This is the latest in my on-again, off-again series of Bygone Blogs, in which I’m re-posting some of my favorite blogs from the last 15 years. This one was originally published on March 21, 2010.
It’s time to update the Wegmans Game
Chances are good you’ve played the Wegmans Game.
You know what I mean. When you and a companion go to Wegmans, each of you counts how many people you know. Whoever sees the most people wins. It’s a fun and easy game, since if you hang around Wegmans long enough you’ll see just about everyone in the community walk through the doors.
I’ve been playing this game for years with my kids, and I must say it’s getting a little predictable. So this morning as I shopped at the Holt Rd. Wegmans, I began to think of ways to spice up the game for the next generation of Wegmans shoppers.
Here’s what I came up with. Feel free to add your own.
The Wegmans Game(21st Century Rules)
Wegmans employees are only worth a half point each. They’re required to be there for long hours anyway, so seeing them is not terribly serendipitous. And you’ll really appreciate this rule if you’re shopping with your high school-aged child, since he or she will know every one of the checkers.
Talkers and stalkers can earn bonus points. These are the people who always seem to shop when you do, and assume you want a half-hour description of their gall bladder surgery. One point for seeing them, a bonus point for successfully avoiding them. Five bonus points for being caught and having to listen to the surgery story.
One point for a teacher if you have that teacher this year. One additional point for every decade back you had that teacher. (For example, one extra point for the 00s, two points for the 90s, three for the 80s, and so on. So Mom or Dad, if you see your grade school teacher, it’s almost a guaranteed win.)
You must know the person’s name to earn a point. Otherwise you don’t really “know” the person, do you? (Whether you need to know both first and last names can be considered a house rule.)
If both players know the same person, point goes to the one who sees that person first. It rewards acute observation skills.
If you skunk your opponent, you must spot said opponent three people at the beginning of the next game.
So I think we have a good start here. Anyone else have a suggestion?
This is the kind of thing I love to write about, because we don’t hear stories like these often enough.
It comes to me from one of my most faithful readers, Linda Meyers. She and her daughter Julia had gone over to her sister’s house on one of those very windy days a few weeks ago, so that Julia could present her Girl Scout Cookie sales pitch to her aunt in person. When they arrived home, however, they noticed that Julia’s cookie money envelope was gone. Sometime during the visit, perhaps when they were walking back to the car, the wind must have stripped the envelope from the clipboard they were carrying.
Linda returned to her sister’s house and scoured the yard. She was able to find $4 caught in a tree in the backyard, but no more. And no envelope at all. She knew she needed some help. She wrote,
Since I didn’t find the envelope or the rest of the money, I posted about the missing envelope on Facebook … and texted a few friends who live close to see if they could look in their yards, which they very kindly did! A few of my sister’s neighbors also went out to look even though it was dark, cold, and windy! One friend/neighbor even said her neighbor and his grandson turned it into an (unsuccessful) scavenger hunt.
Unfortunately, these valiant efforts turned up nothing and it looked like the money was gone forever.
But then, just a few days later, Lena Budd, an official from the Girl Scouts of Western NY, called to report that a Webster man had found Julia’s envelope, complete with Julia’s name and troop number. Lena had gotten a call from Karla Nichols, a Girl Scout Leader in Hilton who works at Mayer’s Lake Ontario Winery. SHE had been contacted by Fran and Rich Grizzanto, who found the envelope, thinking that Julia Meyers might be related.
Linda got Fran’s phone number and called her right away. “We had a lovely chat,” she wrote. “Turns out (Fran) lives diagonally behind my sister. She said they had found $21 floating around their yard and in their bushes. The envelope itself had gotten stuck in a prickly bush along their front walk.”
Later that evening, Linda and Julia stopped by the Grizzantos’ home to pick up the envelope. They were “lovely,” she said, adding that “Rich said he wished he’d gotten a video of his wife scrambling to grab money in the backyard! Fran gave us a jar of her homemade grape jelly, which is delicious, and noted that it is her 21st batch of jam. Coincidence that she recovered $21?”
In the end, Julia was only able to recover $25 of the $50 she had in the envelope, but since no one was really expecting to get any of it back, that was a big relief. Linda says that they’ll be returning to Fran and Rich’s house in March with some free cookies to thank them for their efforts.
So that’s the story of the missing cookie money envelope. A lot of people had to show a lot of kindness to get that envelope and the money back to a hard-working Girl Scout. Many thanks to all who helped make it a happy ending.
If you like this story and perhaps want to meet little Julia for yourself, she and her Troop 60344 will be selling cookies on:
Saturday March 4, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Hegedorns
Sunday March 12, 1 to 4 p.m. at Lowe’s
Saturday March 25, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Walmart’s Home entrance
Saturday April 1, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Walmart’s Home entrance
(Julia herself may not be at all of these dates, but will definitely be at Lowe’s on the 12th!)
Yesterday, as I was dragging my Christmas tree to the curb for the Village to pick up, I was reminded of a nice story that happened seven years ago this week.
In the first week of January 2016, My husband and I had decided to take a winter hike at Helmer Nature Center in Irondequoit. It happens that Helmer is the location where the Town of Irondequoit collects Christmas trees every year for recycling. We noticed that someone had placed an ornament on top of a post near the pile of trees. Clearly, some family had left it on their tree, a kind person had noticed it and put it somewhere obvious in case the family came back looking for it.
At my husband’s suggestion, I snapped a photo of the ornament and posted it on my Facebook page. I was still writing a weekly column for the Democrat and Chronicle at the time, so the page had a lot of readership. Someone at Channel 13 saw the post and did a short piece on their newscast. That caught the attention of the Irondequoit family who had lost the ornament, the Rusters.
Turns out the photo is of (then) 22-year old Teigan Ruster, who was just a year old when it was taken. The family returned to Helmer Nature Center the next day and was thrilled to get the ornament back.
The whole story was picked by by Channel 13 reporter Matt Molloy, who actually came to interview me at the Webster Thomas High School library where I was working at the time. Click here to see his report.
As I like to do at the end of the year, a few days ago I took a stroll back through all of the blogs I wrote in 2022. It’s always a fun exercise, as I’m reminded of all of the events, business openings and closings, people and places that I found to share with you all. It’s a nice reminder of the rich and close-knit community we have here in Webster.
In the last 12 months I posted a whopping 276 blogs, which I credit in part to having more time to research and write now that I’m retired. Most of those were about special events. They began in February with the month-long Fall in Love With Webster, which highlighted our village businesses, restaurants and pubs. In April, we welcomed the return of Community Arts Day and the Greater Rochester Peep Show, and a brand new event, theWebster BID Easter Egg Hunt. Also in April, I reported on the official renaming of North Ponds Park to Charles E. Sexton Park in honor of the town’s first recreation director.
I also shared positive news from our schools, like the Webster Marching Band’s annualAutumn Fanfare, the OWL Cafe at Schlegel Elementary School, the fairy trail behind State Rd. Elementary, and the beautiful murals decorating the halls of Webster Thomas High School.
Some of my favorite blogs were about the people who make up the fabric of our community. Like Jim Lockwood, Webster’s very own Santa Claus; Florence Kinney, “Mrs. Claus,” who reached her goal this year of donating 100,000 holiday gifts to children; Mike Fitzsimmons, the only known person with spina bifida to ever run an ultra marathon; Webster lacrosse standout Dr. Steve Cochi; and Cadet Nurse Corps veteran Marie Gyles. I also remembered two well-loved Websterites we lost this year, Lee Burgess and Pat Copeland.
I often indulged in my love of history. Encouraged by my new role as author of the Webster Museum’s monthly History Bit feature, I wrote about the beautiful, hand-carved Burkhardt Family Creche; found out more about the two houses on Corning Park which used to be one; and shared some “Rules for teachers” from 1872 that proved that teaching has always been a labor of love.
Finally, there were many times when I asked your indulgence, dear readers, as I wrote about some things happening in my life. These were sometimes funny, but mostly thrown out there for my own enjoyment.
And I started the year with the most personal story of all, titled The Power of Words, where I revealed the four simple words that sparked my career in writing.
Whew. That was really long and complicated. And it didn’t even come close to touching on all of the blogs I wrote this year.
But I know lot of you are still reading, because you are the folks who’ve been with me all year. And you’re the reason I write this blog. I’ve said it before and it’s worth repeating: even though I enjoy doing this, it would get pretty old if I thought my words weren’t making a difference.
So thank you all for being faithful readers. I wish you all a very happy, healthy and successful 2023, and I look forward to continuing to spread good news from our hometown.
Just two weeks ago, I had so many blog ideas piling up that once, maybe twice, I actually published two blogs on one day to get them all posted in a timely manner.
Fast forward to this week, and I got nuthin’.
Oh, I’m working on a few things. Later this week, or example, I’ll be telling you about the new MBody fitness studio in the village, and I want to stop by the new Mexican restaurant on Ridge Rd. Plus, of course, I’m waiting for news about when the Wreaths Across America truck is scheduled to come through town.
But in the meantime, I got thinking about two years ago, when we were deep in the throes of the pandemic, and we were all looking forward to a rather untraditional holiday season. I was reading through the blogs I wrote that month, and came across a few which I thought you might like to see again (or never saw the first time).
This first one just made me giggle…again. I posted in on Dec. 15, 2020:
Some holiday giggles
We all could use a little laugh right about now as Christmas-time stress compounds the stress we already have thanks to COVID.
So I thought I’d share these images with you, of a scene I came across in Irondequoit last weekend. All I could think of was, “Arlo Guthrie told us all about the ‘Thanksgiving Day Massacree.’ How come we haven’t heard anything about this obvious Christmas Day Massacree?”
It got worse when I got to the Rec Center, where I saw clear evidence of a hit-and-run.
Webster’s “Reverse” Parade of Lights
Do you remember how, since the Village of Webster couldn’t hold its annual Parade of Lights, we held a “reverse” parade instead? It was a very ambitious idea where participating businesses and first responders would set up in a big Xerox parking lot, and community members would drive through the line-up to enjoy the lights and music.
It worked very well, but was so popular that traffic backed up for hours, even onto the highway.
I was there most of the day, and took several videos of the event. I won’t repost them all here, but you can click here to see them and read the original blog from this week two years ago, Dec. 6, 2020.
This is the latest in my on-again, off-again series of Bygone Blogs, in which I’m re-posting some of my favorite blogs from the last 14 years. This one was originally published on October 8, 2008.
Parental Stupidity Index
WARNING! Mathematics ahead! (But stay with me, because you might find this interesting.)
My husband and I have a 14-year old. She thinks we’re stupid.
Now this phenomenon — which I’ll call “Perceived Parental Intelligence,” or PPI — is not unusual. Matter of fact, it’s so commonplace I’m surprised there hasn’t been any serious quantitative research on the subject. So of course, I’ve decided to give it a shot.
As I see it, the PPI phenomenon proceeds something like this: from birth to pre-teen, children think their parents are the smartest people in the world. At about 9 or 10 years old, that perception begins to sag. Then, at around 11 years old, the PPI takes a precipitous drop and continues to drop (i.e. parents continue to get stupider) until children’s mid to late-teen years.
It’s at this time, roughly coinciding with the college years, that Perceived Parental Intelligence begins a slow and steady crawl back up. Not surprisingly, the index takes an abrupt upswing in the late 20s, when children start having children of their own, and they wonder how on earth their parents managed to raise a family without going psycho.
For visual learners, below you’ll see how the PPI phenomenon looks when graphed.
Point A, a child’s early years, are when parents are percieved to be really smart and know everything.
Point B, when a child enters the pre-teen years, parents begin their quick descent into stupidity.
At Point C, when grandchildren are born, parents all of a sudden look like Einstein.
I’m curious to see if other families are seeing the same phenomenon. I also encourage replication of this study. I wonder, for example, if Point B — where the PPI begins to decline — is a constant.
I heard some sad news the other day. Pat Copeland, one of the Village of Webster’s bright spots, has passed away.
I didn’t know Pat very well, but I did get to meet her a few years ago when her daughter Molly organized a surprise car and truck parade for her 90th birthday. I heard about it on Facebook and made very sure I was there for the festivities.
Precisely at noon on April 28, 2020, dozens of cars, truck and jeeps covered in banners and balloons, led by emergency vehicles all sounding their sirens and air horns, streamed past Pat’s East Main St. home as she watched with a huge grin on her face. The parade even included a drum majorette, Webster’s own Denise Baller of Dancing With Denise.
Denise still remembers the day well.
I met (Pat) after seeing a post from Molly saying she wanted to have a parade for her mom for her birthday, and wanted to have a majorette in the parade. Well, my days at Bishop Kearney were filled with high kicking as a majorette in the BK Marching Kings, so I located an old uniform and boots and coordinated with Molly to be part of the parade!
As my mom had just passed away, I knew how important it was to fulfill the desires of her elderly mom. So I was so happy to be a part of such a special day and create such a nice memory for both of them.
Another very special moment that day, Molly remembers, is when an opera singer, who had once sung the National Anthem at a Florida Marlins game, sang it and “God Bless America” for Pat. Molly wrote, “Finding such a needle in a haystack was the Lord at work giving me a hand in creating such a day!”
The community came out in droves to drive by, honk their horns and lean out their windows yelling “happy birthday!” Many others stood along the sidewalk to watch the festivities. (Click here for the blog I wrote that day.)
Pat was rather blown away by it all. In a television interview she sat for after the parade was over, she told the reporter, “I don’t know where they all came from. (Molly) certainly went out of her way to create a birthday I will remember forever.”
“I’m overwhelmed. I just couldn’t breathe,” she added. “It’s a wonderful gift, a marvelous gift.”
Pat passed away on Saturday Oct. 15, at the age of 92. Her daughter Molly writes that she was not afraid to pass, that she was looking forward to seeing her brother, sisters, husband and friends.
Molly wrote, “The entire family, immediate and extended, will miss her dearly as she never left anyone with anything less than a smile.” It’s fitting, then, that in her later days, the Village of Webster community was able to bring a smile to her face.
Late last night, my husband and I returned from a week-long holiday in Copenhagen. It wasn’t a country we’d every thought would be on our traveling bucket list. But when he saw an conference scheduled for at Roskilde University that dovetailed with his research agenda, he jumped at the excuse to spend some time in Denmark.
And of course I joined him.
Through the wonders of the internet, before I even left town I was able to schedule a half dozen blogs to post throughout the week ahead, so you probably didn’t even notice any glitches. Of course, if you were up in the wee hours of the morning and saw one of my blogs post at 1 a.m., you might have wondered.
We were hoping that the typical cool, rainy weather that Denmark’s known for in October would also take a holiday, but that wasn’t to be the case. Still, umbrellas in hand, we explored about as much of Copenhagen that could be explored, and one day even took a train north to small-town Elsinore to check out that charming old seaside community. And of course, since we were literally so close to Sweden that we could see it across the Øresund strait, we had to spend some time there.
I took a ton of photos, of course, and those are great, but I’ve decided I’m going to chronicle my adventures with a fridge magnet purchased from each of the countries I visit in our travels. So this morning I added two new magnets to my fridge, one from Copenhagen — specifically, the beautiful Nyhavn neighborhood — and one from Sweden. They joined the one I got from Barcelona on a cruise we took over the summer.
We’re not planning any more world traveling for a while, but I’m hoping next spring I’ll be adding a few more magnets from Ireland, England, and maybe even Wales. In the meantime, it’s good to be home and get my blogging feet back under me again.
I think my husband is glad I’ve decided to collect magnets from every country we visit, instead of my original plan: hoodies. I understand where he’s coming from; hoodies are harder to hang on the fridge.
For years, when we were still living in North Penfield just off of Hatch Rd., we would occasionally hear the Webster Marching Band practicing in the Webster Schroeder parking lot. The school was more than a mile away, but every once in a while the prevailing winds would carry the music all the way to our house, and we could clearly hear snippets of the tunes they were working on.
Hearing the music drifting in on the warm breezes was one of the little things I always enjoyed about summer. Since we moved to the village three years ago, I’ve missed that simple pleasure.
But I got it back this summer.
Thanks to some set of circumstances, the Webster Marching Band has been displaced from their usual stomping grounds at Schroeder, and this summer are holding their practices at Spry Middle School, basically right across the street from my village home.
It’s like I’m getting a preview of this year’s program. And if it’s anything like last year’s — when the band took top State honors — it will be an award winner.
That’s just one more great thing about living in the village: music at the pubs, music at the gazebo, music in the streets … and now music across the street from me.
I feature the people and places and events that make Webster the wonderful community it is — and throw in some totally-not-Webster-related personal ramblings every once in a while as well.
I love it when readers send me news about the great things happening in their schools or the community, so please email me anytime at missyblog@gmail.com
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