May Days 2022

If you go to Target and walk around and don’t buy anything, is that considered “Target practice?”

As I drove down the Garden State Parkway recently, I passed the recently renamed rest stops that now honor Jon Bon Jovi, Judy Blume and Celia Cruz. That’s an ignominious kind of fame, isn’t it? Would I want to have a place full of fast food and bathrooms named after me? Not that there is a chance of that, but still…

I should really work for the Weather Service. I can accurately predict the weather; any day that I have to get my eyes dilated will be bright and sunny and every day after my sprinklers are turned on for the season there will be plenty of rain.

I find that too many movies & TV shows use images of text messages or phone calls on screen to advance the plot. The problem is that these images are small and hard to read. Or is it just me?

My secret desire is to sneak into all of the houses in my neighborhood to see how my neighbors arrange their refrigerators. Not that I have much food, but there has to be a better way to utilize the space.

Here’s a first for me: I had to retrieve my magnifying glass to read the ever-so-tiny instructions on the little-bitty turkey breast I was making for a solo dinner. I don’t know what I would have done without it (the magnifying glass, not the turkey).

All sock companies should include their brand name somewhere on the socks. I favor certain ones and then don’t know what brand they are so I can’t buy them again. Sock it to me, guys!

Don’t you hate it when you are doing a load of laundry and the washing machine starts making those terrifyingly loud noises, like it is about to blast off? I know it is all about an unbalanced load, but it still scares the daylights out of me when that happens.

Any drawer referred to as a “junk drawer” must have a combination of the majority of the following items: Scotch tape, pens and scratch pads, batteries, a flashlight, twist ties, string, scissors and mystery keys. 

If you live in NJ, you must either bring your own bag when shopping in the supermarket (and practically everywhere else) or buy one because a ban on providing them is now in effect. A friend reported seeing a man with a cart full of groceries and no bags who refused to purchase one at the checkout. I’m picturing his fruits and vegetables rolling around his trunk, with gunk from the meat packages staining the carpet there. Get with the program, bro. I saved the supermarket plastic bags for two years and then started bringing my own reusable bags just to get used to it. My trunk is littered now with canvas, plastic, nylon and every other kind of bag to tote my order home. Remember the good old days when supermarkets would give you a few cents off your order if you brought and used your own? Those days are gone for good!

The only thing tougher than getting injections in my eyes is deciphering the bills for those injections. I had to call the billing department, where they told me that the bills go into a “HOLD” when they bill the insurance company (at $5000 an injection, I’m lucky to be covered) and then they are supposed to bill me for the co-pay. I called to say I haven’t received a bill for any service this year, and they told me I am responsible for letting them know they have not billed me. Huh? What kind of system makes it necessary for the patient to request a bill? I actually had inquired the last two times I was at the office. I told them I don’t want a statement – I want a bill that I can pay online. After our call, they finally sent me a bill for this whole year, which totaled nearly $2,000! From now on, they can expect to hear from me once a month.

I can say for certain that I won’t see a movie described as “creepy” or one with a trailer that uses this phrase spoken in an ominous tone: “In a world…”

Every Friday I go to an Aqua Zumba class at the same place I attend Aqua Aerobics. The enthusiastic instructor assures us that she cannot see our legs underwater, but I suspect when everyone is going left and I am going right that she can’t miss my lack of coordination. Some of her moves (she instructs from the pool deck) are tougher to do since the water gets in my way, but it really doesn’t matter if I take two steps instead of three. I rarely understand a word of the relentless, driving Zumba music – unless we are “rolling on the river” with my idol, Tina Turner – but none of that is important. We just spend 45 minutes grooving to the beat and getting in some fun exercise.

As someone who is the volunteer recording secretary for an organization, I find it ironic that taking the “minutes” actually takes hours! First, I have to frantically write down everything discussed (which I do on my computer) then go back and correct it, check the spelling of the names and make sure I captured the discussion accurately. New respect for those who do this job!

As I sit in my home office and watch the mail truck stop at my box, I can’t help but wonder if I could ever drive a vehicle with the steering wheel on the right side, stay on the right side of the road and stick my arm out of the window far enough to get the mail into the mailbox. And we will never know…

CVS recently began putting childproof caps on my prescriptions after not doing that previously. So, instead of going to the drive-up window to pick one up, I went inside the store and asked the tech to check the bottle before I would take it. Sure enough, there was a childproof cap (they ought to be called “old people proof” because I’m sure kids can open them more easily that we can). The tech replaced it and gave me an extra one, but when I asked her to correct my profile, she first said that I could go online and do that. “But I’m here now. Can’t you do that for me?” I asked. It took her maybe 10 seconds to make that note in my online profile. So much for customer care, right?

Speaking of CVS, one of my idols, Rutgers’ Hall of Fame Women’s Basketball Coach, C. Vivian Stringer – fondly referred to as “CVS” – announced her retirement earlier this month after 50 years as a head coach. 50 years! She started at tiny Cheney State in Pennsylvania, moved on to the much larger University of Iowa and then arrived at Rutgers in 1995. She led all three of those schools to the Final Four, the first Black woman to achieve that feat. In 2018, she won her 1000th game, the first Black coach (and one of only a few coaches, male or female) to achieve that milestone. Her players have gone on to great success on and off the court, with 21 of them having played in the WNBA, others continuing their basketball careers by playing internationally, and yet others spending their careers as basketball coaches. Under her guidance, her student-athletes have been inspired to become lawyers and teachers, executives and authors and to succeed in their chosen fields. 

Vivian Stringer has been outspoken about racism, gaining a national platform after the insulting and racist comments made by shock-jock Don Imus in 2007 when he called her team that had just lost in the National Championship game a bunch of “nappy-headed hos.” Her team handled the crisis with class and dignity, characteristics that were lacking by Imus himself. In 2009, C. Vivian Stringer was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Also in her “class” that year were Michael Jordan, David Robinson, John Stockton – some pretty good company. 

I started following Rutgers Women’s basketball in 2001-2002, the year after Coach Stringer led Rutgers to a Final Four Appearance. In my first year as a fan, the team won all of 9 games and lost 20 – but I was hooked. These women played HARD, defended fiercely and gave it their best effort. The next year the team turned it around. In 2005, they knocked off three top teams in one week, culminating with an overtime win against number-one ranked LSU at the RAC in one of the loudest and most exciting games I have ever seen. The team made an unlikely return to the Final Four in 2007, despite having lost a home game to powerhouse Duke by 40 points in December. Fans left the RAC long before the game ended, and Coach Stringer made the team watch as they left so they would understand their failure. That same team went on to defeat Duke in March in the Sweet 16. And I went to Cleveland to watch them in the Final Four, where they lost in the Championship Game to rival Tennessee.

There have been countless highlights during the course of Coach Stringer’s tenure, but the things I remember – aside from being there to see her 700th, 800th and 1000th win – are the stories of the young women whose lives she affected. One of them is Erica Wheeler, who came from a tough part of Miami, a competitive, undersized guard with leadership qualities. When her mother passed away from cancer after her junior year, Erica was ready to quit and go home. But Coach Stringer reminded her that she had promised Erica’s mother to watch out for her and make sure she graduated, so she returned. Undrafted by the WNBA, Erica played basketball internationally before getting a few chances with the WNBA. Her persistence never wavered, and in 2019, as a member of the Indiana Fever, she was named to the All-Star team. She was the first undrafted player ever to be named All-Star MVP at that game. She is the kind of player nurtured by C. Vivian Stringer.

Over the past 50 years, the Rutgers women’s program has had only two coaches – Theresa Grentz, whose 1982 team captured the last AIAW Championship (and who will be inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame later this year), and C. Vivian Stringer. No pressure for the next person to lead Rutgers Women’s Basketball, right? Good luck to Athletic Director Pat Hobbs in finding the right coach for this storied team.

A new coach will arrive on the Banks with new ideas and new energy and will work hard to rebuild the program following Vivian’s retirement. He or she will have big shoes to fill and big challenges to face. 

Those of us who love the sport and the program will be back in our seats, cheering for the new regime, hoping for plenty of wins. We will see those games being played at Jersey Mike’s Arena on the “C. Vivian Stringer Court,” which, appropriately, will be dedicated to Coach Stringer this season. What a privilege it has been to watch history being made by C. Vivian Stringer.