Don't Tell Me The Odds

This post is also on Heroes For My Son.

I just love this story about the one person out of four million who picked the perfect bracket. It's so simple. So perfect. And it just defies the odds.

There is no impossible (don't tell my son that -- he's still pissed he got a few wrong).

From ESPN.Com

Autistic teen picks perfect bracket
By Eamonn Brennan

ESPN's Tournament Challenge is currently hosting 4.78 million -- yes, million -- 2010 NCAA tournament bracket entries. After two rounds, not a single one of them is perfect . But the feat has, miraculously enough, been accomplished.

Who did it? His name is Alex Herrman, and he's a 17-year-old student at Glenbrook South High School in Glenview, Ill., one of Chicago's north suburbs. Herrmann, who is autistic, picked all the wild upsets you and I didn't see happening. UNI over Kansas. Ohio over Georgetown. Cornell over Wisconsin. Your bracket may have survived. Your bracket might be good. Herrmann's bracket is 100 percent perfect.

"It's amazing," Hermann said. "I'm good at math. I'm kind of good at math and at stats I see on TV during the game."

Alex entered the bracket on CBSsports.com's bracket challenge. CBS did not return several phone calls to confirm entries into its game. His 24-year-old brother Andrew, who helped him enter his picks into CBS' bracket manager, also entered the contest -- and ranks behind 500,000 other people.

“My bracket is totally shot,” his 24-year-old brother Andrew said. “So is everyone else I know.”

Us too, Andrew. Us too.

In case you needed the visual proof, NBC Chicago has the PDF right here . Another fun fact: According to Book Of Odds , the chances of picking the first two rounds of this NCAA tournament are one in 13,460,000, which means you have a better chance of winning the lottery twice over.

Two rounds is incredibly impressive, obviously, but the next step is seeing if Alex's picks can go the distance. Can he complete the holy grail? Can he seal the perfect bracket? Herrmann's Final Four is a bit dubious -- he has Tennessee coming out of the Midwest and Purdue overcoming the Robbie Hummel injury to make it out of the South -- not to mention the fact that the odds of attaining a perfect bracket are 1 in 35,360,000,000. (Or, according to Book Of Odds, "almost 18 times worse than your odds of being killed by a waterspout in a year [1 in 1,988,000,000]." So, um, yeah.) But doubting Alex now means doubting the one person who managed to get the entire bracket correct. In other words, I'm not going to do it.

Send This One To Your Grandmother

This blog is also posted on Heroes For My Son.

When I was little, my Grandmother used to take me to the library. She's the one who introduced me to all those books. Her and all those librarians.

So here's a new hero that someone sent me over the weekend... Boy, I feel like Casey Kasem doing a long distance dedication. But I used to love those dedications, so...this one goes out to Seth.

From: Seth Moore

My Hero: My grandma

For as long as I've been able to remember (though not my entire life), by grandpa has been restricted to a wheelchair. There was no great accident that made him this way, but rather a rare, incurable disease called attaxia. Attaxia eats away at the region of the brain controlling motor functions, slowly causing the victim to become paralyzed, be incapable of speech, and eventually leads to choking to death.

As of today, he is losing his awareness, though whether that is from the disease or just aging, I'm not sure. He sleeps nearly 20 hours a day, and eats very little. I suppose he is a little more "manageable" now than he used to be, but my grandma has never thought of him in that light.

I am 20 years old. I have never once heard her say a negative comment toward him. She worships him, always praising him for what a wonderful man he is, for his integrity, for how much he loves for her given the limited means he has for expressing it. She considers her task of caring for him to be the greatest calling God could give her.

She prays with him daily. She reads the Bible to him because he is no longer able to hold a book steady or turn the pages. He is always the most lucid with her. He is never a burden.

If all of this were not enough, my aunt has the same disease. While she is obviously younger, it progressed in her much more quickly and at a younger age. Sadly, her husband does not consider caring for her to be the joy that my grandmother finds. After years of emotional abuse and neglect, my aunt finally separated from him to live with my grandparents. Grandma cares for both her husband and her daughter.

It was about a year ago that my grandparents and my aunt moved from their lifelong home an hour from my family to a new home twelve hours north. Another daughter/sister lives up there with her family, and she is an RN. They now live in the best assisted living complex I have ever seen, and life is so much easier. My uncle comes over every morning to sit my grandpa up, strap him to a machine to move him to his wheelchair, help bathe him, dress him, take him to the restroom. But in the end, it all comes back to my grandma and her almost stubborn loyalty to this man.

We Want To See Your Child!

Did you videotape your child being born (I don't mean the gorey parts, or parts with nudity -- I mean the part where the baby is handed to Mom/Dad for the very first time. The nice for TV part)? You did? Great. Can you...er...send it to us for free? I mean it. With Heroes For My Son approaching, we're again looking for help from the Invisible Army (read: all of you amazing people out there who over and over again help us). Thusly, as we make the first video for the book, we're looking for the following footage (especially that delivery room moment):

1. any hospital footage of newborn babies and fathers/mothers being handed/holding the baby for the first time
   
2. a boy (elementary or kindergarten) playing with an airplane toy
   
3. a boy with a video camera
   
4. a boy performing a magic trick
   
5. a boy playing with toy doctor’s tools
   
6. a boy writing letters or doing “writing” school work
   
7. an elementary school boy playing a musical instrument or a toddler banging on or playing with one, or singing with a real or toy microphone, or at a concert/pageant
   
8. a boy in a grade school play
   
9. a boy in cap and gown at elementary or high school graduation
   
10. a junior high or high school boy giving a speech
    

If you have such footage, please shoot me an email and I'll tell you where to send it. As always, I'm at bradmeltzer27 [at] gmail.com. Or through facebook or twitter or anywhere else we pimp.

Much love and thanks for doing this. And yes, we're gonna try and make your little one a star. But in a good way.

b

Adoption

For those who have adopted kids -- or know someone who do, this came to me from the sister of one of my first readers (and now dear friend). Of course, feel free to share with anyone you think needs to hear it:

Brad... my sister is in the process of adopting, and had this conversation with her 4 year old son today (who WILL be getting a copy of your Heroes!):

This morning I was driving Nathan to daycare and we were talking about Batman and Spiderman, as we so often do. He asked about what happened to Batman's mom and dad. I told him that Bruce Wayne's mom and dad had died and that Alfred had helped raise him and stayed with him. He asked about Spiderman, where were his mom and dad. I didn't know but that Peter Parker was raised by his uncle and aunt. And while I was prepared to launch into my favorite "all families are different and as long as there is love its a family" schpeel that I love so dearly, Nathan had his own story to tell. He told me that this would be just like for his new sister. That we aren't her first family but that she'd come live with us and we'd love her forever like Alfred did for Batman. He says he will tell his big sister all about Batman and how families can love you and make you a superhero even if you aren't there as a baby first. Yeah... we're going to be just fine.

Title Of The New Book!

Here it is. The winner for the title of the new non-fiction book, out this May. And, the very first look at the cover.

Heroes For My Son.

And yes, it was the biggest blowout vote we ever had. Just staggering. Special sorry to my wife, who lost.

Hugs and thanks to all who voted.