Women are smarter, tougher, more loyal and resilient

Tell young people old stories with actual dates and numbers, and they instinctually step slightly backward as if longevity is a contagious condition or perhaps they are afraid to be taken down memory lane by a storyteller who doesn’t breathe for paragraph breaks. Last Sunday, May 2, at the De-Feet Breast Cancer 5K, I encountered Phil Wilson, who was a runner on my 1977 state championship cross country team along with Lance White, Glen Smith, Linwood Downing, David Lewis, Jeff Jones and Ronnie Wright. The day was Phil’s 50th birthday - he is the computer guy at Sussex Tech - and I thought it was so cool for us to be there together again and told that story to a few unsuspecting individuals who did that half step backward and pretended to be concentrating on bagel chewing which doesn’t really require Ritalin to pay attention. Phil and his wife Stacey, together since high school, and daughter Carolina, a University of Delaware graduate in accounting, seemed so cool together, which is hard to fake; it’s doable but difficult.

SURVIVORS - I will not pander to women just to make points. I have always said that women are smarter, tougher, more loyal and resilient than men. I really don’t think it’s debatable, speaking as a big boy baby myself. Last Sunday at the De-Feet Breast Cancer Run there was smiling inspiration all over the place and it was humbling. Colleen Windrow, a cute-as-all-get-out 42-year-old mother - no, really, Fredman get out - smiled easily surrounded by family and lots of friends and said, “I guess I’m a survivor. I had my first mammogram seven months ago which revealed the aggressive type of cancer. I just finished my chemotherapy. It was caught early, so I’m in good shape, but if I had waited until I was 50 as has been recommended by some medical professionals, it would have been too late.” As reported in Time magazine Nov. 17, Dr. David Dershaw, director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City in response to the new guidelines said, “I am appalled and horrified. There is no doubt that mammography screening in women in their 40s saves lives. To recommend that women abandon that is absolutely horrifying to me.”

DOUBLE CROWN - You can’t hide nice, so when I spotted Miss Mid-Atlantic and Miss Rehoboth wearing crowns and banners hanging in the Applebee’s parking lot, I went wading and wallowing into long-lens photo opportunity mode.

Shaila Gillis, Miss Mid-Atlantic, teaches Spanish at Sussex Tech while Miss Rehoboth Marcie Smith lives in Newark; makes sense to me. The Miss Delaware pageant is Saturday, June 12, at Dover Downs and it was suggested that it would be a wonderful idea for me to attend but Grand Mom Rose’s voice whispered from history, “Don’t be that guy!”

I watched Shaila and Marcie work around the finish chute and cheer for runners and thought, what a couple of nice young girls. And who knows, one could be the future Miss America.

MOMMA NIKKI – I know Nikki from Gold’s Gym and last Sunday I saw her baby Braedon for the first time, and because I have a camera and a column and these peeps are on my beat into the column they go. Back in my mother’s generation there were no gyms and never talk of fitness or anything else pertaining to women’s health. Anyway Nikki is straight up cool and I wish her the best of luck on her mommy career.

Hampden-Sydney lost 10-7 in the semifinals of the Old Dominion Conference Tournament. Lynchburg will face top-seeded Roanoke in Salem next weekend. Check out all lacrosse results at laxpower.com. The king of the girlie machines is now off to Gold’s Gym. I am the trolley car conductor of the adductor and abductor hip muscles. Back off!