This is a big week for me because it’s spring break. I only get one day for spring break, while the students here get a week, but hey, it’s a break. At my age, let’s face it. The prospects of my being able to withstand an entire week of whatever college students do for spring break these days is remote.

 

Students: “Come on Mr. Ray. We’re going to the midnight belly flop contest at the pool!”

Me: “Do they have comfortable chairs?”

Students: “Huh?”

Students: “Oh, that was a joke, right?”

Me: “What do you think?”

Students: “Mr. Ray, you look kind of funny. Are you sure you don’t feel any ill effects from the jalapeno eating contest?”

Me: “Nothing wrong with me that a stomach pump and a bathtub full of Maalox won’t cure. Besides, maybe a belly flop will help me regain feeling below my neck, which left somewhere between the jalapenos and the Jello wrestling.”

Students: “Awesome!”

 

     No, spring break in your forties is a tamer affair. My first thought, honestly, was that it would give me a chance to fill out my NCAA tournament brackets. Whoo! Party!

     Now before those of you who aren’t sports fans flip over to the real estate ads, let me tell you that participating in March Madness doesn’t require any more sports knowledge than participating in elections requires a political science degree. I have mentioned here before that I once saw a girl win a large office pool by doing nothing more than comparing mascots and predicting which would win in a fight in nature. She beat our entire sports staff at the television station.

     This year, I’m particularly interested in the March Madness because my own alma mater, the Baylor Bears, stand a good chance of being in the tournament. To put that in perspective, the last time they were in, I was single. I now have a daughter in college. The letters in Baylor can be re-arranged to spell, B.O. Lary, by the way (not good). I only mention that for those of you who adopted my anagram method of picking winners a few years ago.

     The anagram method involves re-arranging the letters of a school’s name in order to gain valuable clues as to their likely performance. That year, we wisely predicted that Ohio State (hooi taste) didn’t pass the smell test. Neither did Kent State (tent stake) or Tulsa (which spelled backwards is not good at all). This year, I’d steer clear of San Diego (die on gas), and unlike some of my friends, I’m not too excited about Vanderbilt (bland rivet). Somewhat more cryptic is North Carolina (honor can trail). Perhaps that makes them a comeback team. You be the judge.

     Whether you fill out your brackets using the anagram method, or the survival in the wild method, you are likely to do just as well as the people who use the LTWOOP method (lose three weeks of office productivity). This opens up a golden opportunity for you wives whose husbands believe they know everything there is to know about sports. Challenge your husband to a battle of bracketology wits. Make the stakes high.

     In our house this has led to much excitement and many household plumbing projects being completed. That’s because my wife usually wagers wisely, putting up some badly needed project I have been neglecting as my stakes for losing. I, on the other hand, am a guy, and as such, usually set my sights much lower. Just remember fellas; a little smooching is over in an instant. A toilet repair can last months. Wager wisely.

      There are some other methods I would avoid when picking NCAA teams as a novice. For instance, the PILTG, or Places I’d Like To Go method, for some reason, never works out. There are some schools in the tournament that are from some very nice places, such as Seattle, Santa Barbara, Portland and San Diego. None of them have a chance. Trust me. On the other hand, the best teams come from places you might go on a business trip, but never a vacation, such as Memphis, Chapel Hill, Knoxville, and Los Angeles. Then there are those cities you would only visit for the funeral of a very close relative, like Starkville, Mississippi or Milwaukee. They’ll win a game or two and fizzle.

     I hope this has been helpful and will make your March Madness experience a richer one. On the other hand, I realize that the odds of that happening are about the same as my bears going to the final four. Have fun anyway, and remember, a bruin is a bear and a Jayhawk is a bird, just in case that comes in handy. On the other hand, Memphis can be rearranged to spell “hempism,” which is not a word, but it sounds drug related.

     It may be hard to believe, but I’ve been writing this column for almost 7 years. I suppose it’s hard to believe because one should get better in that amount of time. If I had been playing Texas Hold’em for that long, I’d probably have made it to one of those televised poker tournaments on ESPN by now. If I had been sculpting for 7 years, I would have created a large bust of someone famous and beautiful like Marilyn Monroe. Of course, since I have the artistic ability of a sea bass, and even 7 years wouldn’t have changed that, I would have later told everyone I was paying tribute to the late Ethel Merman instead. If I had been in a rock group, I would have made it, broken up with my band (due to artistic differences), and had a comeback tour by now. If I had started learning to fly an airplane 7 years ago…wait, then I’d be dead. No, I have several hundred columns that expanded our collective realm of discussion by introducing time-honored topics such as the water bra, the balding man’s comb-over, what to do when a squirrel attacks you in a bathroom, and black socks with shorts. In case you are wondering, I’m not quitting my column, but there is something else folks have been asking me to do for 7 years and that’s tell them how they, too can write a humor column.

     I get that question a lot. Usually it’s from someone who has majored in English in college, taken another year’s worth of seminars on creative writing, read every book on the subject, joined a writer’s group, and can cite every rule of good writing as readily as I can recite the lyrics to American Pie. There’s really nothing to tell those people other than, be funny, which let’s face it, if your social sphere is limited to the folks in the book club, the odds are diminished. Well, there goes my book club speaking invitations, but you said you wanted help and I’m willing to take one for the team.

     Another question is, “are you just a magnet for bizarre people and experiences or do you simply find the bizarre in everyday life?” My answer is that I got attacked by a squirrel and had a discussion with Kevin Costner and both instances took place in a public urinal inside the span of one month. What do you think? Even before I wrote the column, I lived through Three Mile Island, met David Koresh, lived through a California earthquake, had an ice cream cone with Dan Quayle and got locked in a dark room with Melissa Gilbert of TV’s Little House on the Prairie. Granted, the bizarre experiences don’t come as frequently these days, but I have never had to look too hard.

     It does help to be a little twisted. For instance, the time I had that ice cream with Dan Quayle, I was covering his visit to Texas and he took us into a DQ to show he was a man of the people. I asked him on camera if he realized that the DQ stood for Dairy Queen and that the sign wasn’t just a show of support for him. The look he gave me was priceless (he did play along after that, surprisingly). If you are in a line in the grocery store behind a large, loud, obnoxious woman in tight jeans that say “Guess” on the back pocket, do you ignore it, or does something deep inside you beg you to say to her, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot?”  

      A lot of people, mostly guys, say, “I could write a column.” My answer is always, “Go ahead.” I happen to believe that if you can make people laugh, it’s a good thing and we can never have enough laughter. These people will invariably tell me their idea. I laugh and ask them what they’ll write the next week, the next week, and the next week. Perhaps it is a combination of having bizarre experiences and creating them at the same time…either that, or just learning that puke is a lot funnier word than vomit and a well-placed “booger” can make a person’s entire novel. Either way, if it stops working, there’s always the book club (if they’ll have me).