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Go to your local convenience store and buy a bunch of food that everyone keeps reminding you should not eat. Start with Munchos. Augment those with a Family Pack of Twizzlers, Double Stuffed Oreos and Orange Sunkist Soda. Also get some Hostess Ho Hos and a five Mounds Candy Bars.

To kill time, have a chat with the cashier while you're making your purchase.

"Hey, the weather's getting better, isn't it," you say. "What a winter we had. I thought the world was ending. I thought we were going to freeze to death and meet on the other size in some heavenly igloo. At the event we would all drink frozen lemonade and suck on ice pops. Hey, you guys sell ice pops?"

This conversation won't take too long and the Final Four lasts about six hours. So ask the cashier several questions. "So, when you were in sixth grade, did you prefer social studies over math? Depending on your answer, give three supporting reasons including an example for each." The cashier should take about four or five minutes to answer this after, of course, asking you why you're asking those types of questions of him and him explaining that there's a line of people behind you he needs to serve and this isn't really time to talk about it.

"Hey, buddy," the gruff-smelly-in-faded- blue jeans man behind you will say. "Stop asking the cashier stupid questions. I need to get my Lime Flavored Tostitos and Chips Ahoy and get to my house to watch the Final Four. You're holding me up. This is the biggest sporting event of the year if you don't count the Super Bowl. I don't have time to wait in line because some guy in front of me is asking a cashier essay questions about sixth grade academics."

"You, sir, don't get it," you will say. "You will be more entertained by this conversation than watching the same teams and coaches that go to the Final Four all the time play again this year. The Final Four will be a bore, a big fat snore, shut the door. It always is when teams like Kentucky, Duke and Michigan State make it there. There is nothing that irks me more in sports than when these same schools, the same wives, the same coaches, the same alumni get to have big parties with chips and dips in Final Four hotels year after year. They get to go to a disproportionately high and unfair amount of partying compared with alumni from colleges such as mine. We never go to the Final Four. Partying at the Final Four should be spread around, not hoarded by the elite few."

"Dude," the guy behind you will say, "get out of my way. I am buying my junk food and you're bugging me."

He shoves you away from the front of the line. You will allow him to get his food and go to his house. This whole convenience store episode will have lasted 23 minutes.

To kill the rest of the five and half hours until the Final Bore is over, you will have to figure out two more things to do. These will have to each kill a lot more than 23 minutes. Otherwise you will have to figure out about 10 things to do to kill time until your March Madness dies its slow death.

Being ambitious, you should drive your car for two hours in any direction. Ideally someplace you have never been so when you try to get home you will get lost. Just drive. Meander in your car in the direction away from your house and the TV where those basketball games will be torturing you even as you don't watch them.

You will wail in the car to yourself: "Oh, the parties I'm missing with my college friends because my college never makes the Final Four. Imagine the wine, women and song we never get to enjoy."

Ideally, this aimless driving will take you to someplace where there is a good pulled pork barbecue sandwich to buy. Look around for such a restaurant. Maybe see if you can tell from the road if a convenience store seems like the type that would make you a pulled pork sandwich. Most of them don't. So you are likely to fail in this pursuit but time will elapse, and that's your main objective.

Just keep searching for a pork Sammy until two hours have passed into the history books. Then start driving back to where you think your house is. But don't use a GPS or map. Don't talk to Siri. Just drive. Guess which roads to take. Purposely take the turns that your gut tells you are wrong. This is bound to devour time and make your drive back home take even longer.

As you find yourself getting more lost, you will know you have completed your second task to kill time during the Final Four.

Plow on to step three: While on this drive, stop in at a hotel, preferably a seedy one where you suspect you might get mugged. Get a room for a few hours. Sit on the bed, grab the remote and turn on the TV. Whatever you do, don't go to the Final Four channel. Watch Judge Judy if she's on. Or search around for some cool Hawaii surfing competition. Or even better, fire up the "Weather Channel" and find out what's going on with the weather around the country including your neck of the woods. This should mesmerize you for a few hours.

Fall asleep, by accident. Wake up whenever. Rub your sleepy eyes. Be discombobulated about where you are. Feel enriched you missed the Final Four.

Stand up and dance around the room singing, "Victory, victory, victory."

You won the national championship.

- Charles Hartley

Charles Hartley is a freelance writer who has had more than 1,000 articles published in a wide range of media outlets focused on humor, sports, business, technology and consumers. He has earned master's degrees in journalism and business administration and a bachelor's degree in English and communications.