They humor me

It is that most wonderful time of year again, that of college basketball tournaments with all of the basketball competition on the court and the bracket competition off of the court. This year, yours truly wised up and took five hours of vacation on Thursday and watched the entire first day of the tournament. This was fun for me on that day, and after 12 hours of basketball on Thursday, I watched some portions of some other games the remainder of the weeked but didn't feel like I urgently had to be in front of the TV.

This ties into the family because like last year, everyone joined in on picking their winner of all 63 games of the men's tournament. After the first 48 games, here's the family lowdown:

Genevieve discovered what the seeding numbers mean. A team with a lower number (higher seed) is considered to be better than a team with a higher number (lower seed). That's all she needed to know. With the exception of two first round games in which she pick the lower seed (Texas A&M and Wisconsin, and both won [how did she do that?]), she picked the higher seed for all the other regional games. She picked North Carolina out of the four number one seeds to win the tournament, and in a year with few upsets, Genevieve finds herself in 25th place out of all 658 entrants in our on-line candy bar pool. She leads the family pool.

The President is an honorary member of our family pool, though if he wins, we ain't sending him a candy bar. Like Genevieve, he is enamored of the former Jayhawk coach Roy Williams and the Tar Heels to win it all, but unlike Genevieve he did not use a scientific method to make his selections and finds himself 5 points behind our five year-old.

She-Who-Fills-A-Bracket-Because-It-Will-Give-Her-Something-To-Talk-To-Her-Husband-About-For-The-Nineteen-Days-Of-The-Tournament has a soft spot for Duke, and apparent residual year-old warmth for Kansas. She has both teams playing in the finals, with Duke and Coach K on top. She has proven herself as good a prognisticator as the Prez and is tied in points, and she will be applying for a cabinet position as soon as one opens.

Reesa... well, Reesa does this by which names she likes better, or if it corresponds to something she recognizes. Arizona, Arizona State and Wisconsin were all picked to win a few games on name recognition. The word "Siena" slipped like silk on her tongue all the way to the final game, but there was one other team that caught her fancy like no other.

As a native New Yorker (as in the state, NOT the city), I grew up pronouncing Binghamton like this: BING-um-tun. Not Reesa. She says it like this: bing-HAM-ton. Or, to be more precise, "bing-HAM-ton, tee-hee-hee-hee" as if every time she uttered the word it tickled her neck. Reesa gets "daddy credit" for picking two New York teams in the finals, but by her using her methodology she is already mathematically eliminated from winning. No yogurt pretzel prize for her.

And me? So far, I'm four points ahead of She-Who, one down from Genevieve. I figure I can start getting used to being outcompeted by my children -- that's the way of the world. As long as I don't lose to She-Who-Gloats-Upon-Beating-Her-Hubby, I'm doing okay.