For shoppers, snagging a close parking spot in a five-acre lot is almost as thrilling as finding a 75-percent-off sale. Although there’s always a place to park, sometimes it’s difficult to find one’s vehicle when faced with a never-ending sea of silver and beige hoods.

I always make a note of the aisle and section where I park because those huge lots can be overwhelming. I used to write down the location on a piece of paper, but I usually lost the paper. Once I wrote my location on the parking ticket, but I left the ticket in my car.

When I headed into Houston for the Gem and Jewelry Show at Reliant Arena last weekend, looking for some bargains, the last thing I worried about was parking.

There’s hundreds of parking spots in the complex, but I park in the North Kirby Lot for two reasons: I know how to get there, and I know how to get back on the freeway from there.

Unfortunately, a gun show and a cheerleader events were going on at the same time, so the parking lots were pretty full. But the lure of a bargain motivated me to fight the crowds.

Slowly but surely, I maneuvered my way to the North Kirby Lot and found a space.

I looked around and noted I was parked on Row 4.

I wrote the number 4 on the back of my hand with a pen.

As I was walking away, I looked back over my shoulder, making sure I was parked on Row 4.

A few hours later, I left the jewelry show, confident I’d walk right up to my car. As I neared Row 4, I did what anyone with a key bob does — I pressed the lock button to hear the horn honk so I could locate my car.

Silence. I looked at the light pole again. Yes, I was near Row 4. But then I looked beyond that pole and saw another pole in the distance. It also had a sign with the number 4. I looked in the other direction — 4 on that pole as well.

As far as the eye could see, there were 4’s on all the light poles. Then it hit me. I was in Parking Lot 4, not row 4.

There were at least 50 cars in every row and at least 20 rows in front of and behind me. Then I remembered something my son said when I was complaining about finding my car in those mammoth parking lots.

“You know, Mom, there’s an app for your cell phone that can mark your parking spot, and it’ll lead you right to your car, like a GPS device,” he’d said.

I brushed off his suggestion, telling him I had a pen and my hand, and those two items were much more reliable than an app.

Wandering around the parking lot, I found myself wishing I’d taken his advice. As I tried retracing my steps, I noticed I was surrounded by dozens of confused people who were also meandering up and down the rows with their key bob over their head, pressing the lock button with their thumb, listening for a familiar honk or beep.

And then, 30 long minutes later, a familiar toot answered my call. I pressed the bob again and my long-lost vehicle answered.

I quickly walked in that direction and, sure enough, there was my Altima, right next to the Number 4 pole, right where I’d left it.

Later that evening, I called my son and asked him how to download the “Take Me To My Car” app.

“Be glad to send you the site,” he said. “It comes with the ‘I Told You So’ app as well.”

It’s not too often sons have the right to gloat. So I’ll say it this once — Stephen, you were right.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I was at the park with my granddaughter recently, and she decided to head toward a tall slide, quickly putting some distance between us.
“Don’t climb up the ladder until I get there,” I called after her.

“Why?” asked the 3-year-old over her shoulder.

“Because you could get hurt,” I said.

Later, as I was pushing her on the swings, she pleaded for me to push her higher. I told her she was already going high enough.

“But I want to go higher,” she said.

“You could get hurt — this is high enough,” I told her.

It wasn’t until the fifth time I cautioned her about not attempting something a little bit daring that I realized how many negatives had come out of my mouth in just one afternoon.

Don’t get near that ant pile. Don’t jump in that water puddle. Don’t climb so high.

My granddaughter had approached the park with enthusiasm and excitement. I’d slowly but surely squeezed a good bit of that glee out of our afternoon. .

Somewhere along the way, I’ve gone from believing life is a wonderful adventure to becoming a human caution light — all yellows and reds.

So many times, we approach a situation paying attention to only the warning signs flashing in front of us.

Don’t ask for time off because you’ll just have to make it up later.

Don’t travel because it’s too expensive.

Don’t sleep in on Saturday morning because you have work to do.

Brian Stokes Mitchell is one of my favorite singers. He’s a popular Broadway performer, but last year, he came to Houston for a one-night-only show.

I talked myself out of going for a variety of reasons — the tickets were too expensive, I didn’t have anyone to go with and his show was on a work night.

What I should’ve thought about was how wonderful it would’ve been to hear Mitchell sing “The Impossible Dream” and “The Wheels of a Dream” in person.

Instead, I sat home, safe and comfortable in my living room, and I missed the performance, all because something could’ve gone wrong.

This week, some friends invited me to come with them for a quick dinner and some chit chat. I declined, knowing I needed to go home, finish some paperwork and throw in a load of clothes.

The whole time I was washing dishes and matching up socks, I wistfully thought about my friends and how I wished I’d gone with them.

Sitting on the couch, surrounded by a stack of folded towels, I vowed to find a way to turn my negative, cautionary statements into positive, life-affirming ones and to lean over the edge in life instead of hanging back in the shadows.

So the next time my friends say they’re going out for a quick bite after work, I’m going to join them because laundry can wait. Friendships shouldn’t.

If one of my favorite singers comes to town, I’m going to the show, even if it means losing a few hours of sleep.

The next time my granddaughter asks to go higher on the swings, I’ll push her as high as she can go and pretend we’re reaching for rainbows.

And when that 3-year-old comes down the tall playground slide, I’ll be sitting and sliding right behind her, both of us grinning from ear to ear, caution thrown to the wind.

Because life should be illuminated by green lights, not yellow and red ones.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Christina Taylor Green was 9 years old. Bright-eyed, optimistic and eager to learn about politics, she was simply on an outing to hear a local Tucson politician talk to her constituents.

On a pretty April day in 2007, Henry Lee was studying computer engineering at Virginia Tech University, still celebrating his newly attained American citizenship papers. He loved photography, movies and hanging out with his friends.

Lauren Townsend was captain of the girls’ varsity volleyball team and a candidate for valedictorian of the graduating class of Columbine High School. She was in the library with her friends, perhaps talking about where she’d attend college that fall.

Alan Beaven was preparing for a case in San Francisco and, after that, was planning a trip to India to do volunteer work. The young lawyer kissed his wife before he left on Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001.

These young people will never see their dreams materialize because they were all victims of murderous, evil madmen who killed innocents for reasons rational people can never understand, nor hope to.

Evil isn’t a new emotion. This raw, powerfully bitter emotion dates back to the days of Cain and Abel. Through the years, cold-blooded killers in positions of power have taken thousands of innocent lives — Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin.

Even in my lifetime, there have been more senseless killings than I care to count. I remember vividly when our school principal opened the door to my second grade classroom in 1963 and, tears running down her face, told us all to get down on our knees and pray.

Our president, John F. Kennedy, had just been shot and killed.

Looking at the wall, it didn’t seem possible that the smiling, handsome young man in that black-and-white photo could be dead. Nor did it seem possible that five years later, we’d hear that the peaceable Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had also been killed by an assassin’s bullet.

And, that same year, another murderer would open fire on the JFK’s young brother, Bobby, and senselessly end a life that promoted civil rights and an end to poverty.

These world leaders, and many whose lives were taken much too early in Columbine, Virginia Tech, Auschwitz, Uganda and thousands of cities and villages around the world, had dreams of building a brighter future.

They were filled with optimism and a dogged determination to make the world a better place. But those dreams were cut short, and there’s no good reason why.

In the aftermath of such tragedies, newspapers and the Internet are filled with thousands of words describing the psychological profiles of these murderers.

Pundits try to explain their motives — they were teased, they were outsiders, they were mentally unbalanced or they were angry at how their lives had turned out.

Instead of accepting personal responsibility for where they were in life or working to change the attitudes of those around them, these butchers used cowardly violence on innocent people. They took lives, shattered families and did their best to create an atmosphere of fear from coast to coast.

But if we let these murderers rob our country of hopes and aspirations that these young people and these young leaders believed in, then we’ve truly lost.

By concentrating too much on trying to figure out evil madmen, we run the risk of overlooking the heart and soul of what good people stand for.

Integrity. Attitude. Perseverance. Hope.

Martin, Bobby and Jack demanded that people incorporate those four words into their daily lives. In the deliberate acts of violence our country has experienced in the past few years, bystanders have stood up, used their bodies as shields and intervened as much as possible to stop the violence.

Few of us will have the split-second decision in that situation, but we can strive to be brave and accepting every day of our lives through our words and actions that tell the world we’ll never stop hoping for peace.

Christina, Henry, Alan and Lauren would be proud.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Have to thank my Mom for introducing me to these old movies — “Madame X,” “Imitation of Life” and, this, the all-time favorite Hebert girl chick flick, “An Affair to Remember.” Thanks, Mom…

One of my favorite movies is “An Affair to Remember” with Gary Grant and Deborah Kerr. A true “chick flick,” the film is about Terri and Nickie who meet on a trans-Atlantic voyage, fall in love, and agree to meet six months later at the top of the Empire State Building to see if they really want to be with each other.
On the way to their meeting, Terry is hit by a taxi cab and paralyzed. She doesn’t want to go to Nickie until she can walk to him. However, Nickie thinks she stood him up and is heartbroken. He waits on the observation deck for hours and leaves bitter and disappointed.

He doesn’t find out what happened to Terry until the end of the movie and, of course, they live happily ever after.

But this magical and romantic movie never could’ve happened in today’s instant-access technological age. With the invention of cell phones and the Internet, the old movies we’ve come to love would never fly.

In “An Affair to Remember,” Nickie would’ve texted Terry or, if that didn’t work, Nickie could’ve checked Terry’s MySpace status for posts and updates.

Another one of my favorite chick flicks is “Sleepless in Seattle,” and Annie did use the Internet to track Sam down. However, instead of using a private investigator to find Sam, Annie could’ve jumped onto Facebook and found out his birthday, residence and much more by friending him.

Forget meeting at the top of the Empire State Building. Both couples could’ve created a private online chat room and typed back and forth without ever crossing the continent.

In fact, all the old love movies could be trimmed in half by having the characters join an online dating service, thus completely removing chance and the magic from the movies.

Sappy love movies aren’t the only films where modern technology would change the entire plot. In “Star Wars,” viewers could’ve saved so much time if Luke would’ve gotten an instant message from R2D2, instructing him to download Princess Leia’s movie and then sending him a text that Darth Vader was his father.

In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” modern technology was at the forefront as the U.S. government tried communicating with the extraterrestrials. With the Internet, all those people with the same dream about the Devil’s Tower could’ve set up Websites and YouTube videos and known they weren’t alone.

Yes, modern technology would’ve gotten us to the point a lot faster. But for those of us who love the “boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl” format, nothing beats chance mishaps, letters that cross in the mail and long courtships that cause us to drag out the Kleenex and wallow in a sappy love story.

Some of our best personal experiences revolve around chance and coincidence, and those old-fashioned stories allow us to remember the enchantment of letting a story unfold with the fates directing the outcome.

And just about the time we picture a suave Cary Grant standing in our living room, asking us to dance or Sean Connery requesting our help on a secret 007 mission, the cell phone vibrates.

It’s the kids, asking if we can ferry their forgotten homework to school for them. Or it’s a sales call, offering us a great deal on a mattress or a reminder text from the dentist about that root canal scheduled for Tuesday.

Perhaps these old sentimental stories are best just the way they are. Sure, today we could sail right through all of life’s twists and turns with a practical GPS device and a pocket-sized 4G cell phone, but we’d lose the one ingredient crucial to any good story.

Magic.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.