Dear Kid,

Happy Day After Oops! I Forgot It Was Saint Patrick’s Day and I Have To Go Change My Shirt Madness Day.

There were lots of reasons to have fun yesterday: Basketball, Shamrocks, Basketball, Leprechauns, Basketball, Pots o’ Gold, and Basketball, and reruns of Project Runway All-stars.

Also, it was the start of March Madness. (Just in case you weren’t sure.) You can tell it’s March Madness because I just threw a pair of jeans across the room and they landed (more or less) in the chair I was aiming for. (You’re impressed, right?)

We’ve talked before about basketball, and more basketball, and more basketball, because March Madness shows up each year. Here’s the important part: basketball players are tall. Really tall.

J2 and I were at the gym the evening, walking on the track and solving all the world’s problems when we noticed a basketball-player-type person also walking on the track. We could tell he wasn’t a professional player because A) he was at our gym and B) we could see his head without binoculars. We could tell he was a basketball-player-type because A) he was bouncing along in the way only a “type” can and B) tall.

As we passed him (“type” not an actual player), I said, “I feel like an ant.” J2 said, “I know! I think I could walk between his legs and not hit anything.” This was comment on his height, not a slur on his manliness. At least that was my assumption.

The thing is that on TV the actual b-ball players playing actual b-ball look like they are normal sized. They’re not. They are huge. They just look normal because A) all the players are about the same size so it’s hard to tell how much bigger they are than normal humans and B) your TV isn’t life size. Well, your TV is the size of your TV, but the images (and by “images” I mean people) aren’t the size they are IRL.

Love, Mom

P.S. Tomorrow is National Poultry Day (don’t chicken out).

Dear Kid,

Happy 11^th!

The number 11 is very cool (not necessarily cooler than other numbers, but we’re not talking about other numbers today).

There are all sorts of interesting things about then number 11 that I don’t really understand (including that the number 11 “carries a vibrational frequency of balance.” Say what?) so I’m not going to talk about them. If you want more, you can consult My Friend the Internet your-own-self.

One of the fun facts (excuse me, “easy to understand fun facts”) is that multiplying 11s lets you build Number Eleven Pyramids.

Number Eleven Pyramids
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
Feel free to keep going—it works.

Do you know about elevenses? It’s what you eat around 11am if you happen to be in the UK. If you happen to be in the US, you still eat it but it’s called a coffee break.

The number 11 is important in sports. In football, field hockey, cricket (who knew?), and soccer, there are 11 players on each team. Not in rugby, but they make up for it by having a ball that’s 11 inches long.

There are all kinds of funky tricks for figuring out if a number is divisible by 11. For example, if you add up the odd digits and then add the even digits and take the difference, if the resulting number is a multiple of 11 (including 0), then the original number is divisible by 11. And I repeat, say what? Easier (but perhaps not as interesting) to grab a calculator

Most importantly, the 11^th is today. Hope you can find 11 great things about your day.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

We’re coming up on March Madness season, and I speak not of St. Pat, but of the basketball craziness.

Doubtless, there will be craziness on the 17^th, but we’ll deal with that another day.

So since MM is fast approaching, I thought I’d turn to My Friend the Internet and find some wonky rules to make fun of highlight.

Turns out that on the day when wacky rules were being handed out, college basketball stayed home. There just isn’t a basket-load (see how I did that?) of crazy, who-thought-that-would-be-a-good-idea regulations.

Other sports have plenty of crazy rules. Even chess has rules no one knows about (and even fewer understand). Cricket is a game made up entirely of crazy rules.

But apparently not so in bball.

Note: There are plenty of crazy (as in certifiable) NCAA rules, but they apply to all sports, not just basketball, so they don’t count. At least not in this respect.

Speaking of things I didn’t know, who knew that baskets grew on trees?

Enjoy the Madness of March—even without entertaining rules.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I was a slug on Sunday.

In the past, I would have just assumed I was a slug. Now I have proof positive.

My Fitbit (which I love) made it perfectly clear. It seems I pretty much forgot to move the entire day.

Just to be clear, I was wearing my Fitbit. The entire day. So no way to blame it on forgetting to put it on.

By the time I got to work on Monday, I had more steps than I did the entire day on Sunday.

Then again, our dust dragons took more steps than I did on Sunday. Han Solo took more steps while he was frozen in Carbonite. Our couch took more steps than I did.

BF (Before Fitbit) I would only have been able to guess at the extent of my slugfest. Now I had specific and explicit data to document my slothfulness.

So I had a long conversation with my Fitbit. Fitbit explained (rather succinctly) that slug-ness every now and then wasn’t a bad thing. But please not to make a habit of it.

We didn’t get around to defining “habit.”

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Is it me, or are football players getting bigger? I turned to My Friend the Internet for information.

After much scientific analysis, data regression, and an apple, I concluded that the average professional football player is big.

Big as in larger than the ordinary human. Big as in there is a reason that football pants only go to the knee (any more fabric and the league would go broke). Big as in “Daaaammmn!” (Extra points if you get the reference.)

It’s important that football players are big—because all the other football players are big. It is important that football players are strong—because all the other football players are strong. It is important that football players are fast—because splat is only fun if you’re the splat-er rather than the splat-ee.

This year’s Super Bowl was a feast of have and have nots seen and seen not.

We saw puppies and more puppies and Super Bowl babies and Doritos babies and cars and even some football that didn’t include unsportsmanlike conduct. We saw the longest punt return in the history of the Super Bowl. We saw a two point conversion.

We saw a lot of sacks and a lot of turnovers. And a really sad FG attempt that had our resident kicker saying, “Oh, I feel so bad for him. The commentators need to stop talking about it. I’m sure he feels bad enough.”

Did you notice that Cam’s chewing gum matched his uniform? Important color coordination. I think that’s worth at least 2 style points but negative five for Who Lets Someone Play with Gum in Their Mouth?

We heard the announcers talk about Athletic Trainers (shout out!) and we saw a great halftime show.

There was a lot that we didn’t see in this year’s Super Bowl.

We didn’t see OT, because Peyton. We didn’t see dabbing by Cam, because defense. We didn’t see a safety (frowny face).

We didn’t see a drop kick bounced on the ground. It’s legal, it used to be done a lot, but now it seems QBs and kickers are leaving that kind of drop kick to rugby players.

We didn’t see illegal leverage. This does not refer to using the same cash to place multiple bets (the finance majors reading this understood that one). Illegal leverage is when the defense pushes or pulls members of their own team during a FG or PAT.

We had a long National Anthem and orange beverage being poured on the coach (important if you’re following the prop bets).

In Summary: We need to go back to Roman Numerals.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

It’s Super Bowl Sunday (which is almost as good as Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day but with better TV coverage). Not only are the traditional bets in play (who will win, who will lose, who will come out on top in the office square betting), but prop bets are going crazy.

You remember about Prop Bets right? They are the fabulously funky bets about everything other than the score of the game. Here are some of my faves available this year.

Note: You are a college student without lots of excess cash. All your bets should be for things like who washes the dishes after dinner, who takes out the trash this week, or other non-monetary consequences.

The second best prop bet for this year is how many times “dab” or “dabbing” will be said by announcers during the broadcast. Yes, I know what dabbing is (read here if you don’t) because I am twelve kinds of cool and I looked it up weeks ago. I don’t intend to count, but the betting is over two or under two and it’s hard to imagine they’ll say it less than twice. (NOTE: Halftime doesn’t count.)

The best prop bet for this year is whether “Left Shark” will make an appearance during halftime. You can also bet on which song Cold Play will play first (but not whether they’ll be cold), and what color shoes Beyoncé will be wearing.

Peyton Manning things you can bet on include whether he’ll announce his retirement in the post-game interview, whether he’ll throw a pick 6, and if he’ll be seen crying at any point during the broadcast.

Speaking of post-game interviews, you can bet on who the Super Bowl MVP will mention first (God, team, city/fans, coach, family, or something else).

You can place bets on a zillion things related to the coin toss, three zillion things related to kickers and punters, and five zillion things related to when scoring happens.

You can bet on whether Cam Newton will break the Super Bowl record for must rushing yards by a QB (see “dabbing” above).

You can—I swear I am not making this up—bet on the exact outcome of who wins the Super Bowl AND who wins the presidential election. You can bet on the Carolina Panthers winning the Super Bowl and the Golden State Warriors winning the NBA title. You can bet on whether the goals in the Montreal/Carolina NHL game February 7^th will be higher than the total number of receptions by Greg Olsen, and whether the Arsenal goals February 7 will be higher than the number of Peyton Manning TD passes.

You can bet about whether Mike Carey will be wrong about a challenge, whether there will be an earthquake during the game, and how long the national anthem will be.

You cannot—as far as I know—bet on whether your mother will stay awake to watch the entire game or what commercial people will be talking about tomorrow.

Happy Super Bowl.

Love, Mom