YOUR OFFICE--With an astonished expression, a co-worker openly questioned your knowledge of basketball when viewing your office bracket today.
"Boy, you have some crazy stuff up here," said your co-worker as he scanned your hastily constructed bracket pasted to the wall of the copy room. "North Texas beating Kansas State! That's a 15 beating a 2, and that's only happened four times in the history of the tournament," he said, citing a fact you did not know because you know very little about basketball or the teams in it.
The co-worker, holding a styrofoam cup of coffee and peering at the bracket, examined your picks for the entirety of your shared six minute stay in the copy room, and noted multiple oddities about the bracket you scratched out in four minutes of unfocused hurry yesterday morning.
"And Siena beating Purdue?" your co-worker asked. "A four losing to a thirteen? Man, you're really playing it fast and loose here! That's just crazy. What about Siena makes you think Purdue won't be able to handle them?"
You demurred and answered "I just like them," not admitting that you cannot recall watching either play this year or any other year. The co-worker attempted to rope in a fellow co-worker, a shapely new assistant, who responded that she knew nothing about basketball and did not fill out a bracket because it would be a waste of twenty dollars she could spend somewhere else.
The co-worker, discouraged but unbowed, continued to press you on choices you made out of a combination of blind ignorance and random choice. He expressed his disbelief at your choice of Florida State over someone named Gonzaga, and then marveled at the final four appearance of Notre Dame in your bracket due to their over-reliance on blah-blah-blah-Jesus-won't-he-shut-the-fuck-up.
"Man, you have Duke losing in the second round? It's Duke!" Your co-worker then expounded on the merits of Duke and their famous coach, whom you recalled from a Nike commercial you watched over a decade ago.
Your co-worker would keep the conversation going long after you left the copy room, talking to three different co-workers while sipping coffee and spending 17 minutes in total expressing shock at your choices.
"I mean, UTEP over Butler? It's like he doesn't even know how this tournament works! I spent most of last night working on my bracket, and I'm nowhere near this guy. And I've got Minnesota making it out of the first round, so it's not like I don't have my gambles built in there," your co-worker said to someone whom he saw come into the corner of his eye through the door.
The someone, Samantha from accounting, said "Mm-hm, that's crazy," but later admitted she was not listening, Answering a follow-up question, Samantha also admitted that she rarely listened to the co-worker or anyone else at her job.
The conversation came to an end when the co-worker, still stunned at your roguish pick of Florida over BYU, walked over to your cubicle to question you on your preference for an erratic Florida team over a solid BYU squad. You wanted to reply that you don't even know where some of these teams' college were and probably shouldn't have foolishly agreed to make the bracket or put twenty dollars on the outcome of a sport you couldn't care less about, but well shit it's too late now, isn't it?
Instead, you said had a bad headache and an important call to make, and then waited for him to leave for good before blowing another four hours surfing the web with one break around two to take some headache powder and linger for 18 minutes in the bathroom.