In Noel Streatfeild’s Skating Shoes, Lalla, a young skater, is supposed to be practicing her brackets on the ice, and becomes angry when her friend and fellow-skater Harriet reminds her. Hearing their argument, and learning that it was about brackets, Nana, Lalla’s nurse, finds it hard to intervene. “Whenever that word was used Nana saw in her mind’s eye some brackets that had been in her home when she was a little girl. They had been made of wood, covered in a pinkish plush, and on each bracket stood photographs of her relatives.”

This week I learned that I know as little about brackets as Nana did when I entered the office March Madness Pool. Knowing virtually nothing about college basketball, I chose my teams using the following rules: 1) If I had ever seen the team play I picked that team. The only college men’s basketball game I have ever attended was a Butler home game, so I picked Butler as the winner of it all. Butler lost last night. 2) If I had never heard of a school I picked them to lose. Valparaiso University didn’t stand a chance. 3) If I had any association with a school either as a student or an employee, I picked them if the association was positive, and chose them to lose if the association was negative. I worked at Harvard for fourteen months and hated it so I chose them to lose. They won in the first round. 4) The last criteria was if I thought I would like to visit the state or city. I’d like to visit Oregon so I picked them.

My brackets have fallen off the wall leaving large holes in the plaster. I have since learned that 1) the numbers next to a team on the bracket chart are not random; they represent the college’s ranking. Who knew? Apparently everyone but me 2) the winning team is the team that wins the game, not the team that wins an election based on popularity.

But I’m not sure I would necessarily change my brackets now that I know more about the way it works. After all the “upsets” I have heard about on the news, maybe there is still hope for a few of my likable states or cities. It was only five dollars to enter and I doubt I would have done better by buying tickets for last night’s Powerball drawing even though the winning ticket was sold in New Jersey. However, I have since learned that Valparaiso, Indiana, was where Orville Redenbacher developed his popcorn, and the town has a popcorn festival each year. I would probably choose them next year. After all, how can you vote against a place that has an Orville Redenbacher monument?