March Madness---more than basketball frenzy

What could be worse than another wet, sloppy, dreary day following a wet, sloppy dark, snowy night? I know you don't want to hear about the endless ugly weather here which causes a lot of us to turn into endless ugly whiners.

So, I'll spare you of how I'm really feeling this morning as another two inches of white has covered the ground overnight. Bill has already heard my thoughts so nobody else needs to share the punishment.

Instead, I'll ponder on what could be worse, and then maybe I'll look at the bright side of this gloomy March day.

What could be worse?

I could be one of all those poor millionaires whom Bernie guided with his financial wizardry and then Madoff with their money.

Or, I could be Bernie, sitting in a jail cell and knowing it would be 150 more years before I saw the light of day or even had reason to complain cuz it's raining too much on that sloppy snow for me to go play with my horses or plant my posies.

Or, I could be a housefly flushed down the toilet. Has anyone out there seen those flies suddenly appearing on the window sills or the upstairs floors? I've vacuumed up several of them lately and almost daily pick up half a dozen or so off the floor, fling 'em into the toilet and flush. Poor things.

Instead of suddenly coming to life one day if spring ever arrives here, those buggers unfortunate enough to drop out of the ceiling or the light fixtures have been flushed into a future no better than Bernie's.

Or, it could be a Sunday in March, and I could still be a school teacher with lesson plans to do and a week's worth of stress and insomnia to conquer. Sunday's, specifically Sunday afternoons and evenings, were always the worst during my teaching years.

The perpetual knot in the stomach, the feeling that no matter how much I prepared, I was still not ready for Monday morning---definitely a deadly combination of dread.

Or, I could be Julius Caesar, and this could be March 15. And, by golly it is----the Ides of March. And, my wife could be crying because of bad dreams she's had lately, where my blood has gone spurting in several directions.

And, I could be telling her she doesn't have a clue what she's talking about.

And, I could be brushing my teeth, admiring Ourself in the mirror, getting ready to go to the Senate where good things were gonna happen, and I could head off and leave my neurotic, whimpering wife behind, and I could get there and see all my friends anxiously waiting for me, and I could walk around thinking I must be pretty cool cuz they're all hanging around so close and "Ouch, that hurt, and Brutus, why did you do that?"

And . . . . well, you know the rest of the story.

I could be that miserable guy in George Orwell's 1984 who sneaked around doing rebellious things which he thought the Big Brother screen wouldn't notice, and then I could be lying there strapped to that bed with all those hungry rats trotting up my torso right into my face.

And, then I think I would say 2 and 2 are 5, just to get those rats to go somewhere else and go crawl around on people like Bernie in his prison suite.

Yeah, life could be a lot worse than it is this morning when I'm sick and tired of slop and dealing with my own form of March Madness, but wait-------today is Selection Sunday. Just seven hours remain before we can sit in front of the tube and see where our ZAGS are gonna go to play their first game in the NCAA Tournament.

And, possibly they'll end up in Boise, and then maybe Willie, with his press pass, will get to go see them play, and we can hear the inside scoop from our sports reporter son himself.

Yeah, it's March madness all right, but life could be a lot worse, and I could possibly bring myself to veer off the anger route right into the temporary insanity that takes over when all this college basketball stuff consumes our thoughts for the last two weeks of winter.

Go ahead. Bring on the rain and the snow and the general crud. We'll show you, Mother Nature!

We'll just quit complaining and look forward to yet another afternoon inside the house. We'll stoke up the fire, get some chips and dip, take that remote, flip on the tube, forget the slop and enter into another zone where our thoughts turn to exciting possibilities for our beloved team.

I'm feeling better already, but I do have one question: will Bernie be able to watch the tournament in his prison suite, or do they figure he's already seen enough of his own brand of March Madness?