I found it
ironic that, while the rest of the country was celebrating Mother’s Day by
taking mom out to eat, Kobe Bryant was serving papers to his mother. At issue was her receiving a $450 k advance
to auction off mementoes from his high school basketball days.
Now don’t
get me wrong. As someone whose mother
gave away his dog while he was doing reserve duty with the Great Lakes fleet, I
know mothers can be cruel. Even saintly
Mary, my wife of many years, had to be stopped from throwing away Sean’s
baseball cards. She did get rid of most
of his Matchbox cars before I could stop her.
Kobe claimed
that he never gave his mother permission to sell the items; just that he tacitly gave
her possession of them after he left the house to join the NBA Lakers sixteen
years ago. Of course the value of $450 k
in Kobe’s mind might be relative. While
we’ll never know the cost of settling the civil suit with the Colorado girl, we
do know that the kiss-and-make-up ring he gave Vanessa likely cost at least
that much. I believe I saw somewhere
that Kobe’s current salary is $38 million and I read that in 2010 his endorsements
were $48 million, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he let his mother keep the
advance when he negotiated with the auction house to relinquish their rights.
While I
looked at the matter as one of property rights, Mary had a different take on
things. As the mother of two grown boys
both of whom live within a mile of our home, she wonders why we still call their
bedrooms “Sean’s room” and “Tim’s room”?
And why do we still have so many of their possessions? Tim’s is a little more understandable because, not only is the principle
object in the middle of the room his tennis racket stringer, but this week he
will be sleeping in that bed as we have to take him to St. Edward at 3:00 A.M.
to catch the bus to LAX and start his annual Eighth-grade trip to the
East. Tim has taught at St. Edward for
ten years and was there when Kobe’s daughter, Natalia was in Kindergarten. Coincidently, Kobe and Vanessa were married at St. Edward
and, their children probably would have continued there had the Bryant’s not
moved to the Newport Coast.
Mary hypothesized
that Pamela had probably reminded her son that his high school jerseys and such
were still in the home sixteen years after he left. Kobe perhaps had even told her that he would
pick them up “when he got around to it”.
What mother would not have drawn a line in the sand? Especially when her son has his own, very large
house.
So, if Mary
is right and all it took to get those things out from under her roof was to put
them up for sale, I think Sean and Tim had better start monitoring e-Bay for
activity from their mother.
In my next
post I will bring you a little information about tele-medicine and
tele-dentistry. I just returned from a
meeting where that topic was relative and I find the subject intriguing. Please plan to stop on by.
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