Walsh Wonderings Column

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on November 3, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on November 10, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) It was odd enough having the first week of school cancelled because of Hurricane Irene, but dealing with power outages on a snowy Halloween? Not even the Great Pumpkin saw this one coming. Since my childhood days, I’ve long been a fan of the Electricity Derby. In the days before laptops or Gameboys, I’d sit vigil during electrical outages while trying to guess which part of our neighborhood would get power restored first. Occasionally, a random house would suddenly sparkle to life, the glow of its lights illuminating our defeat. These were the cheaters, of course, the ones smart enough not only to buy generators but also keep them filled with gas. I hated them for their forward thinking and their refrigerators filled with unspoiled food. My mom would unearth the decades-old box of Carnation powdered milk that blighted the pantry shelf and inflict it upon us if the outage lasted more than a day or two. Power outages were dangerous for the youngest boy in a family of seven kids. Electricity formed a kind of invisible fence that separated my brothers and sisters from me. The distraction of the radio, the televisions, and the video games protected me from their gaze. When the electricity went out, it was as if all the cages inside the zoo were opened at once. A boy could find himself pinned to the ground while his brother performed the dreaded “Loogie Drip” over his face, or get cornered by a mother who’d just noticed several more chores that needed doing. This is probably when I first noticed how one’s senses are heightened when the power goes out. Without the white glare of the streetlights, suddenly the sky is filled with stars. You smell the trees and the leaves and the ground at your feet. You rediscover the sounds of nature around you in a way that’s never possible when you simply choose to turn all the lights off. You truly hear what your house sounds like: you notice every squeaky stair, every loose shutter. You begin to hear the conversations that your neighbors are having just behind the hum of the cicadas. My neighbor, upon informing me that the power company had told him it would take a couple of days to restore power this week, calls this a “return to nature – a chance to live like our forefathers did, before electricity.” Sometimes, I hate my neighbor. After all, there’s no comparison here; our forefathers never knew any better. They lived every day with salted beef and reading by candlelight, so they never knew what they were missing. Take away their saltpeter for a day and they’d squeal like stuck schoolgirls! We, on the other hand, are dependent on electricity; those who aren’t, like Unabomber Ted Kaczynsky, tend to go off the rails. I need to see “SportsCenter”…

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on October 20, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on October 27, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) Jogging is right up there with chainsaw juggling on my list of favorite hobbies. Unlike chainsaw juggling, however, I keep trying to talk myself into liking the jog. Like most things in my life that I consider failures, I like to blame it on my upbringing. (Keep this in mind for the future, kids: Works every time). Growing up as one of seven children in the "sticks" of Greenfield Hill in Fairfield, my mom logged thousands of miles shuttling us to our various swim and soccer practices. By the time we reached fifth grade, we all understood that if it wasn't raining, we were on our own to get where we had to go. Our coaches must have wondered why the Walsh boys always arrived to soccer practice in a lather, never realizing we'd just biked six miles to get there. When our bikes were broken, we had only our feet upon which to rely. As a result, my two older brothers decided to become triathletes, and I decided to become bitter. Instead of using this situation to its best advantage (using this travel as training sessions for their future races), I took it as an opportunity to whine every time I walked to work at the beach. My brother Chris began pinning articles about Mike Pigg, a famous triathlete, all over our shared bedroom bulletin board. I retaliated by creating Mike's fictional younger brother, Tim, and tacking up my own "articles" and "inspirational" quotes. Where Chris posted Mike's quotes such as, "Whether you're first or second, you have your pride," I posted Tim's: "Running hurts my toes and takes away from Twinkie time." I cultivated my snarky attitude toward fitness even as I desperately tried to "catch the fever." Figuring prominently on the family bookshelf was a copy of Jim Fixx's "The Complete Book of Running," the seminal text of the running craze of the early 1980s. I leafed through it many times hoping to discover the zeal of the recently converted, only to put it down and grab another cookie. Not even his death of a heart attack (at the end of his daily jog, no less) could free me from the nagging notion that I should be out there running if I was serious about staying in shape. What followed was about 20 years of sporadic "training," three or four-week bursts in which I'd attempt to convince myself that running could chase away those unwanted pounds. Many of these bursts ended right after a series of kind souls pulled their cars over to the side of the road as I was running — to ask if I needed help, or maybe an oxygen mask. It's not as if recent news is helping my self-esteem as I try my hand at running again. Last week, even as I pounded away on my treadmill…

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on October 6, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on October 13, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) I’m a sexist, no doubt about it. At least, I’m a sexist when it comes to my dogs: the Walsh clan has a strict “no Y chromosome” policy. Like a holiday sale at Anthropologie, we’re girls only. It’s not that male dogs are bad; in fact, two of my favorite dogs growing up were dudes. It’s just that getting older has caused me to get picky, and one of the gifts of old age is the propensity to perpetuate unsubstantiated stereotypes without apology. You know, like Glenn Beck. For instance, when it comes to doing “number one,” I prefer the dainty female squat over the lifted leg of the male. Our girls empty their bladders all at once, an important consideration for those freezing January mornings when you’re dressed in nothing but your faded flannels and moth-eaten Led Zeppelin sweatshirt. The male dogs I’ve had in the past tended to dole it out a little at a time, making sporadic deposits as if handing out tips at the country club. Females are said to be able to “hold on” longer than males, which was a nice surprise for me: car trips with my wife turns into an impromptu tours of the local rest stops if we’re on the road longer than 20 minutes. Female dogs are also supposed to be easier to train, and frankly, I need all the help I can get. Long ago, I accepted that the women in my life are all smarter than I; we’re not recruiting any more players from the losing team. Females are less distractible, a truly male trait if ever there was one. Speaking of distraction, it’s cheaper to spay a female than neuter a male. They also seem less angry afterward. This is important because the males have a stronger instinctual urge to roam, a la Tiger Woods, and I don’t need any teen moms in this house. Like any protective father, I’m not a fan of potential suitors for my girls; no dog will ever be good enough for my pups. No matter how great he might be, nature has endowed him with an extraneous appendage that clouds the thinking of all of us so afflicted. The unexpected visit of the “red rocket” can turn a merry family gathering into an awkward lesson on anatomy (I guess that’s true for humans, too). I prefer to saddle the poor middle school health teachers with the birds and the bees, thank you. Still, dogs crave the company of others, and I can’t protect them forever. We continue to seek out doggie playtime even though every trip to the dog park at Lake Mohegan finds me politely asking someone, “Could you please get your dog to stop humping my spaniel?” After all, my girls can’t help it if they’re hot. We seek out the company of responsible dog…

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 25, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) “It’s not fair!” whined the little boy as he tore from his mother’s grip. “Everybody else has an iPad or a Nook; why do I have to use a stupid Kindle? It’s not even in color!” He jammed an e-reader back onto the shelf, knocking the “Back to School” sign off in the process, before his mother managed to wrangle him out of the electronics department. She kept apologizing to him, asking him to realize how much it cost, even as she dragged him out of the store. A few of the other customers exchanged condescending glances, but I understood the moment all too well: it was Dynamite magazine all over again. When I was that kid’s age, I was going into 6th grade at Timothy Dwight School. Among the many rites of September was the magical hour when the teacher would spread the Scholastic Arrow Book Club sheets on the tables before us, inviting us into the world of reading through a series of tiny checkboxes we’d fill out in pencil. We could order any book or magazine we’d like, provided we came in later that week with the cash or check from home. The teacher would give a short summary of each magazine and show us a few sample issues. Alas, like Wyle E. Coyote, I only had eyes for Dynamite. Dynamite was a glossy magazine for children that fed us popular culture in elementary school bits: think People magazine on training wheels. It featured the biggest stars of the day on its covers without the girlish stigma of Tiger Beat or the amateurish camp of Bananas. Before the days of cable TV and the internet, magazines had cache. In short: if you were cool, you got your copy of Dynamite each month in the big brown box the teacher lugged from the staff room. If you weren’t cool, you waited to be handed your free copy of Junior Scholastic. Not that there’s anything wrong with Junior Scholastic, mind you, just as there’s nothing wrong with a free VD shot or buying ramen noodles in bulk. It contained the news of the day in digest form, followed by a series of reading comprehension questions and quick quizzes or word searches. It was supposed to make current events fun, a form of Flintstones chewable vitamins meant to cover up the aftertaste of Walter Cronkite. The good folks at Scholastic carefully chewed up the news before regurgitating their monthly cocktail into our eager 6th grade hands, their cover stories bearing headlines like, “Understanding The Hostage Crisis” or “The SALT Treaty and You.” If Dynamite magazine was dinner and drinks with Alec Baldwin, Junior Scholastic was jumping bail with Daniel Baldwin. In addition to Magic Wanda’s page of tricks, the Good Vibrations advice column, Count Morbida’s puzzles, the Bummers page (adolescent bits of satire that always began with, “Don’t you hate it when…”), or the occasional pull-out poster,…

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 11, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) The moment you realize you’ve slowly become your parents is always a surprise; my moment arrived when I told my wife we’d joined a boat club. While I’d never made a secret of my desire to get out on the water, she reacted the same way my mom had years ago when my dad announced he’d just bought the family a boat. An odd smile formed on her lips as if forced to appear at gunpoint. “Really?” she said. Just like Mom once did. “That’s interesting.” Women are smarter than men; all the women in my life, at least. In the second week of August, however, the brutal heat and humidity of Fairfield County can lead otherwise reasonable men to ignore the wisdom of these women and seek refuge in the comforting arms of material excess. For some it’s a red convertible, for others a shiny new motorcycle; for the Walsh family, it’s always been boats. Growing up, my six brothers and sisters and I were prisoners of the thermostat. Because my dad didn’t “believe” in air conditioning any more than he believed in swimming pools or Bigfoot, the summer heat reduced us to boneless, moist clumps of flesh draped over the couches like melted chocolate. When he told us about the boat, we felt as if Moses were leading us out of the desert. My mom stood stoically to one side, no doubt mouthing a silent rosary in anticipation of the future headaches in store. While my dad was trying to recapture his glory days in the navy, my mom would be saddled with the practical realities involved in readying seven kids for an afternoon on the water with this unapologetic perfectionist who’d never owned his own boat before. While he climbed up the tiny flybridge to steer, it was she who’d have to cram the brown bag lunches, sunblock, blankets, and seven kids into the tiny galley below deck every time it rained. When we arrived at the Housatonic marina for our maiden voyage, we caught our first glimpse of the new (used) twenty-four foot cabin cruiser—or at least what had been one in a previous life. It bobbed sadly in between the majestic boats on either side, as lifeless as the floating bunker fish that surrounded it. These being the days before they cleaned up Long Island Sound, this was a far cry from “sailing the ocean blue.” My mom’s eyes began to tear up, but I couldn’t tell if it was the smell of the fish, low tide, or the sight of the boat. Dad christened his dream boat “The Irish,” a loving nod to our family heritage, ignoring the somewhat checkered maritime history of the Irish themselves. He’d soon discover the irony. Out of necessity, my dad required that we immerse ourselves in nautical jargon. There was no front or back of the boat; only “fore” and “aft;” no left or right…