Stratford Star

Bouncing and insomnia

Written by Robert F. Walsh
Thursday, 03 May 2012 11:25

One doesn’t often think of mattresses until lying sleepless in them for hours at a clip. In the well-lit showroom, all of them seem comfortable. That the “memory foam” will suffocate my wife and I in summer, or that the “dual zone” option will leave one of us sleeping in a crater, never enters our minds.

A night in a hotel changes that. We’re thrown into a no-win situation: If we love the bed, we end up hating our own. When we get back, we’ll run down the laundry list of ways our bed doesn’t stack up, staying up all night adding foam layers or switching pillows. If we don’t like the hotel bed, we’ll be up all night playing with the AC or switching pillows. Only one thing is for certain: Regardless of the mattress, we’ll hate those pillows.

'Please don't kill me'

Written by Robert F. Walsh
Friday, 20 April 2012 06:56

Please don’t kill me. And yes, I mean that literally.

Folks like me who ride a motorcycle around Fairfield County in April aren’t just taking our lives into our own hands, we’re putting them in yours … and honestly, some of you don’t seem all that jazzed about it.

Taking on another one of life’s humiliations

Written by Robert F. Walsh
Friday, 06 April 2012 18:28

I recently undertook a fitness challenge from a friend, which is a prettier way of saying I’ve allowed myself to be humiliated on a weekly basis. This humiliation takes the form of something that’s been the bane of my existence since elementary school: pushups.

The beckoning beach

Written by Robert F. Walsh
Monday, 26 March 2012 00:00

As seagull calls echo across the empty beach, I revel in the fitful sunshine that warms my face in spite of stiff March winds. While the calendar turns slowly toward spring, the melodies of summer can be heard just underneath the breeze. If I try hard enough, the sounds of a youth spent at these shores bubble to the fore: “Robert Francis Walsh, you get out of that water right now or so help me God …”

My mom never needed to finish those kinds of sentences, and she certainly never needed God’s help to carry out a punishment. However, it was always a chore to get her youngest boy out of Long Island Sound while the sun was still up. Growing up in a family with seven kids, the beach offered the space and privacy that a house crammed with nine people could not. People in large families realize that “privacy” is a relative thing, especially when the only room with a lock on it is the bathroom (and even that can be easily opened with a nail file). Privacy was the ability to lose myself amid the laughing and screaming of hundreds of other kids at the beach.