Honey? Why is that truck in our driveway?....

We live in a right-to-your-door world, where everything from your DVD rentals to your prescription medicines (and in New York, your pot, according to NPR) arrive at your door as if by magic. So I can’t say I was actually surprised to be riding alongside an SUV yesterday on Robious Road emblazoned on the side with “PATERNITY DNA PROFESSIONALS -- WE’LL COME TO YOU.” But still, I must say, I was a little thrown. Because it’s one thing to accept the reality that this service, like any other, would be available to you in the privacy and discretion of your own home, but there was the catch. PATERNITY DNA PROFESSIONALS -- WE’LL COME TO YOU. Can you imagine that truck pulling up to your house? I tried to picture any scenario under which that would be a comfortable situation and couldn’t do it, with the possible exception of “Oh, Marge,” she says, poking her nose over her privacy fence, “isn’t it wonderful? We just found out we may be blood relations of Warren Buffet! Keep your fingers crossed!” But that seems, well, unlikely. And so, that truck -- PATERNITY DNA PROFESSIONALS -- WE’LL COME TO YOU rolls into driveways all over town presumably under circumstances that call for the utmost discretion. I wondered if, perhaps, the driver/swabber keeps a stash of magnetic door signs in the trunk to slap on the door just before arriving, like, MATERNITY DOC PROFESSIONALS -- WE’LL COME TO YOU or FRATERNITY DETOX PROFESSIONALS -- WE’LL COME TO YOU or PIZZA HUT.

But maybe I’m off-base. Maybe it doesn’t bother people to have a PATERNITY DNA PROFESSIONALS truck parked outside their house. Maybe some people, as my mother would say, have no shame. Most of the rest of us, I’m sure, would choose to handle these matters in the discreet setting of a public courthouse.

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And just a word, if you don't mind, about last night's big game.

I, like millions of other people, pay attention to basketball, for only a few weeks a year. I can’t tell you the last time I watched an entire basketball game, except for last night. I hope you will forgive my fair-weatherness. In fact, I hope even if you are a die-hard VCU Rams fan, that you will welcome it, embrace it. Because moments like last night, when Eric Maynor hit that jump shot with less than two seconds on the clock to knock Duke out of the first round of the NCAA tournament and advance VCU into the second round, are less about basketball than they are about a whole city being able to celebrate in unison. It’s about civic pride and love of hometown and all those things you can’t sell in a Chamber of Commerce power point presentation. I’m guessing that VCU won’t win the whole thing. Neither did Elliott Yamin. Didn’t matter with Elliott. Won’t matter with VCU. They’ve all made us proud. Good show.