methods such as: "Do you like seed number 1 or 4?" "Hey, I've heard of that city!" or the ever popular, "I LOVE the color of that team's uniforms." Teams were systematically eliminated until each family member had chosen their favorite (or at least someone) to win it all. And, more importantly, the family member with the most points to win a chance at picking dinner one night!

Early on, those of us basketball-guru-posers, betting on the golden boy teams to easily stroll their way into the Final Four, were wondering if this activity wasn't such a good idea after all. The only one who maintained a laissez-faire attitude from the get-go was Baby T. And after multiple attempts were made to distract him from methodically applying liberal amounts of his dinner to his hair and face the night the brackets were completed, an executive decision was made to simply pick the top seeds to win all the way through.

And last night, even with one of his sisters selecting the correct winner of the whole enchilada--Baby T reigned supreme. Now if I can only convince him that the meal he chooses should not contain yogurt, raisins or apple juice.