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Patty Kimerer column

Basketball playoffs demonstrate life lessons

As I sat biting my nails watching my Cavs play the Pacers the other night, it occurred to me that the NBA Playoffs are really a metaphor for life. Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a LeBron Loyalist, an Irving Addict and an absolute Lover of Kevin Love (well, duh) … but I really do believe I’m onto something here. Consider the following lessons to be gleaned from our super-tall pals on the court: 1. Never assume a win. You could be ahead 3 and 0 in the series, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to sweep it, yo. Just because you had a great interview or you’re a super smart student ...

Celebrating a love that saved us all

Today is one of celebration for a whole heck of a lot of folks. For those of the Hebrew faith, it is the seventh full day of the Jewish feast called Passover, which is a commemoration celebrating God’s freeing of the Israelites from the Egyptian Pharaoh who enslaved them. As part of the escape plan, the Lord sent several plagues down on the Egyptians, one of which was the death of every first-born Egyptian male in a family. Moses (their leader) told the Israelites to mark the doorposts of their homes with lamb’s blood so the Lord’s spirit would know to spare or “pass over” ...

They grow up so fast — and so smarty-pants smart

No one likes a smarty pants — especially those of us with plain old, average trousers, you know what I mean? Well, except, of course, when the smarty pants in question belong to your son, and you’re watching him walk across the stage in them, as he is inducted into the National Honor Society while you blubber in the front row of the audience trying hard not to jiggle the camera and ruin the photo capturing the big moment. Yeah, that moment your baby, so grown up and handsome in his dress shirt and tie, accepts his certificate from the National Honor Society saluting academic ...

Technology turns tendencies toward texting

As I sat with my son Kyle at a restaurant the other night, I couldn’t help but notice that very few of the humans were interacting with those seated beside or across from them. Or at adjacent tables. Or in the building. Except for their server, of course, but only when they needed refills. Hmpf. It’s no new concept, really, the notion that technology is all at once tremendous and awful in terms of its impact on personal communication. Sure, you can carry on multiple conversations with people all over the city, state, globe and on the dark side of the moon these days, but at the ...

Sharing trips around the sun

So, my pup Monnie and I are both March birthday girls. She’s the 22nd and as for Mommy, it’s tomorrow. She just celebrated the big number 6 and I’m about to enter the last year of my 40s. Hard, hard gulp. It occurs to me that next year we will almost be the same age according to human calculation, which is weird since she was two months old and I was 43 YEARS (or 516 months) old when we met in May of 2011. Either way. I couldn’t help but notice that we share a birthday month with megastar Lady Gaga. The world tends to make a bigger deal of her March 28 birthday than ...

If I weren’t so peaceful, I’d poke her right in scanner

You know her. She’s the nameless, faceless, no-bodied voice at the self-checkout aisle in the grocery store. She is pushy and intolerant and terse. Not only does she yell at me to place items on the belt that are clearly rolling down the lane like a steamroller (and flattening the hot dog buns that were already scanned, BTW) but she also randomly reverses the belt direction and spits back items for re-scanning about 50 or 60 times. I get charged for each of them. Grrr. She then refuses to process in-store coupons without the assistance of a store clerk — a demand, of ...