My Uncle Muncie: A Study of Alter-Ego

Every March I can expect to hear the familiar voice of my Uncle Muncie, and I know that it's tournament time. Muncie is a sports fan. More specifically, he is a fan of college basketball, and his team is the Tarheels of the University of North Carolina. Always has been; always will be. Muncie hates computers, but he enjoys filling out a tournament bracket with all of his picks (including the inevitable: Carolina winning it all), so I do it for him, faithfully recording his bracket, and entering him into my brother's group on Yahoo. Let the games begin.

An alter-ego means never having to say you're sorry, and, in a setting where trash talk is valued almost as highly as picking the right teams, Muncie never does. It's got me thinking about some other folks I have come to know over the years, as well as the others I might expect to walk through that door in years to come. It would seem that, like Elwood P. Dowd, I have crossed paths with a few pookas, and maybe at times even fancied myself one.

First, there was Maked Man, a youngster of around five years of age who, though singularly minimalist in his application of vestments, brought joy and laughter to the hearts of many. Maked Man's signature getup was the epitome of immodest anachronism: little cowboy boots on his little feet, a little belt with an outsized buckle on which hung a six shooter, constructed, it was rumored, completely of legos, a little cowboy hat pushed back upon his big round head, and finally, a cape, perhaps inspired by a certain dashing D'Artagnon appeal (though a pen knife would for Maked Man have to substitute for a sword, at least in those days.)

A few years later, when Maked Man had long since succumbed to the forces of age and social convention, a new character emerged. His name was simply Schneider, and he was forged in the icy furnaces of a French Canadian hockey rink. With a ferocity not seen before, and not since, Schneider would torment his opponents on the ice, the coolness of which could almost be felt through the battered carpeting of a basement wreck-room, on which my little brother would often lie dazed and bloodied and angry after having had an unfortunate encounter with the toothless, brooding Habitant.

There were others: Scotty Scotch, the inebriated lowlander of dubious descent, who entered the country on a student visa, only to disappear--and re-emerge at odd hours in back barrooms, possessing, it would seem, a sixth sense for late-night whiskey binges, and a disturbingly spotty memory for his lusty, provocative behavior during these same.

I suppose it's not so much the existence of these fellows that surprises me, but rather my extreme affection for them. They all seem to have something that I do not, some inner quality that makes them stand out. I love them, one and all, and, though I cannot say what the future might hold, it is comforting to me that I can always expect, when the calendar says March and the weather is just starting to turn, my dear old Uncle Muncie, dedicated sportsman and curmudgeon, will once again take center stage.