Humor

The Toilet Roll War

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on February 23, 2012, in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

I noticed it as soon as I walked in the room, balanced precariously on the edge of the valance.

Amateur, I thought, taking it down and tossing it into the garbage. Why not just string Christmas lights around it next time?

Married couples develop odd little games after a while, and Kristen and I are no different. These games are never stated as such, and very rarely acknowledged. It might be a game of, “Who’s Letting the Dogs Out Before Bedtime?” or “Who Will Empty the Dishwasher?” My favorites are, “Who Will Break Down and Find That Smell?” and “Who is Gonna Answer The Damn Phone!

Nothing, however, trumps the Toilet Roll War. Ours started innocently enough, as these games usually do. My wife crawled into bed and bonked me on the head with an empty toilet paper roll.

“You didn’t replace the roll again,” she said, settling into her pillow.

“Yes, I did.” I replied, putting my book down. “I just put a new one in there this afternoon.”

“No, you just threw a new roll on top of the toilet.”

“Like I said,” I replied. “New roll.”

Some consider the source of marital friction to be an indication of that marriage’s overall health. My wife and I are lucky in that we never argue over the important things like love, respect, or the general direction of our lives. Instead, we can major in minor things like how to properly replace bathroom tissue. Every couple has its own bathroom battles, of course—some argue about whether or not to roll up the toothpaste from the bottom, others over the failure to wipe the mirror after brushing one’s teeth. For my wife, an empty toilet paper roll is like a raised middle finger.

As a man, if toilet paper is within my reach, it’s where it’s supposed to be. Even the inventor of modern toilet paper, Joseph Gayetty, thought so little of it that he had no problem watermarking his name onto each sheet. It makes no difference to me whether the paper is on the roller or resting comfortably on the shelf of the toilet. In fact, the very idea that toilet paper would require a holder at all seems ludicrous. I would not have included the unfurling of tissue paper on my list of required assistive technology, yet no bathroom in America is complete without a toilet paper roller. Instead, I would argue that it’s done more harm than good. As anyone who’s ever been in a rush can attest, a hastily pulled handful of toilet paper can spin the rest of the roll into a heap on the floor. Our efforts to re-roll the paper onto the holder look like a child’s attempt at mummification, and the paper rips at every subsequent turn of the roll. This is progress

Any visit to a public restroom reveals the ludicrous extremes to which this can be taken. Large metal contraptions encase the toilet paper and turn this delicate moment into an exercise in fly-fishing as we carefully pull just hard enough to hook the paper without ripping it in the process. I’ve seen Rube Goldberg machines that were less complicated. There’s even a protocol for how the paper should be unrolled, as a recent Cottonelle poll showed that 72% of respondents prefer the paper to pulled over the roll as opposed to under. My mom takes it a step further, pointing out that the paper must be folded to a point on top of the roll for guests. However, if my guests need an arrowpoint to show them the direction to pull the toilet paper, I doubt I can trust them to flush the toilet afterward.

To highlight my cavalier attitude toward the proper disposal of empty toilet paper rolls, my wife took to placing them on top of my toothbrush. I would then place the roll on her bedside table until it magically appeared under my pillow later that night. So began an escalating series of attempts to hide the rolls in odd places: in briefcases, jewelry boxes, cereal boxes or freezers. The game-within-a-game became a contest to see which of us could use up just enough toilet paper without taking that very last sheet, as the person using that last sheet has to replace and dispose of it properly

Lest you think my refusal to dispose of used rolls is inconsiderate, know that I’ve maintained the moral high ground here because my wife has trumped my lack of bathroom etiquette: she leaves the toilet seat up. Oh, she won’t admit it—in fact, she claims I am the one who always forgets to put the seat down. She clings to the idea that the toilet seat should always be put down, but not the lid. I try to explain that the toilet seat and lid are actually two parts of the same mechanism: both parts should be down when leaving the bathroom, and both of us should have to lift something before every use. What she’s really asking me to do is to optimize her toilet experience, to keep it in the “ready” position for women at all times. How dare she, how dare all women, demand such special treatment!

And so I poured my energy into more and more extravagant ways to hide the empty rolls. I strung several from our bedroom ceiling, even taped some together into a makeshift sailboat. Still, it’s getting harder to keep topping ourselves, to search for clever and increasingly flamboyant ways to get out points across. If I was single, I’d probably just leave it at, “Let’s make sure we replace these rolls when they’re done.”

But I’m not; I’m married, and I’m currently attempting to construct a mini Eiffel Tower out of the empty rolls I’ve been collecting for months…

Continue ReadingThe Toilet Roll War

Short, Gray Locks of Love

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on February 9, 2012, in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

“No, you’re not.” My wife said it so quickly, and with such authority, that I was stunned into silence. I had tossed my comment out casually, delicately, as one would a Nerf ball to a small child.

“It shouldn’t take that long,” I replied. “You said so yourself—it grows so quickly.

“You know you’re going to look ridiculous,” she sighed, using her time-tested strategy of allowing me just enough rope to hang myself. Or, more appropriately, enough hair to embarrass myself—which in this case would be a minimum of ten inches. That’s the shortest length for a donation to Locks of Love, a non-profit charity that accepts donations of human hair and money to make wigs for needy children who’ve lost their hair due to medical conditions.

The idea had come to me while thinking of new ways to get my eighth grade language arts classes excited about community service. Middle school students are terrific at raising money for various causes, but I wanted to challenge them to stretch their wings and find additional, novel ways to give. What better way to advertise this than having their middle-aged, follicle-challenged teacher attempt to grow out his hair for the first time since college? After all, almost 80% of all hair donations are made by kids to help other kids.

To appreciate the sheer absurdity of it, one must realize that I’ve maintained a Beetle Bailey buzz cut for the last twenty years. My wife had never seen my hair touch my eyebrows, much less go past my shoulders. Telling her that I planned on growing a ponytail was like telling her I planned to fly to the moon… only more embarrassing. This way, she’d have this wild gray mane accompanying her to every wedding or funeral until I was allowed to cut it.

At the time of my announcement, I hadn’t cut my hair in almost four months. It was with great excitement that I pulled out the measuring tape, thinking the length would probably fall somewhere between Moses and a teenage Andre Agassi.  For someone who’d learned how to shear my own hair because I didn’t think my wife cut it short enough, it felt like my Jim Morrison period. Alas, it turned out to be closer to the retired Agassi—two inches at its longest.

It was time to acknowledge that my hair had long passed its expiration date—my hairline has receded to the point where my forehead has become a five-head. Even I realize that the best I could hope to accomplish was the dreaded Garfunkel, a hairstyle that can best be described as patches of thinning hair clinging desperately to the top and rear of one’s head. Much like Garfunkel’s similarly challenged partner, Paul Simon, my head was never meant to permanently host hair.

Still, I harbored hope that I had one last run in me. I don’t have the money to buy a fire-engine red Porsche, so this seemed like the best option for my mid-life crisis. I looked up the requirements and found that donor hair must be ten inches or longer, clean, devoid of curls, and bundled into a ponytail. The hair cannot be bleached or colored. So far, so good. I figured I’d gut it out for the rest of the school year and cut it in June, maybe at school, and maybe at the hands of my students.

The dream died when I looked into how fast hair can grow—turns out it grows at a rate of around six inches per year. Outside of amazing advances in hair growth technology, the process would take me until late April, 2013. There’s no guarantee my wife wouldn’t strangle me with it long before then

Ironically, the good folks at Locks of Love took the decision off my hands. While they do accept donations of gray hair, they don’t use it in their hairpieces—they sell it to offset their manufacturing costs. Because they only provide hairpieces to children, and mostly young girls at that, they don’t want to send them out looking like Phil Donahue.  It’s a charity, not a wig manufacturer, and the organization shells out $1,000 for each custom-made hairpiece.

So gone are the hoped-for comparisons between me and Russell Crowe, who donated his hair after filming Robin Hood a few years ago. Instead, my goal has become as short as my hair: I’m gunning for hair just long enough to cut and bundle into a short tail. It looks like I might be able to pull off about five inches by the end of the school year. Not exactly rock star length, but long enough to serve a great charity in their efforts to help kids.

On the other hand, if I can find the time to painstakingly glue each strand together, I just might have enough to create my very own Donahue for my old age.

Continue ReadingShort, Gray Locks of Love

Warning: Graphic Nudity

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on January 26, 2012, in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

I heard it while taking my shoes off in the airport security checkpoint: “We’re in the backscatter line—we should refuse to let ‘em search us!” It was the same drunken voice that had been complaining about SOPA, marijuana laws, and American foreign policy for the last twenty minutes as I stood behind him in the interminable lines of Orlando International. It’s hard to take someone seriously when he’s wearing a white Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and smells of onions and stale Budweiser. It was all I could do not to ask him to set down his Red Bull long enough to read the many signs we’d passed stating that backscatter imaging was, in fact, optional.

Don’t get me wrong: I get as worried as the next guy when it seems the government wants to infringe on my rights (see SOPA—the Stop Online Piracy Act), but I don’t understand the furor over these scanners. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I could care less about things like facts or justice or even human decency if I get to spend less time at the airport. I’ve had root canals that were more pleasant than my time at LaGuardia.  If these things get me through security faster, then do that voodoo that you do so well.

While not yet as advanced as the X-ray tube in the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) has installed these body-imaging machines at airports across the country.  They scan passengers and create images of each body (without clothing) for a TSA agent seated in a separate area. It’s supposed to identify hidden metals, chemicals, or explosive materials, but it mostly seems to identify nipple rings or forgotten sets of car keys.

Many are concerned about the radiation and accompanying cancer risk these scanners represent, but the TSA claims it’s less than a typical cell phone transmission. They go on to explain, more distressingly, that backscatter technology produces less radiation than two minutes of actual flight time on an airplane. Someone should let them know that’s not exactly reassuring. Instead, they should tout the Food and Drug Administration’s finding that the potassium ingested from eating one banana produces the same radiation dose as these scanners. Someone needs to warn Curious George, not frequent fliers.

While we can still choose the old metal detector and a mandatory patdown, I’ll gladly put up with a little extra radiation if it means I can avoid that awkward groping. After I’d forgotten I was wearing suspenders last week, I was asked to wait in a holding pen for someone to feel me up. The sight of another man, without a medical degree, snapping on rubber gloves and telling me how he was about to touch my privates is reason enough to opt out. “I’ll only go over your sensitive areas with the back of my hands,” he said, as if that really made a difference. I’d already had to take off my jacket, my shoes, my watch, and my wedding ring in addition to removing my cell phone, keys, laptop computer, and any change I had in my pockets. What made me think they’d let me keep my dignity?

Still, it was inevitable that the thing that makes backscatter scanning so effective, seeing through our clothes, would also make it so controversial. Many privacy groups are outraged at the thought of strangers viewing what is essentially a crude charcoal drawing of blurry naked people holding their arms up. Despite the fact that these images are about as titillating as an Oscar statue, the TSA has had to install additional software that further obscures human features. A company called Rocky Flats even created radiation-shielding underwear (appropriately adorned with a fig leaf) to keep the prying eyes of the TSA away from your shadowy nether regions.

In another nod to privacy concerns, the TSA has had to swear on a stack of Bibles that no backscatter images would be printed or scanned, ensuring Playboy will never get to publish those x-ray images of my mom when she flew up to visit last Christmas. Her hair was a mess, so it all worked out for the best. If they want to keep my images, however, I say have at it! Pin ‘em up on the wall, Photoshop me onto a unicorn, I could care less. Besides—and I hope this doesn’t sound conceited—I think there is a real need for more naked x-ray pictures of my body in this world.

Let’s face it: Americans are a target around the globe. Airport security is a necessary evil, so if checking my dental records or determining whether I’ve been circumcised will get my plane to leave the gate on time, then let’s just get this over with. In the meantime, I’ll hope that the lugnut in the lead-proof undies will still be waiting in the patdown line as I cram my overstuffed carry-on bag into the bin over his seat.

Continue ReadingWarning: Graphic Nudity

The Dead Zone

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on January 12, 2012, in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

The final verse of James Watson’s 1711 lyrics for what we know as “Auld Lang Syne” perfectly captures the sentiments of football fanatics the world over at this time of year:

Since thoughts of thee doth banish grief, when from thee I am gone;
will not thy presence yield relief, to this sad Heart of mine.
Why doth thy presence me defeat, with excellence divine?
Especially when I reflect on auld lang syne.

Football widows might notice the dead eyes of their spouses as fantasy football players mourn the loss of the beloved game-day buffet known as the NFL Red Zone channel. While some might not be familiar with the real-time highlight show that rivets their loved ones to their TVs for seven straight hours each Sunday, they’ll probably notice the sad, restless clicking of remote controls from the living room couch. If lucky, they might even notice some chores getting done.

What began in 2005 as part of DIRECTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket package became available to other cable subscribers in 2009, mostly as part of an additional tier (Public service announcement: time to cancel that tier until next season, guys). The channel cuts back and forth between games each time a team enters the “red zone” inside its opponent’s 20-yard line. It’s as if a Jedi master has taken your remote: no commercials, no timeouts, no “down time.” The channel often splits the screen to show two or even four games at once in a dizzying ballet of violence. It’s a game even soccer fans from across the Pond could appreciate.

What really catapulted the popularity of the channel is the abundance of real-time statistics and injury information throughout the afternoon. While unabashedly perfect for the gambler, it’s taken root among fantasy footballers everywhere. Fantasy football leagues allow an “owner” to “draft” players and tally up their statistics each week while squaring off against another owner. As a result, those active in fantasy football leagues are like hobbits every Sunday, huddled in front of whatever statistics they can cobble together from web sites or highlight shows. The Red Zone channel saves them from the agony of having to wait that extra one or two minutes for information on the latest scoring play.

Anyone who’s ever run a fantasy football team knows it’s like having a second job, and keeping up with your players’ stats is akin to tracking the stock market just before the closing bell. Because there are no commercials, no promos, no breaks in the action before switching to the next game, a seven-hour slate of games can easily steal the most productive hours of the day from the unwitting viewer. Like many vices, it becomes addictive; as more and more cable companies offer their packages for streaming to cell phones, no fall wedding will ever be safe from covert updates again. Not since Ronald Reagan decided to leave Bonzo and enter politics has fantasy had such an impact on reality

Of course, this type of immediate gratification comes at a cost. In giving us the television equivalent of a sandwich with the crusts cut off, it encourages the celebration of individual players rather than the fostering of loyalty to any one team. A die-hard Miami Dolphin fan since birth, even I found myself clicking away from their latest blowout loss in order to catch the more competitive games on Red Zone. Growing up, I was often inconsolable after a loss; now, I simply move on to check out whether my fantasy team is winning. In short, it takes the fanaticism out of being a fan, and that just might signal the eventual decline of America’s most popular sport.

Still, it’s hard to fight progress without seeming like an old codger. I try to explain to my students how, before the age of ESPN and endless highlight shows, we actually had to watch the games to find out if our favorite team won. They look upon me with pity, as if I were extolling the virtues of rural electrification or disco. In an age where I can get email notifications of breaking news from around the world moments after it occurs, I might have to forget my outdated notions of the game I’ve always loved. Maybe I should more fully embrace James Watson’s advice from a time even before leather helmets:

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished, and fully past and gone.

May happiness and health knock on the door of your home in 2012. As for me, I’ll have to remember to keep the volume down if the games are on.

Continue ReadingThe Dead Zone

Jesus vs. Santa (A Young Catholic’s Struggle)

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on December 15, 2011, in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

As the Salvation Army Santa rang his bell for donations in front of the Stop ‘n’ Shop last week, I couldn’t help but think that this really improves his image. Like many kids, I had thought of Santa as my “go-to guy” for years, writing more letters to him than to all my relatives combined. Unfortunately, he’s only human. Or mostly human. Either way, he can only be trusted up to a point.

My Sunday School teachers always tried to put the holiday season in perspective: “Christmas is more about the birth of Jesus than the appearance of Santa Claus,” they’d say. That was always a tough sell. The end of the calendar year was like a holiday clearinghouse: Halloween, All Saints Day, Thanksgiving, the Immaculate Conception, Christmas, and the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary (New Year’s Day) all fell within two months of each other. In this crucible of holiday craziness, young Catholics like me were told we should turn to Jesus, not Santa Claus, for all we needed. However, material concerns often outweigh their spiritual counterparts when you’re eight and you’d trade your immortal soul for a new GI Joe with the Kung-Fu grip.

It was a delicate dance. How could we manage to keep both of them happy so as to maximize our Christmas haul while still keeping a door open for future salvation? After all, this wasn’t Jesus vs. the Easter Bunny. All the Easter Bunny did was hop around and hide eggs—he didn’t even have an opposable thumb. Santa, on the other hand, was famous for making a list and checking it twice. Whereas Jesus did not appear to retain a written record of my past transgressions, Santa seemed to hold a grudge.

Santa also provided children with a clear list of what not to do, and everyone knows it’s easier to be told what not to do than to be told what you should do. Don’t pout… check. Don’t cry… check. Jesus, on the other hand, was fond of saying things like, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I mean, how do you know when you’re doing that right? It was easier to follow the things like the Ten Commandments, which seemed to have been written by Santa. He also made it clear that there would be immediate consequences if we didn’t do what he told us to do. He saw me when I was sleeping, and he saw me when I was awake. If I screwed up, he’d keep my presents and put a lump of coal in my stocking. Coal. I might as well have woken up to the bloody, severed head of a horse in the bed next to me. Santa dealt in black and white. With Jesus, I figured I’d always get a second chance.

Santa had immediacy: we could sit on his lap in the shopping mall and put the screws to him about that new bicycle we wanted. One time when I was eight years old, I jumped on his lap and begged for a new Lionel engine train.  Santa leaned into my ear where my mom couldn’t see and whispered, “You’ll have your train.” I was elated. I had backed a winner! I was still very fond of Jesus, but he had never looked me in the eye and promised to deliver like Santa. Jesus was fond of cryptic messages and fuzzy promises of rewards later on, but Santa was as subtle as an oncoming bullet. “You’ll have your train.”

On Christmas Eve, I went to midnight Mass with my family and tried to smooth things over with Jesus. I wished Him a happy birthday and hoped He understood. The next morning I ran downstairs to clear a spot in the basement for the train tracks. Santa was known to have somewhat questionable taste at times, and my impatience grew with every unwrapped pair of socks or knitted sweater. It wasn’t until the last present was opened that I began to doubt Santa. Surely he was on his way back, I thought, secretly putting out the fire in the fireplace so he wouldn’t hurt himself. The train set must have gotten stuck in his bag.

And that’s the rub with Santa. I learned that sometimes he couldn’t help himself, making promises he couldn’t keep. After all, if he’d had any restraint, he probably wouldn’t be so morbidly obese. We forget that he moved off the grid, setting up shop in the middle of nowhere like the Unabomber or Abe Vigoda. How could I expect him to remember the important things like my train set when he didn’t even have the foresight to install fog lights on his sleigh?

So ended my crisis of faith. It was fine to believe in Santa up to a point—as my mom would say, he was only doing the best he could. However, much like the Easter Bunny, I couldn’t put all my eggs in that basket.

Continue ReadingJesus vs. Santa (A Young Catholic’s Struggle)

Bathed in Controversy

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on December 1, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on December 8, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

Some say bath towels, like milk, have an expiration date. Regardless of race, creed, or nationality, there are really only two kinds of people in this world: Those who change bath towels after every shower, and those who don’t.

Towels matter. Because we use them while we are most exposed, this decision speaks to who we really are. If you don’t believe me, ask around. I had a friend in high school that recoiled in horror when I shared that my family only switched towels once a week. “That’s disgusting—how can you dry yourself with a dirty towel?” In his eyes, it was as if I was drying myself with a used diaper, but my mother was washing laundry for nine people each week. Unless a root system was actively growing on the towel, we used it.

The Turks, who first popularized today’s bath towel in the 18th century, never had to deal with this: They bathed weekly at best.  I was once a Turk myself, spending most of my pre-teenage years trying to convince my mom of the wisdom of minimal bathing. Alas, she clung stubbornly to the Western tradition of bathing several times a week. Each of her kids was assigned a worn bath towel, large enough to do the job but small enough to be useless as a cape. We would toss them in the hamper each weekend and grab another, usually while soaking wet.

There were inherent flaws in this system, of course. As anyone with brothers can attest, teenage boys are required to wipe any number of unspeakable things on their younger brother’s bath towel. Whether you need to stem the blood from a shaving cut, cover a sneeze, or wipe the excess oil off your bike chain, a little brother’s towel does it all. It only gets worse at summer camp or college—without a blood bond, things are wiped on towels that would curl the toes of even the most experienced portable toilet cleaner. Small wonder that some won’t trust a towel that doesn’t come right out of the wash. Believers in the “All Need Antiseptic Linen” school of thought (I wish I could think of a good acronym for this) therefore insist that towels are automatically “unclean” after one use.

However, the “Did I Replace Towels Yesterday?” school of thought (I know—I need an acronym, but what?) seems to be gaining momentum. Even hotels, once a playground stocked with innumerable clean towels, are beginning to embrace my mom’s philosophy. Bathroom cards read, “Save our planet: Every day, countless gallons of water are used to wash towels that have only been used once. A towel on the rack means, ‘I will use again.’ A towel on the floor means, ‘Please replace.’ Thank your for helping us conserve the Earth’s vital resources.” While trying to guilt us into helping them save on their laundry bill (and who knew Tide was a vital resource), they manage to paint the “All Need Antiseptic Linen” folks as wasteful rather than “clean.” Hoisted by their own petard!

A simpler way to end the controversy is to ask the obvious question to those still clinging to the “All Need Antiseptic Linen” group (I know, I know—they need a shorter name). In short, what the heck are you doing to that poor towel? It’s meant to dry the water off freshly showered skin; if we’re not clean after a shower, when are we? True, there are areas of the body that might require stringent sanitary attention—places my mom, a former nurse, used to put thermometers to see if her kids were really sick. But this problem is remedied in the shower, not with a towel. Each of us made a fateful choice the first time we bathed alone: When we came to that fork in the road, we became either top-to-bottom towelers, or bottom-to-top towelers, and that has made all the difference.

A unique logic is employed in this crucial decision. I won’t use the towel after I finish drying my feet, for example. However, I’ll put it on the shower rack and use it the next day as if the Towel Fairies had been hard at work all night, dry cleaning. When I take two showers in a day, I won’t dry myself with the towel if it’s still damp; that’s what my wife’s towel is for. Only if hers is damp will I make that long walk to the linen closet for another towel. It’s almost as if I can hear my mom saying, “Starving kids in China would kill for a moist towel, and here you are asking for a new one!” as I reach around the guest towels for a spare. Guest towels are always off-limits, like foldable fine china. Our guest towels can spend entire presidential administrations in the closet until a guest appears, but we’ll dry ourselves with the bath mat or hand towels before we touch them.

Like most of the truly important questions in the universe, there is no simple answer as to how often to change a bath towel. If you change every day, you’ll either destroy the planet or run out and have to use the hand towel. If you keep your towel a few days, expect someone else’s toothpaste in your hair. On the other hand, if we’re honest, we can come to an agreement on one thing: there really isn’t a choice at that “fork in the road.” To be anything other than a top-to-bottom toweler is barbaric and wrong, and if you come to any other conclusion, you’re all wet.

Continue ReadingBathed in Controversy

Black Friday

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on November 23, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on December 1, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in the fall of 1621, when the Native Americans inadvertently got the Pilgrims thinking about their first holiday buying opportunity. Over the next 300 years, they brokered a series of “deals” that netted Pilgrim descendants about 3.1 million square miles of prime real estate. The Native Americans got pox-infested blankets and the colonial equivalent of a continental timeshare. Is it any wonder that Americans have been obsessed with finding bargains around Thanksgiving ever since?

The National Retail Federation released forecasts last week predicting up to 152 million people plan to shop on the weekend after Thanksgiving, higher than the 138 million people who planned to do so last year. For men that enjoy shopping as much as they enjoy bamboo chutes under their fingernails, it’s no surprise that the day after Thanksgiving is called “Black Friday.”

Some believe the origins of the term stem from the rush of crowds pouring through the malls, reminiscent of the craziness that resulted from the Black Friday stock market panic of September 24, 1864. For others, the name derives from the fact that this major shopping day can push many retailers from red ink losses into the black ink of profit for the year. Growing up with four sisters, I have come to believe it’s based on the 1940 movie Black Friday, where Boris Karloff replaces part of the brain of his dying friend with that of a dead gangster, resulting in his friend’s feverish hunt for that gangster’s hidden treasure trove. Seems to capture the day nicely, right?

In our family, Black Friday was primarily an estrogen-fueled exercise in commercial exchange. While my brothers and I would still be sleeping off the effects of that second helping of Grandma’s corn pudding (how could we forget that Grandma didn’t believe in expiration dates on dairy products?), my sisters would be up before the sun to make the switch from stuffing themselves to stuffing their shopping bags. This made sense in the time before the internet, when things like store hours and banking hours still mattered. Opening stores at 5:00 AM had the appeal of novelty, and my sisters used it as a bonding experience.

Now, like most things American, it’s been super-sized into a three-day event. For those lucky enough to make it through the traffic, a trip to the mall now comes with a mandatory mile hike from your parking spot—one you probably had to risk car damage to secure from other desperate drivers who prowl the lots like sharks in search of a closer spot.

Where Black Friday used to mark the start of the Christmas season, now it’s just another rest stop on the retail highway. CVS was selling miniature reindeer the day after Halloween, and Santa’s been popping up on television ads since the leaves turned color. Still, Black Friday is the first time many retailers throw themselves fully into the holiday season without shame. It’s a great time to indoctrinate your children into good ‘ol American consumerism at its finest—store owners bring their “A” game to every window display in the unending competition for limited consumer dollars. All kids should have their “Ralphie” moment, where they spy their own equivalent of the Red Rider BB gun with a compass in the stock and “this thing that tells time.” If you don’t understand the context of that reference, chances are you never had your “Ralphie” moment—or you just don’t own a TV.

As much as Black Friday confuses me, I’m grateful that retailers have this opportunity to recover in this tough economy. While not daring enough to brave the stores myself, I applaud my wife for wading into those waters. I’ll stand on the shoreline and cheer, enjoying the holiday decorations even as I note one glaring absence: Even on the day after Thanksgiving, there are no decorative references to the Native Americans who saved our bacon four centuries ago. Not surprising, really—depictions of that first meal always seem so forced, as if you can actually hear the Pilgrims wrapping up the party with, “So, thanks for the food. Mighty fine land you have here. You, ah… mind if we take it?”

Spending the next two hundred years systematically killing and relocating your hosts to get their land is not the best way to say “thanks.” Besides, if only the Pilgrims had waited, it probably would have been on sale the next day.

From my family to yours, we wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings. If you’re lucky enough be in a position to help, donations of old clothes, linens, blankets or money are needed year-round at homeless shelters like the Prospect House in Bridgeport (203-576-9041), Spooner House in Shelton (www.actspooner.org), the Bridgeport Rescue Mission (203-333-4087), or Operation Hope in Fairfield (www.operationhopect.org). Soup kitchens run by organizations like Hunger Outreach prepare and serve over 1,000,000 meals a year through a network of over 34 food kitchens in Greater Bridgeport, pantries and mobile units made up of mostly volunteers working seven days a week, 365 days a year. (For more information, please contact Byron Crosdale at byroncrosdale@ccgb.org.)

Continue ReadingBlack Friday

The Electricity Derby

(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” before I go to bed or else I get owly. Losing electricity forces me to become hyper-conscious of things like the battery life of my iPod, cell phone, and laptop computer. My wife and I scramble to find our car charging cords, wondering how long we can hook them up before the car battery dies. We suddenly learn how much hot water is stored in the hot water tank in the basement, or how long the ice stays frozen in the freezer. Will the house alarm still work, or even the house phone? For the first time, we realize how many things rely on D batteries—every flashlight and emergency radio in the house seems to need one, and I haven’t bought one since 1994. Instead, I have scores of the AAA batteries that power the TV, VCR, DVD, cable box and dog alarm remotes that now sit useless… next to the useless flashlights. We are forced to use candles, which my wife buys without any thought of the practical reality of flame; she has only trinket-sized patchouli and clover candles that give off less light than my wristwatch. We begin to navigate the rooms more by smell than by light; the acrid rose candle in the bathroom, the vanilla in the bedroom, the maple (maple? maple candles?) in the kitchen. And who has matches these days? We stopped smoking years ago; the Smiths across the street smoke like chimneys so their house is lit up like a joint in a dorm room. We usually spend half the night looking under the couch cushions for that book of matches we remember from three years ago.

Still, after a few days we begin to get confident that we’ll never need electricity again. We get used to the ethereal silences and grow to appreciate the lack of electrified distraction that we often allow to dominate our lives. We keep the lights out at night, reveling in our newfound power over power. Maybe our forefathers had it right all along?

Then, just as I go upstairs to drift off to sleep amid the sounds of the crickets, I step in a steaming pile of dog crap. That’s when I remember that our forefathers lived like filthy animals, and I fall asleep to “SportsCenter.”

Continue ReadingThe Electricity Derby

Running A Fever

(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 in a desperate attempt to complete a 2-mile jog, Amber Miller finished the 26.2-mile Chicago Marathon while 39 weeks pregnant. She gave birth a few hours later to a healthy baby girl, saying, “For me, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.”

On Saturday, Mark Ott finished the Hartford Marathon and did a handstand: He’d just finished his 51st race, one in every state and Washington, D.C.

As if this weren’t obnoxious enough, on Sunday 100-year-old runner Fauja Singh earned a spot in the Guinness World Records as the oldest person to complete a full-distance marathon when he finished the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. In my early 40s, I lose my breath when looking for the TV remote.

One thing keeps me from giving up, though, and that’s my brother Chris. He went from reading Mike Pigg’s inspirational quotes to becoming an inspiration himself as he fought off the ravages of colorectal cancer. Rather than rail at the injustice of getting this disease despite a lifetime of clean living and elite athletic training, he responded by preparing for his next marathon even as the radiation and chemotherapy robbed him of energy. Even when surgery threatened to permanently end his pursuit of Iron Man triathlete status, he found himself running in a series of events to support other cancer survivors. Today, he is not only a cancer survivor himself, but also one of the world’s foremost cancer care consultants (cancertreatmentsurvival.org) and, yes, an avid triathlete. Let’s see Mike Pigg top that one!

So I keep buying blister pads and trotting onto the treadmill in the hope I might someday be able to run four miles without stopping. While I’ll have to trade my Thanksgiving Day goal from the Pequot Runners 5-mile Road Race (pequotrunners.org) for the more attainable Stratford 5K Turkey Day Trot (hitekracing.com/turkeytrot), I keep training in the hope that someday running will grow on me. At one point I hoped to be able to match my brothers and finish one full marathon. At this point, I’ll be happy if I make it to the Thanksgiving table without a side trip to the emergency room.

I’ll keep training, though. Fauja Singh ran his first marathon at age 89, so I figure I have a few years to get this whole running thing down. Even Tim Pigg would have to admit that’s within reach.

Continue ReadingRunning A Fever

Parenting (is) A Bitch

(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 owners at places like the 6th Annual Fall Festival to Benefit Animals at Paradise Green in Stratford. Held this year on Saturday, October 8th, from 10am-5pm, it’s an amazing combination of dog walk, craft fair, and puppy playdate (additional information available on starsfest.com). After that, we’ll continue to hope for a permanent dog park in Stratford (check out “Residents for a Stratford CT dog park” on Facebook for information and petition).

In the meantime, I’ll smile at the males—I’ll pet them, praise them, throw the odd tennis ball or two—but I’ll keep a wary eye on them. After all, it’s a bitch to have female dogs.

Continue ReadingParenting (is) A Bitch