March Madness, they call it.

Madness, because it’s an all out brawl between 65 teams fighting for one spot; because for a few weeks in March no team is immune to upset, whether it be Cinderella at her first ball or the old hag that just shows up year after year, you just never know.

Madness because I’ll soon be staring blankly into an empty bracket and, with all my infinite wisdom, attempt to correctly predict the unpredictable.

I don’t really gamble on sports, or in general, and not because I have a moral objection. I just don’t find it that interesting. I know guys who get so wrapped up in the lines and the over/unders that they hardly enjoy the game.

Teams play to win the game and I watch to see who wins. It’s really that easy and my wallet appreciates it.

With that said, there will be little or no discussion of sports in the rest of this column. The story you are about read has nothing to do with basketball, or March Madness, and it doesn’t work to justify that little voice in your head that makes you sure that Sport has a way of transcending everything in the world but good and evil, right and wrong, you versus them. (And it does, by the way, and I have an idea of why, but I’m neither smart enough nor a good enough writer to explain it.)

It’s the story of a degenerate gambler and though the painfully small amounts of money lost and gained are almost as laughable as the situation, it’s the story of an improbable comeback.

Last summer, my weeklong vacation somehow turned into a two-month vacation. My family and I drove down to Houston, Texas to visit with family. It was the first summer in my adult life that I didn’t have a job. Since I’ve been old enough to drive, I’ve had a full-time summer job of some kind and the type of loyalty more often found in a 16-year-old dog than a 16-year-old kid.

I felt bad missing work, like I was hanging the fellas out to dry by not pulling my weight. Then I become a writer. I finally discovered that worthless laziness that I knew lived in me somewhere but had yet to show its face. That summer I could have done my job anywhere there was an Internet connection.

So when my family left after one week for the 20-plus hour drive back to Ohio, I decided to stick around. My cousin, James, had a friend who was a pilot and could get me a flight home any time I wanted, so I intended on wearing out my welcome.

I spent every day with my uncle, Mark, and James, “working” with them in their sign shop right off the Southwest Freeway in Houston. I filed weekly masterpieces (okay, we all know that’s bologna, I was on vacation) for the paper back at school and then spent the rest of time hanging out and catching up on six years of missed vacations.

The summer heat in Houston is unbearable. It weighs heavy on you like a fully loaded back pack, so we usually saved most of the hard manual work, like digging holes and putting up double faced, 4-by-8 feet signs, for the evening.

During the day we played cards, poker, video games, practical jokes and watched movies in the comfort of the AC. It was exactly what I wanted in a vacation.

When you’re the boss, you make your own hours, and Mark and James were the only bosses and the only employees. It was more like a boy’s club than a place of employment.

“Now, if I could just get rid of these damn customers,” Mark would say jokingly, upset that he had to pause his movie and turn the lights on to talk to a customer.

That was the daily routine, and I had come to expect little deviation. So, when James asked me if I wanted to tag along with him and his wife Charlotte to a casino along Interstate 10 in Louisiana, I said yes. I’d never been to a casino, had no idea what to expect, and I had no money – but I was game. I was game for anything.

“I’m on vacation,” became a rallying cry, which, translated from Jim-speak, means, “my dumb ass will follow you anywhere in the name of a good time.”