Basketball tournament season is upon us, and you know what that means: My mother will be out of her gourd between now and the time the last championship net is cut, sometime in July or August.
Not that she isn’t out of her gourd the rest of the year, too. It’s just that basketball tournaments turn up the volume, you might say.
For those of you hoping to converse with Mom at any time a basketball game is being played, good luck. You might as well give it up now. There are 3,176 television channels devoted to basketball, and my mother’s satellite dish pulls in every single one of them. If she’s not watching a live game, she’s watching a rerun ... unless she’s watching highlights or a classic game from the past. As long as it’s basketball, Mom’s tuned in, which means tuning out everything else.
Mom’s basketball viewing preferences are, in order, Indiana University; any other university in the state of Indiana that happens to be in the same conference as IU; any other university or college in Indiana; any other university in the Big Ten; any other university in the Midwest; any other university in the continental United States; the rest of the world; and the NBA.
A viewing schedule like hers leaves little time for things like eating and sleeping, much less answering the telephone when her loving elder son calls. Still, she has been known to absent-mindedly pick up while watching a game. …
Ring ring.
Mom (distracted): Hello.
Me: Hi, Mom.
Mom: Oh, hi. Hold on a minute. Traveling! He traveled! What’s wrong with these refs? Why don’t they call traveling anymore?
Me: I don’t know, Mom.
Mom: Well, he traveled.
Me: Speaking of travel, Mom, I …
Mom: Hold on a minute. Oh my God, how could he miss that? He was right under the basket by himself! 
Me: Mom, is there someone there with you?
Mom: No, I’m just watching the game.
Me: I see. Well, anyway, Mom, about traveling …
Mom: Hold on a minute. That’s the way! Don’t let him take that shot! Jam that ball right down his …
Me: MOM!
Mom: Oh, hi. I forgot you were there.
Me: Right, Mom. Look I just called to say hello and tell you I’m going to travel to …
Mom: Hold on a minute (places me on hold and then comes back on). Can you call back later? Mike’s on the other line, and I’m watching basketball.
Me: Mom, it’s me. 
Mom: Well, they’ll call back. It’s almost halftime. Oh! Did you see that? Why can’t anyone hit free throws anymore?
Me: I don’t know Mom. Look, the reason I called …
Mom: What were you saying? Did you go somewhere?
Me (grasping the end of my rope): No, Mom. I was going to tell you I’m going to sell all my worldly possessions and move to Tanzania to spend the rest of my life playing the ukulele at bus stations.
Mom (still distracted): OK, well, call me when you get there. Oh, my! That’s three 3-pointers for that kid! I have to go. Nice talking to you!
And so on.
P.S. No, I’m not really going to play the ukulele in Tanzania. Don’t tell Mom, though. I want to see what happens when she realizes what I said. That should happen sometime in July.
Redmond is an author, journalist, humorist and speaker. Write him at mike@mikeredmondonline.com. For information on speaking fees and availability, visit www.spotlightwww.com.

Ordinarily, I am not a slave to temptation. Dessert, for example. It may be tempting, but I can take it or leave it, pretty much, without too much difficulty.
Occasionally, though, temptation jumps up and seizes control of me and there’s not a thing I can do about it. For example, the other day in the grocery store. I had just a few things to buy and was well on my way to completing the list when all of a sudden I was overtaken by an insane desire for …
Olive loaf.
Yes. Olive loaf. Everyone else in the world gets derailed by things like pie and cake. Me, I get my head turned by bologna with chunks of green stuff in it.
Sometimes I really wonder about myself.
It’s not like I have any great childhood memories of olive loaf. In fact, I can’t remember it ever being in the house. Regular bologna, sure. We ate tons of it, along with ring bologna and bologna salad, too. Pickle loaf, yes, because Dad liked it. Same for old-fashioned loaf (whatever the heck that was) and pimento loaf (see above under pickle loaf, but with red flecks in the bologna instead of green ones) and braunschweiger (the very thought of which makes me slightly nauseous). But not olive loaf.
In other words, I cannot explain the attraction. Maybe there’s some part of my brain that thinks of olive loaf as the most exotic of the bologna variants. In fact, Bill Daley, writing in the Hartford Courant about 20 years ago, called olive loaf “the exotic temptress of the deli counter.” It’s nice to know that someone else out there sees it as I do.
Maybe it’s because I like olives and I like bologna and it only stands to reason that I’ll like them together. 
Or maybe it’s just because I can be exceedingly weird sometimes.
Stuff finds its way into my grocery cart and I am hard-pressed to explain it. Fish sticks, for example. Practically every supermarket in the 317 area code has a perfectly nice fish counter nowadays, with plenty of glistening, fresh (well, sort of – this is the Midwest, after all) seafood resting on banks of sparkling ice. And yes, I have been known to buy some of the product offered there. But for every head-on trout or tuna steak I have chosen, I have also bought a box of frozen fish sticks.
(For this one, I know why. I went to school during the era when fish sticks showed up on the cafeteria menu every Friday without fail, and for some reason I loved them. My friends all thought I was out of my fourth-grade gourd but I didn’t mind. After all, they gave me the fish sticks they had no intention of eating. Bonus for me.)
I am a sucker for exotic produce (star fruit, anyone?), pistachio nuts, designer root beer, every variety of Klondike bar and kidhood cereal favorites, but I know this about myself. Which gets me back to the olive loaf and the fact that I have no earthly idea why it winds up in my grocery cart every once in a while.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I have a fresh package in the refrigerator, and lunchtime is coming. I think you can guess what’s on the menu. 
Redmond is an author, journalist, humorist and speaker. Write him at mike@mikeredmondonline.com. For information on speaking fees and availability, visit www.spotlightwww.
com.