I live an hour away from the city of London in southern Canada, a place with almost half a million residents. When I was young, there was a colourful and popular AM Radio deejay in that city who hosted a morning call-in show.
One day, or maybe for a few days, bowling enthusiasts began calling in to Bill Brady, the witty broadcaster, with complaints about the state of bowling facilities in London. What had the bowlers upset was not any shortage of bowling alleys in the city but the fact that there were very few opportunities for “open” bowling, the chance for friends to simply drop in to an alley and enjoy a few hours of their favourite sport. The reason for the restriction was that, as the complainers explained it, all the bowling times were taken up by league bowling. If you were not part of an official team in an official league, you were out of luck.
The deejay listened to call after call with great sympathy until finally he received a call from a man who lived in a small hamlet located 10 miles or so outside the city. The very old community, called Birr, is home to fewer than 50 people.
“Ya, Bill,” said the caller. “We’re having a heck of a time out here in Birr.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Bill Brady.
“Well,” said the caller. “A brand new, 40-lane bowling alley opened up here recently and the noise from that place is driving everyone nuts.”
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Brady.
“Well, not only is this place huge, it’s open 24 hours a day and it is all open bowling. No league bowling at all. The noise from the bowling and from all the cars coming and going and the bowlers talking and laughing in the parking lot is keeping us all awake every night.”
“That sounds pretty disturbing,” said Brady.
“It’s just awful,” agreed the Birr man. “Do you have any ideas what we can do about this?”
Bill Brady promised he would look into the matter with authorities to see if any local bylaws could be enforced to bring more peace and quiet to the citizens of Birr.
The next few days saw bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving London and heading for the phantom bowling alley in Birr.
That infamous call was made about 50 years ago. Bill Brady is long gone and maybe, perhaps, is the annoyed caller from Birr. On the other hand, I was driving through the crossroads community yesterday on my way to London when I noticed a sign on a small house close to the highway signalling the “Mayor of Birr” had his office on the premises. Birr, of course, is too small to have a mayor. Or a bowling alley. But maybe the village’s most famous prankster is still up to his tricks after all this time.
I am sitting in a pizza shop in a huge shopping complex in a large city in Canada.
Every time the door opens, my napkins blow off onto the floor and a cold wind sweeps over me as though I was adrift on an iceberg. That’s because all these gigantic stores, though connected, somehow forgot to put a roof over their mall.
What the heck is it with the end of the enclosed shopping mall? I’ve always loved those warm, cozy places. I could sit hour by hour on a nice big bench with coffee in hand and people watch. Now and then, someone I knew would sit down beside me and we’d chat. I will pay you $100 if you will bring me a photo of a bench anywhere in the new commercial centres and if you find one, it will be sitting outside somewhere at the mercy of the weather.
Now, with these Titanic-sized stand-alone stores with entrances that face the parking lots, you have to walk half a mile from store to store in the frickin’ cold, dodging cars like a fox trying to lose the hounds.
Oh well, as a friend of mine used to frequently say and now I do too, they didn’t ask me before they went ahead with this and so they did it wrong.
There could be only one reason our birdbath was always empty. There must be a hole in it. I fill it three times a day and soon there is not enough water left in it to drown a gnat.
However, I thought it might be possible that the birds are taking so many baths they are causing our water bill to shoot through the roof.
Sure enough, I looked out the kitchen window one day last week to see a dozen starlings standing on the edge of the bath waiting their turn. And there they were. Two of the medium-sized speckled birds taking a bath at the same time. And they were splashing up a storm.
Then a third starling slipped into the rapidly dwindling pool and started flapping its wings like crazy.
Mystery solved.
However, the drama wasn’t over. Soon, a fourth starling joined the first three and before long, a fifth guy jumped in. It began to look like a typical Friday night hottub party without the bikinis and the booze.
But my jaw dropped when Starling No. 6 squeezed itself into what was left of the bath and I could hardly see the bathers for the plumes of water they were generating while another six stood on the edge of the bath, waiting their turn.
When the bathers all suddenly left as though they were late for a meeting, I went out to inspect the damage. There were several feathers in the remaining water which was so sparse it was completely gnat friendly. And there was a whole lotta poop.
I cleaned the whole thing out and prepared for the next big communal party.
A friend sent me a bit of a nasty email. He has a bad habit of doing this. Almost every time he hits “send”, his list of real-life friends gets a little shorter. But many of us take this quirk of a character flaw into account and stack it up against his many better qualities.
I hang in there, but it isn’t easy. I replied to this latest email very carefully, as I always try to do, in order to avoid the mountain-molehill phenomenon. I kept writing, then backing up and erasing and starting again, to choose better wording.
At one point, a part of one of my sentences read, “…if you want to…” I erased that line and wrote something else. But maybe I didn’t get rid of it all.
Just before I hit send on my reply, I notice some stray letters at the very start of the message, right at the top. They were: “f you.” They were left over from “if you want to.” A Freudian slip? My true feelings?
I don’t know, but I broke out in a sweat, deleted the f you and sent the message. Maybe I should have left those four tiny letters in. Or maybe I’ll use them in my reply to the next nasty message which I know will be coming soon.
The worst thing that ever happened to my friend was the invention of email. Seriously. Worst thing. Ever. And I am not effin’ kidding.
The distance between the brain and the computer screen is simply not far enough for some opinionated souls. In the old days, we were told to write the letter but wait one day before sending it. Most of the time, we would end up ripping it up.
Emails, it seems, are not so easy to shred. Common sense is a wonderful commodity but sometimes it just can’t keep up with the pace of change.
It’s a well-known fact of life that sometimes a person’s best intentions go up in smoke and lead to the worst circumstances.
This has happened to me a time or two in my long life and now it has happened again.
My family and I no longer had any use for a very nice workbench a carpenter had built for our shed. The shed had been repurposed and now there isn’t much work goes on in there, hence the surplus workbench.
So, we moved it against one wall of the back of our house, right under the kitchen window, and it has seen a lot more use there than it ever did or ever would have when it was in the shed.
As I had befriended the wild rabbits in our backyard and as winter was coming on, I worried over how they would survive. So, I (cleverly) filled in the bottom third of the workbench with boards after raking a pile of leaves underneath it to make it more attractive for the bunnies. Lots of soft bedding for them, I calculated. I left a rabbit-sized opening at each end so they could make a hasty retreat if a predator joined them under the bench.
It didn’t take long for My Bunny (practically a pet now) to discover her new digs and to wander in there for a look. I happened to be standing next to one of the openings when she came bouncing out one day, hopping right across my feet.
“What a great guy I am,” I remarked to myself, as I reached to pat myself on the back.
But the bunnies gave a terrible review of their new winter home and abandoned it right away. I am not sure what I did wrong but there must have been a design flaw somewhere.
So tonight came the good intentions gone bad.
We have had a skunk lurking around our yard very late at night and early morning for the past month or so. It feasts on the birdseed I spread on the ground.
I am not a big fan of skunks and I wondered where the smelly creature was hanging out when not dining under the bird feeders.
Tonight I got my answer.
Standing outside well after dark, I saw a telltale fluffy black and white tail disappear under our workbench. It then turned around and stuck its nose out the doorway, fleeing back inside once it saw me standing there.
This annoying wild animal has taken up residence in the wonderful hutch I made for the bunnies that seem to prefer to freeze half to death in a bush in winter than take advantage of my generosity and workmanship.
Later today, I’ll be busy evicting our newest tenant and boarding up its apartment.
If it gets upset and take revenge on me, I’ll be eating my meals in the shed for a while. At least there is no workbench in there now to stumble over.
The first thing I am going to do when I get to be 86 is sue my daughter for $520 million. That is what Frank Stronach has done to his daughter Belinda and I think it’s a heck of an idea.
Frank says his darling Belinda has mishandled their company called Magna International since she took over and he wants to see things put right and $520 million in his bank account. All those times he tucked her in at night when she was a toddler, I wonder if he whispered to himself, “Some day, Belinda, you are going to pay!”
I have many years to go before I turn 86 in 2037 and that also gives my daughter almost two decades to save up $520 million for when I come a’callin’ for my money. I think that is fair notice.
If she sets aside $27 million a year, and with the interest added on, she will have more than enough to settle my claim. Then, as these things go, I will promptly die the next day and give it all back to her in my will.
Without my lawsuit threat hanging over her head for 19 years, I am more than certain she would fritter away that $520 million and wonder where it had all gone.
I just came from my latest checkup by my doctor and he was really pleased. Apparently, I am going to live forever. He didn’t exactly use those words but I am a very perceptive person, always have been, and I am sure that is what he meant to say.
I don’t mind the prospect of living forever – my family will be spared the funeral costs – but I can see my would-be heirs getting a little cranky when they can’t get their hands on Dad’s fortune. I feel badly for them but I will defer to my buddy Warren Buffett who says he wants his kids to have enough that they can do something, but not so much that they can do nothing.
At least by living forever, I will probably get a mention in any number of record books as the centuries go by and that has always been my dream. I want to be unforgettable and living forever will probably help that goal come about.
The other piece of good news, as if living forever wasn’t enough, is, by all estimations, I keep getting better looking each year.
Yay for me!
All those unfortunate young women who threw me overboard for some other more-promising adonis, must be weeping big tears now!
I sat down at the computer this morning to discover that about 60,000 emails were missing. I had them all neatly divided into about 20 folders according to category, from business, to banking, to family history and friends. The proper response to something like this, of course, is to go stark raving nuts and so that is what I did.
I tore apart my filing cabinet looking for the name of a person at my Internet company and her email finally in hand, I sent off a sharply worded message which contained only about three Canadian “sorry to bother you’s” as opposed to my usual number. I think she got the message because I also used the words “nasty surprise.” That will tune her in, I surmised.
Then I found her phone number and called but had to leave a message. My barely contained rage properly seeped into my message which started off with an apology, of course, and I might have also repeated “nasty surprise”. The woman did not immediately call me back, as she probably rushed into her boss’s office to resign as soon as she heard my enraged voice on her message machine.
So, I called another woman who I spoke to before she forwarded me to a third woman for whom I left what was by now a familiar anger-tinged and panicky message.
Finally, the first woman called me back, after apparently having reconsidered her decision to quit her job, and she listened patiently as I raved on about my important emails and then she put me through to technical support. A very nice man then tried to walk me through the whole mess and he could honestly not figure out why my email folders were gone.
But, he told me not to worry, they would be somewhere on my computer. And right about then, and his mentioning “my computer”, a little light went on. Sometimes, it is very dark in my brain but now and then, there is a dim illumination. Low wattage, kind of like a night light. And this light told me I was not at MY COMPUTER but instead had sat down at my wife’s machine where, of course, my email folders would never be.
I thanked the young fella, ran downstairs to my computer and presto changeo, there were my emails. Almost twice as many as Hillary Clinton deleted so long ago.
So, three poor women and an unfortunate man, suffered the barely contained Wrath of Jim. Which, on reflection, does not surprise me. Two days ago, my cat died.
I won’t speak for other men, but that’s often how this one reacts to this sort of loss. I would gladly lose two million emails if I could have my little buddy back again.
I recently wrote about the first personal computer I bought in 1994 and how the one I have now has 500 times the amount of RAM that my first one had and how its hard drive is 2,000 times bigger.
My first computer cost $4,000; my newest one cost $400. If my newest one was priced the same as the first one but the price was based on the amount of RAM, it would have cost me two million dollars.
If the price was based on the size of the hard drive, it would have cost eight million dollars.
Now, let’s go the other way. My newest computer which I bought in 2011 cost me only 10 per cent of what I paid for my first one. If that trend continues, a computer I buy in 2028, should cost me between 20 cents and 80 cents and, of course, be between 500 and 2,000 times more powerful than my newest one.
But here’s the sad thing. I might not be able to afford a new one, even at those low prices, by then.
My admiration for Stephen Hawking just keeps going up and up. Today, a headline says Hawking may have just unlocked one of science’s biggest mysteries.
Appearing at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm on Tuesday, the acclaimed physicist presented his theory before a packed house of scientists.
Here is his discovery: When particles enter a black hole they leave traces of their information on the event horizon. When the particles leave, they carry some of that information back out. This phenomenon has been called “Hawking Radiation.”
I don’t want to puff myself up but I had a similar theory a long time ago. However, nobody took me seriously when I told them.
“I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but in its boundary, the event horizon,” Hawking said. “The event horizon is the sort of shell around a black hole, past which all matter will be drawn into the dense object’s powerful embrace.”
He continued: “The information is stored in a super translation of the horizon that the ingoing particles [from the source star] cause. The information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form. For all practical purposes the info is lost.”
Is there nothing this man can’t figure out?
I will be totally with him once I find out how all that music gets inside my transistor radio and comes back out again. Sometimes it feels like my brain is a black hole, where information goes in but can never get out again. It would not surprise me to learn that Hawking had something to do with that.
I grew up in Canada on what was called a “mixed farm” although almost all of the varied things that were raised and grown were gone by the time I came along.
But even though they were gone, we would play in the empty henhouse where the chickens had been. There were unused beehives sitting beside the garage. I know we used to have geese as my Dad was attacked by a gander when he was five years old. He grabbed the big bird by its neck and hung on till the vicious pecking was over.
We had pigs, cows, beef cattle and horses along with the geese and the chickens. And in a 10-acre field west of the house there was a large orchard, all the trees in neat rows, though the fruit was never taken care of in my day and was often scabby. There were lots of apple trees of many varieties from red apples (maybe macs?) to yellow harvest apples and these huge “cooking” apples that were terrible to eat – very pulpy – but good for making pies and cider. The darned things were half way between a very large apple and a small pumpkin.
There were also some plum and pear trees in the orchard though the season was usually too short for the fruit on those trees to ripen. The branches of the trees hung low and when a friend brought his pony around one day and I got on it to ride a horse for the first time, the little dickens headed straight for the fruit trees at a fair clip knowing the branches would scrape me off its back, which they did.
My favourite fruit tree of all was a cherry tree located near the road. I remember the red cherries would be ripe by the last day of school in June and I would climb up there and fight the birds – and sometimes my siblings – for them. The birds were easier to chase away than the siblings. Even when the cherries were gone I would sit up in the tree and watch people come and go on the road. I always thought they couldn’t see me so that was kind of thrilling and mysterious.
All of these things were features of the way my grandparents farmed and they gradually went out of use when their day passed along with the mixed farm. One thing that did remain was a massive vegetable garden. That was a great place to go with a salt shaker. I’d pick tomatoes, wet them with my tongue, cover them with salt and eat them. Heaven.
The mixed farm is long gone almost everywhere now but can still be found in Mennonite Country north of where I grew up. It isn’t just their clothing and horses and buggies that harken back to a much earlier, simpler, quieter time. Most of them have no hydro, though some of their “modern” neighbours and relatives do. Their yards are impeccable and their fences are built with wooden posts and woven wire. And most of them have all the creatures my ancestors had including pigs, geese, chickens, cows and horses. Lots of horses.
Some may even “keep” bees. The only sweetener in the old days was honey. Even in my grandparents’ time, white sugar was not allowed on the table during our meals.
For years, I have been driving to the city every six months for treatment and examination by a medical specialist. She is a marvelous doctor and a wonderful person. She always asks about my family and from one visit to the next, she somehow remembers details of what we talked about, no small challenge given the number of patients she sees every day.
I really enjoy our encounters but they are always too brief. Suddenly, in mid-sentence, she disappears from the room. I expect her to come back, but she doesn’t. She never says goodbye. I suppose if she ever does say goodbye, it might be because she expects to never see me again. For some awful reason I don’t want to think about.
Finally, a nurse comes in and shoos me away. This doctor, besides being very interested in my life and the lives of my wife, son and daughter, has a great sense of humour and is also very wise. I always have food for thought on my one-hour journey home after each appointment.
Last week, she was a bit concerned about something she saw and did a biopsy on me. Her nurse would call me with the results she told me just before she bolted from the room.
The nurse called this week with the all clear. I am going to live to be at least 125. While I took in that good news and breathed a sigh of relief, I was crestfallen at the rest of her message to me.
“The doctor would like to see you in a year’s time,” she said, before setting a date for the visit.
In the last 15 years, this will be the first time I will go a full year without seeing the doctor. Normally, I would assume, a person would be over the moon at the news they don’t have to see their specialist for another year. And with most specialists, I guess, I would be too.
But darn it, this is going to be a long 12 months.
When I look out my kitchen window in the evening, or even in the middle of the night when I sometimes get out of bed for a snack, I can see a light in the upstairs window of a neighbour’s house behind us and a few doors down. I don’t know why, but that light gives me comfort.
The light shines through a green curtain, so it isn’t vivid; it’s nice and soft. I think it might be coming from a kitchen, maybe a light over a stove (this is an upstairs apartment in a house, the first floor is a business office.) I don’t know who lives there. I’ve never seen anyone in the window and don’t expect I ever will.
Still, just knowing that light is there makes me feel good. All is right with the world.
In the winter, when I am watering our backyard skating rink at 2 a.m., I glance up at the light and feel warm, despite the cold.
Once in a while, sometimes on weekends, I look out my window to see the light is not on and strangely enough, I feel slightly ill at ease. I assume whoever lives there has gone away for the weekend.
I don’t know where this comes from, this need for this kind of comfort. Maybe it’s a leftover thing from my early days on the farm when houses seemed so far apart and a yard light or light from a window was nice to see. Or maybe it’s a caveman thing – the light from the fire would keep the predators away at night.
I just hope my neighbour doesn’t move out some day and is replaced by an energy-saving tenant who prefers to live in the dark.
I met Tom about 30 years ago. For the rest of this column, I will refer to him as Tom (because that is his name.) I think at that first meeting, we were sitting in a coffee shop near my place, and he looked over with a big smile and said “Hi.” As it turns out, that is the one and only thing he has ever said to me that I have completely understood.
On that first evening, he talked and I listened and nodded. Every “conversation” we have had since that time, and we’ve had about a dozen of them, went the same way. Tom talked and I nodded. Because he seems to be a genius and I seem to not be a genius, it has been like a dog explaining barking to a cat. But maybe I am a good listener.
Tom knows all about two things very, very well: short wave radio and cars. I know very little about either one. For a long time, I thought a cattle littick converter was an instrument we used on the farm to turn a bull into not a bull. (That was fun.)
So, he talked radio and he talked the inner workings of cars and I felt like a Martian trying to understand a St. Patrick’s Day parade. (Or maybe only a Martian could.) I am polite, so I never interrupted him. Also, nothing he has ever said to me interested me enough to want to know more about it so I asked few questions.
But here’s the funny thing.
I didn’t mind listening to Tom. It was almost like watching a nice sunset. You don’t understand it, so you just enjoy it. Maybe I didn’t absolutely love every one of these sessions, to be honest, but there was something about his unrelenting enthusiasm for his two main interests in life that was infectious.
However, I usually walked away from every conversation wondering if, in fact, I am actually a stupid human being. I am not convinced that I am not. Why can’t I get any of this stuff after all these years?
Tom and I haven’t run into each other in almost a decade. Today, I pulled into a parking lot right beside him. I had my window down, he had his down and we faced each other. Tom started talking to me as though we had spent two hours in the coffee shop last night and were just completing a subject we had started. He seemed to think in his mind that he was picking up exactly where we left off talking in our last meeting 10 years ago. And who knows? He is so brilliant, maybe he does remember exactly where we left off. As for me, I can’t remember whether or not I showered this morning.
So, for 15 minutes, Tom told me about cars and short wave radios and I understood exactly as much as I did at our first meeting 30 years ago and at every subsequent meeting. But it’s the darndest thing. When he pulled out of the parking lot, my day seemed a little brighter. I had said four words, he had said 4,000 but I would say I came out ahead. Not any smarter, just somehow a little happier.
I just hope I can remember where we left off when we next talk-listen 10 years from now or so. I am sure that he will and that I won’t. And that it won’t matter.
It won’t take me long to get up to speed because when we are together, I am travelling about two miles an hour. I guess I am kind of like a long-wave radio, if there is such a thing. You know, the kind of station you can hardly hear late at night because it’s being crowded out by all the biggest stations.
I had a stress test one recent Saturday. I had thought living in the city in a small house in 2014 with a wife, two teens, five gerbils, two cats, a dog, two cars and more bills than a pond full of ducks was a sort of 24/7 stress test but apparently the authorities did not think that was official enough.
So off I went in loose-fitting clothing (at 65, is there any other kind?) to find a clinic in a nearby city, an office I’d never been to. Driving up and down a busy four-lane street looking for a number on a building was the start of the stress test, I guess. When I finally found it, I rushed in the door to a lobby filled with older people, half of them with great big intravenous syringes sticking out of their forearms. Well, that’s too bad for them, I thought, but that wouldn’t be happening to me. I was just here to go running around on a treadmill.
I introduced myself at the front desk and was given a “release” to read and sign. For maybe the first time in my life, I read something I was about to affix my John Henry to and the blood rushed from my head to my toes as I took in the words on the page. “This test,” one sentence read, “occasionally results in a heart attack and very rarely, death.” Okay, I thought, this piece of paper must be a clever beginning to the stress test. A doctor, somewhere, watching me on a monitor fed by a hidden camera, was looking for my reaction to the news that I was about to sign a piece of paper which said to the authorities, “Yes, go ahead and kill me and see if I care.” If they wanted me to tense up, mission accomplished.
It was all becoming clear to me now in an instant. On the phone with a sister the day before, I was planning a family Christmas party for Sunday. “But aren’t you having a stress test on Saturday?” she asked, as though she knew I would not be at the party. That was also why my wife wanted to come with me – so she could drive the car home as she knew I wouldn’t be. And why she called on my cellphone before I went into the clinic to say, “I love you.”
OH MY GOD! THIS IS IT!
It occurred to me to set down the paper and run out of the building but I have been trained to trust the authorities in all matters and so I signed it and said my prayers. One by one the syringe people were called into another room but I don’t remember seeing them coming back out. They were probably being taken out the back door and driven away in hearses.
Finally, as in a dream, I heard my name being called. And a few minutes later, I was sitting back in the lobby with a great big syringe taped to my arm, about the size they’d use to inoculate a giraffe. An hour later (do you know how many thoughts can go through a person’s head in an hour? I don’t either because there was only one in mine: I AM GOING TO DIE!!!) I was called back into the other room which was very pleasant looking, almost like a fitness centre or a very modern mortuary. I was placed on my back in this tube-like thing to have my heart photographed so they could recognize it later after taking it out and putting it in a cooler, I thought. I was told to lie perfectly still with my arms above my head for 15 minutes and under no circumstances, was I to fall asleep. So, I fell right to sleep. I often do that when I am COMPLETELY STRESSED OUT.
Back to the lobby for another hour to mull over my impending doom along with the doctor’s scolding for my having fallen asleep. Called back in finally, I went into a small room with a very nice-looking young woman with the most intoxicating smile I’ve ever seen. The first thing she did was pull off my sweatshirt which was a struggle as she had to somehow get the sleeve over the IV in my arm without yanking it out.
“Women are always trying to get my clothes off,” I joked with her. “Well, it looks like I was successful,” she laughed as the top finally popped off.
“Believe me,” I replied, “any women who try to get my clothes off are always successful!”
She seemed to think that was a reasonable reply so to punish me she put me on a treadmill. After a few minutes of huffing and puffing I thought they may as well warm up their hearse. But the worst was yet to come. This nice young woman, obviously offended by my low-brow humour, kept speeding up the treadmill and tilting it higher and higher till I felt like one of those fancy dancers in Singing in the Rain who somehow dances right up the side of a wall.
A doctor came in and started taking my blood pressure every few minutes. In my imagination, I thought I heard a great big Cadillac – the kind funeral homes like to use – warming up in the parking lot. But eventually, just when I thought St. Peter would soon be giving me a scolding, the treadmill slowed down and stopped, the nurse smiled at me and handed me my top and she told me my fast was over and that I could go out and eat whatever I wanted to.
Like all health-conscious people who’ve just had a heart test do, I headed straight to a restaurant for a pizza and can of pop.
A week later, my doctor called to tell me the results: My heart is as good as new. When the Toronto Maple Leafs call me up, I’ll be ready.
Years ago, a farmer in southern Canada not far from where I live made a series of very bad decisions one night.
The first one was to leave a local hotel in a drunken state and start up his car for the ride home. His second foolish move was to try to outrun the police who attempted to pull him over. A high-speed chase ensued through the countryside.
The farmer drove straight (well, maybe not so straight) home, in the laneway and right up his barn bank. He jumped out of his car and following another very bad bright idea he had, he hauled open the gigantic doors at the top of the bank and drove his car into the upstairs of his barn. He then closed the doors. The perfect crime.
The police, still in hot pursuit, would never find him.
In one final dumb decision for the ages, the farmer then climbed back into his car to move it ahead but tramped too hard on the gas and crashed right through another set of doors on the other side of the barn. The car went flying out the second storey of the barn and landed in a huge pile of cow manure in the barnyard.
I am not sure of the outcome of the whole sordid episode but I do know he had landed himself in deep shit.
I hate it when things such as this happen and there is no one around to study them.
For the past 10 years, my face has endured twice-daily (and more often) applications of copious quantities of dog slobber. I wonder if anyone has examined this sort of phenomenon with an eye to predicting when the effect on the human face is so severe with the slobber build-up that one day it just slides right off the skull.
There must be some way in which this could be tested. At the same time, I am getting no help from the skin specialist my doctor sent me to. I was told by that doctor, after thorough testing, that I was suffering from a severe case of dog slobber deficiency, the worst case she had ever seen. She recommended I continue the twice daily applications and went so far as to advise me to encourage my dog to ramp up his schedule.
Another scientific test I would like to see done is an examination of how much slobber one 13-pound dog is able to exude in a day because I am pretty sure my dog’s glands are overproducing.
Lest you think a simple face-washing with soap and water might solve the problem, I am here to declare that slobber is very much like the goo that oozes out of evergreen trees from time to time.
Last week, I received a lovely eight-page, handwritten letter from my oldest sister Betty who lives in another city. She always sends letters and greeting cards where every inch of blank space is filled with her news.
Betty is not a fan of computers and doesn’t use email. I don’t believe she has ever sent one, though her husband prints out ones that are sent to her and brings them to her.
She doesn’t have a smartphone and not even a regular cellphone. She uses her landline.
But she loves her flatscreen TV and sits in the evenings, remote control firmly in hand.
After I receive one of my sister’s letters, I call her and we talk for two hours. But this time, I decided to respond in kind. So, I sat down and handwrote her an 11-page letter.
It was tough slogging. My handwriting, which used to be so good I won awards at fall fairs for it, has gone downhill. And it was a real effort to form all the letters and make them legible. My left hand kept wearing out on me and I would have to set down the pen and massage it back into shape.
The problem was I was trying to write like I type on my keyboards – very quickly. I couldn’t slow down and my hand was very tense.
But, the job finally done, I stuffed my treatise into an envelope, addressed and stamped it and took it to the mailbox down the street.
I felt pretty good about myself and tried to figure out when the last time was that I handwrote someone a letter. It might have been 50 years ago when I would write home for money to keep me going in university. They were very carefully written letters, something a defence attorney might present to a jury to try to keep his client from going to jail. The better I presented my argument, the more money I might score.
Then there was the summer I wrote a love letter every day to my girlfriend at the time who took the opportunity to get away from me by going to summer camp. Those letters, looking back, were probably sappy enough to cause rock music icon Roy Orbison, who specialized in writing sad songs, to admonish me and tell me to, “Cheer up, for ‘Crying’ out loud!”
In any case, yesterday my sister called me with some news and I asked her if she’d gotten my letter yet. She hadn’t and was all excited to have been sent one.
“I will read it over and over and treasure it,” she said.
And I know she will.
Next up: Sending her photos of our family. She sends us photos in the mail all the time and we never send any back. That will soon change.
In this fast-paced society we live in, Betty’s feet are still on the ground.
And I am grateful they are.
My feet, on the other hand (can your feet be on your other hand?) are somewhere between clouds seven and nine. Fresh off this victory, one of these days I am going to walk right past our shower stall and lay me down into a piping hot, soapy puddle waiting for me in our bathtub. It might take me two days to get out of the damn thing, but it will be worth it. Back in the day, I used to smoke cigarettes and read a book in the tub. It’s a right bugger trying to do either one of those things, or both, in the shower. However, I have given a lot more shower concerts than I ever have done in the bathtub.
And it seems like forever since I fell asleep in the shower.
My cat Mario and I have a lot in common. We are more alike than you might think a man and a cat could ever be.
To begin with, we are both old now, more days behind us than ahead of us. He is almost 18 in cat years and I am a little more than 10 in dog years.
We both have a touch of arthritis. We are incredibly picky eaters and very lucky guys to have found people to love us in spite of our quirky ways and our tendency to occasional outbursts of crankiness.
We have both lost brothers and are sometimes lost ourselves in our loneliness. We’ve given up a lot of the things of our youth. Neither one of us spends much time playing any more. That doesn’t mean we are unhappy, just that we’ve lost interest in some of the things that used to captivate us.
Mario still goes outside and enjoys doing so but he never leaves the property now and I rarely do as well. Our worlds are shrinking and I like to think that is by choice. We both love our backyard these days and when Mario sees me lounging in a lawnchair under one of our maple trees, he reaches for me to pick him up and sit him in my lap so I do.
Sometimes he sunbathes on the patio and falls asleep. I lie back in my chair and saw off in the shade.
But we do differ in some ways. He has a couple of more legs than I have and a long tail. All I can offer concerning his latter feature is a tailbone. Had I been ripping around the planet a few million years ago, who knows? I might have had a tail longer than his.
Mario isn’t much interested in human food and he doesn’t have to worry that I will eat his. He will still chase a rodent if one makes the mistake of crossing his path but his skills in that field have gone downhill. I haven’t hunted a wily groundhog since my days on the farm though I did chase one out of our yard a few years ago.
Mario sits on more laps than I ever do. He sleeps all day and wanders around at night. I napped during the day more in my twenties than I do in my seventies but like my younger self, I am still a nighthawk. As I write this, it is 4:45 a.m.
Added to these differences are our medications. He gets rabies shots once a year, I get a flu shot. We give him a little paste which helps reduce his furballs. I have no issue with furballs. I also don’t have to take any substance to ward off fleas. Flies and bees follow me around like rockstar groupies when I am outside but the fleas leave me alone.
But there is one major medication area where we are totally alike. (You knew something just had to be coming after reading all this, didn’t you.)
Mario and I both take the same laxative. It is made for humans but the vet recommended it for the cat as well. I pick it up at the pharmacy. We hide his in his soft food so he won’t detect it and refuse to consume it.
But I am braver than my cat. I pour mine in a saucer and lap it up.
Cat and man do have our issues but, all in all, we’re just a couple of totally regular guys.
I think the Universe is sending me a message and it doesn’t seem to be a pleasant one.
Two days ago, I wrote about my frustration in living a lifetime of not being able to turn straw into gold as many people seem able to do. And to rub that fact in, a woman ahead of me in a shop lineup earlier that day bought five cents worth of garlic powder and in return, was rewarded with a slip offering her $10 off her next purchase at that store. Instantly, somehow, she turned a single nickel into 200 nickels.
If I had 200 nickels and I was wandering around the stores, I would soon be reduced to one nickel. I can’t explain it.
But what I have learned for sure is that I have to quit following the woman around whom I referred to above. Again, today, I somehow wound up standing behind her as she was paying for parking at our city’s medical centre. She owed $4 and so she inserted a five dollar bill into the machine. Immediately it spit out her change into a receptacle. She reached in to pull out what she expected would be one dollar in change and instead fished out $5 in coins. She let out the same whoop of joy hockey players yell when they score a winning goal.
This was baffling and discouraging to me and it didn’t help that she turned to share with me how pleased she was with her good fortune. Following her golden nickel strike of the day before, this was just too much to watch her celebrating shoving five dollars into a machine and getting five dollars in change in return.
Along with the many things I wish for every day, I suddenly wished I lived in a bigger town so my chances of encountering this woman, seemingly on a daily basis now, would be greatly reduced.
I guess I should be pleased that she must wear a lucky horseshoe medallion on a golden chain around her neck, but her good money management on two days in a row while ahead of me in line is just a reminder of my total lack of the same.
The last time I dealt with this same machine, I used my credit card instead of cash. I tried my best to follow all the instructions but the transaction didn’t seem to go through. So, I slipped my card in again and had better luck the second time.
Checking my credit card statement when it came in, however, I discovered that my first insertion of the card HAD WORKED. As did the second. Bottom line: I paid $8 that day for a $4 parking fee. And on this day, the woman I seem destined to stand behind in line every day now paid $0.00 for a $4 fee.
Someday, I suppose, my ship will come in and I will climb aboard. A mile out from shore, I will watch in horror as the lake begins streaming in through a big hole.
To make things better, I will hear the engine of a large yacht streaking by with a now familiar face at the controls. And that lucky woman will smile and wave as she disappears from view.
I dropped my daughter Sarah off at her friend Melicia’s house. I went back a few hours later to pick her up but in the suburbs, sometimes, houses all look the same to me. I somehow found the right one and went to the door.
“Are Sarah and Melicia here?” I asked the man who greeted me warmly at the door. He nodded and went off into the kitchen, coming back with a little girl, maybe four, whose name was Sierra. Sierra and I had a nice chat and soon a woman in her 20s named Melissa came along behind her and we all started gabbing like old friends.
Finally, there was an awkward silence so I piped up, “Are Sarah and Melicia in the basement?”
Lots of puzzled looks greeted that question. A long silence and then, as it did for the family who stayed up all night to see the sun rise, it finally dawned on us. I had the wrong house.
“I think you want two doors down,” said the man who must have wondered later why he brought a little girl to the door to meet a total stranger. I wonder if he had mistaken me for someone he was expecting. Lots of apologies, then I went outside, crawled under the sod, and slithered my way down the street.
Even so, I’m pretty sure my red face shone up through the grass like a beacon.
What are the chances that the wrong house I would go to would have two females with names so close to the girls I was looking for? Freaky!
Here I am, night after night, staying up late counting my nickels and wondering how I will pay for the next day’s chocolate milkshake. And cookie, if funds allow.
After 73 years, I have never quite caught on to how everyone I know seems to be able to open the money spigot whenever the spirit moves them and stand back to watch the cash flow out like water over the rocks at Niagara.
Now and then, I do get a glimpse of a secret or two but even then, I can’t understand it.
This evening, for example, I was in a shop to take advantage of seniors’ discount day (for all the good that day has ever done me) when I watched a woman before me in line negotiating with the teller over the purchase of a very small quantity of garlic powder.
“That will be five cents,” said the cashier, sheepishly, as he rang up the meagre sale.
After a brief search through her purse, the woman retrieved a nickel and slid it across the counter. Of course she did, as women almost always seem to pay with cash. Maybe that’s part of the secret, I wondered.
To my astonishment, the teller handed the woman two pieces of paper – the first a receipt for her five-cent purchase and the other a sheet on which was printed a $10 discount she would receive on a future purchase of at least $30.
Where on God’s green earth could you get a $10 return on having invested a mere five ridiculous cents, I thought.
So, this is how it is done.
Based on my experience over these many years, I would be lucky to qualify for five cents off my next $10 purchase. As the woman happily left the shop, I watched to see her climb into what just had to be a limousine but was surprised to see her driving a far-from-new sedan which was no stranger to rust. Maybe that’s another clue as to how the wealthy do it. Invest one nickel to instantly earn 20o nickels and then drive away in a rustbucket.
I think I am in need of a brain massage. And a super large milkshake.
I will begin my new adventure into frugality by skipping the cookie.
I’ve played guitar for 45 years but I have never owned a guitar amplifier. That changed a few days ago so today I went out into the garage and plugged it in. I experimented with it, turning all the buttons every which way and checking out the neat sounds it can make.
After a while, I became curious about how loud it would go. So, I cranked it up. All the way. I strummed my guitar strings a few times, didn’t care for the distortion, and shut everything off to take the dog for a walk.
I got three houses away from home and my neighbour came out of his house. “My power just went off,” he said. Another neighbour came out his front door, directly across the street. “Have you got any power over there?” the first neighbour asked him. “Nope,” was the reply.
Then a woman emerged from the house next door. She too had no power. “Have you got any power?” the first neighbour asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “I was just playing my guitar in the garage there and my amp was plugged in.”
Oh, oh.
The report arrived later that almost the whole city had been down for a while.
Oh well. I am hell bent on becoming a rock star and my neighbours are powerless to stop me.
This is turning into my best week ever. First an email announcing a boatload of $7.5 billion in cash deposited in my bank account by Western Union and Mr. Peter Campbell.
And just now I got another email from Justin Alexander with an incredible offer on a new hair restorer product. Two sprays on my scalp and all my hair will regrow in four days. Every last little strand.
I am so glad to be alive in this day and age. Next time you see me walking down the street, I will have a head of hair like Elvis and wads of cash falling from my pockets like Warren Buffett.
If bad things happen in threes, maybe good things do too. Can’t wait to see my third surprise.
My dog Toby is 13 inches high. And I like to sit in a lawnchair in my garage with the door open so I can watch life as it passes by. Toby likes to do that too. However, some of the life that passes by arrives in the form of squirrels, which Toby likes to chase. Sometimes they run right across the street with Toby right behind them. This is a recipe for disaster.
Nothing to do but to build a gate which would go across the garage door opening and keep my critter in. So, I did. First, I measured the height of the dog, then went to the board store. Brought home a bunch of lumber. Toby watched me construct his prison.
The first gate was too high and other family members complained it was too hard to step over when they entered and exited the garage. So, I took it apart. Made another one. A really nice one.
I bought two lengths of lattice and stapled them onto the frame. Then I painted the whole affair blue to match the house. The height was acceptable. I sat down in my chair to watch life go by while Toby sat on the floor beside me.
My neighbour came over to inform me that the dog would easily jump over the fence. My neighbour revels in breaking news like this to me. He would gladly tell me I had a huge whitehead on my nose that was ready to pop and that it looked like hell.
I have not murdered my neighbour yet but only because I haven’t been able to devise a painful enough way to do it. So, my neighbour shambled back to his lookout and I watched Toby as he tried to look through the lattice. I could see that the darned holes were too small and he couldn’t get a very good view of the squirrels he was never again going to chase.
So, I took the gate to the back yard and ripped off the lattice. Went to the board store for some more wood and restyled the whole affair to make it easier for my dog to see all the rodents go flitting by. It seemed to be acceptable so I painted it up.
My neighbour came over to tell me the slats in the new gate were too wide and that Toby would squeeze right through. I calculated that if I squeezed my whitehead at just the right angle, the contents might hit him in the eye.
So, the summer went by and man and dog sat in the garage. I watched the young women from the fitness centre next door jog by in their ponytails and spandex and Toby watched the impudent squirrels scoot across the driveway. Life was good.
Three weeks ago, we were packing up the car for our annual vacation to a hut situated in the middle of a bear compound up north because we don’t want to die natural deaths and as he always does, poor Toby lost his mind. He was sure we were going to leave him behind.
The garage door was open and we all stepped over the gate as we hustled stuff from house to car. I wandered aimlessly with a can of bear repellant in my hand while Toby continued freaking out.
But Toby is a fast learner and he stood in all his panic, watching us step over the gate. And then, in a style reminiscent of every mountain goat that has ever scaled a hillside leaping from rock to rock, Toby backed up, put it into gear and flew over all that lovely painted lumber I had bought at the board store.
Next week, I am putting up an electric fence. Not to keep Toby in. That’s hopeless. To keep my neighbour (and the bears) out.
And once again, I thank the Creator for all the good sense and balanced thinking I was blessed with. And for the joggers from the fitness centre next door.
This is a tale of tragedy, trickery, treachery and maybe even treason. Most of all, betrayal.
You might have to follow the bouncing ball here a bit but I promise I would not relate this story to you unless it was of some vital importance. And I am still a little too emotionally overwrought to write clearly.
Last night my wife and I attended a very nice event and sat down to a wonderful banquet, served at our table which we shared with several others. The most important feature of the meal was the gravy, of course. It is commonly known that if there is no gravy, it is usually not worth the effort to even pick up your knife and fork.
When this wonderful food was consumed and enjoyed, we were advised by the wait staff to hang onto our forks, that we would need them. That is a very encouraging sign at any meal. It means there is dessert on its way. The main course, after all, is just something to get out of the way so that you can have dessert. Tale as old as time.
I need to preface the rest of the story by setting some ground rules. People insist on concocting desserts, pies very often, out of various organic materials that were never intended to be served up to humans as an after-dinner confection. Here are some “foods” that are not suitable for consuming at any time, especially after a meal. Rhubarb tops the list, of course. What depraved person first looked at a rhubarb plant and thought, “That would make an excellent pie.”? Similarly, raspberries, suitable for jam only, are wholly wrong in a pie. Apples are a wonderful fruit but to use them in any way other than their natural form is just wrong.
And, it doesn’t even need to be said, that people who bake pumpkin pies should be incarcerated, hopefully with a breaking rocks schedule added to their sentence specifics.
But the good news is, the humble cherry can be used in any of a hundred ways and not one of them is wrong. The cherry pie is the human’s ultimate achievement, moon landing a distant second place. The first person to ever bake up a cherry cheesecake needs to be given sainthood status by the Pope.
Dessert came.
What the hell?
Two fluffy cake-like affairs that were unidentifiable and it is a truism that if a thing cannot be identified, it should not be consumed. My wife was helpful. The dessert I had been randomly assigned was some sort of rhubarb affair. Oh no! It had a redness to it that was not appealing. Little red things sticking out here and there.
The stranger across the table from me had some other substance. My wife declared that it was an apple cake of some horrific assembly.
“I like rhubarb,” said the man across from me, obviously deranged. He scared me a little.
I generously switched desserts with him. He could have my bloodshot rhubarb disaster and I would take his apple monstrosity. He tore into his newfound gift, I laboured over mine. When he was close to finished, he got a closer look at everything and declared, “Hey, this isn’t rhubarb. It’s cherry!”
I looked more closely at my dessert. There were green things sticking out of it, items that seemed horribly familiar. They were rhubarb chunks.
I had had a wonderful cherry dessert delivered to me and traded it away, on the erroneous information supplied to me by my own wife, for a rhubarb cake.
Here is the definition of hell. You eat a rhubarb cake, feel faint as you most assuredly would, then fall face first into a pumpkin pie. Fortunately, there were no pumpkins involved in this affair. The authorities have been keeping a close watch on the kitchen staff at this place, which has served pumpkin in the past and been warned not to do it again.
As you might expect me to do and will congratulate me for having the courage to do it, I made a big stink right there and then about my betrayal. The display of righteous indignation paid off. There was one more cherry dessert left in the kitchen and it was brought out in a special container and given to me for later.
There was silence between my wife and I all the way home in the car following the dinner. I am hoping we will be speaking again by Thanksgiving.
Well, isn’t that cute, I thought. One of the horses in the race we were betting on was called You Can’t Fix Stupid.
Six of us former college journalism teachers were sitting around a monitor and looking out the big windows at the racetrack, following the excitement and checking our tickets after every race. We had each thrown $20 in a pot and when that was gone, we’d quit betting.
This night, we were doing pretty well. In fact, by Race 5 we were up almost $500.
I’m new to this but nevertheless I was sent up to place our bets for Race 6. I took some money, approached the wicket and carefully placed $24 worth of $2 bets. When the race was over, there was great rejoicing at our table. We had won $499.80.
OMG we’ve made a thousand dollars tonight went the shouts and there were still six races to go.
One of the other teachers grabbed the winning ticket and went to the wicket to collect. He was there a long time and he seemed to be almost arguing with one of the women there. I suggested helpfully that maybe she didn’t have enough cash to pay us. Someone else said he looked like he was negotiating with the clerk.
Finally, he turned and came back to the table with a disgusted look on his face. He tossed the ticket on the table in front of me. “You bet on the wrong race,” he said to me.
It was quiet on the way home, all of us in the car. The only thing that saved me at all was the fact that our winning streak carried on for the rest of the night and we ended up ahead $800.
Nevertheless, there was some suggestion made that I would be left in a cornfield somewhere and the words “hide the body” were also spoken but I am not sure what that was all about. I didn’t want to know. I was grateful it appeared there was no shovel about.
All I do know for sure is You Can’t Fix Stupid didn’t win, place or show, and I felt badly for him as he and I seemed to be kindred spirits that night.
I’ve been around animals all my life, starting with my years growing up on a farm. Surrounded day in and out by four-legged creatures of various species, it’s easy to begin thinking that you know something about animals.
But the more I am around them, the less I think I know. One thing seems certain; they are capable of much more than we give them credit for.
Our old cat Mario (18) and our dog Toby (15) have never gotten along. Over the years, when Toby makes the mistake of getting too close to Mario, he pays for that with a series of sharp smacks to his body, although we noticed as time went on that Mario’s shots rarely found their mark.
But that never stopped Toby from carrying on like he’d just been mauled half to death by a ferocious tiger. He got lots of sympathy. That was the point.
On New Year’s Day, we almost lost Toby. He slipped into some sort of drowsy coma and we rushed him to a clinic for care. He was found to be diabetic and has been treated for that ever since.
But he was gone from our house for four days. Mario wandered the halls alone, having lost his own twin brother a few years ago. When Toby finally came home, he was sleeping on the recliner he loves so much. Mario was on the couch beside me, staring at the dog.
Finally, he jumped down and slowly stalked him.
“Oh, this isn’t going to be good,” I thought.
Up came Mario’s right paw and while it would often descend on the dog in several rapid-fire swats, something was different this night.
Mario put his paw on Toby’s head, patted him gently once, and walked away. The dog slept on.
We think Mario missed his brother from a different mother that has been a part of his life for so long. What must he have thought when, like his real brother Luigi, he suddenly disappeared?
It amazes me what the tee-shirt industry has managed to get away with these past few decades. While virtually no one (except me) was watching, the makers of these classic and simple garments have been steadily shrinking the material they put into them while expanding the designations they assign to their clothing.
I remember, when I was a boy, my earliest tees being sized “small” and even at that, they fit pretty loosely. Then came the mediums, and same thing – hardly snug, just right. But the devious manufacturers began pulling the wool (cotton? polyester?) over our eyes when they began churning out “large” tee shirts.
I swear these newer shirts, in an earlier time, were actually mediums or even smalls, but there I was walking around in large tee shirts which, eventually, somehow, didn’t seem large to me at all. In fact, they felt more like mediums and on hot, humid days, even smalls.
And there were times on hot summer days when I actually needed help to pull these larges up over my head and off my sweaty torso.
The day I put on my first extra large tee shirt was as close as I have ever come to writing a hostile letter to a clothing maker or taking even more drastic action but I was too depressed to do it. The fact is, the extra large shirt fit just fine, which obviously meant that in reality, it was a large or even a medium size. How, I wonder, are these greedy capitalists able to get away with such a swindle?
Finally, on Saturday, I put on a new “two times extra large” tee shirt and I was crestfallen to realize that the Great Tee Shirt Scandal was now tipping in a new direction. Rather than being too small, this darned thing was way too big. I wore it to a family reunion anyway, having nothing else that was clean. Since then, I have seen photos of myself from the event and am shocked to realize that I was wearing not a tee shirt at all but an actual moo moo.
So now, the tee shirt makers are passing off moo moos as tee shirts. And I refuse even to discuss the size designation of “three times extra large”. That one is big enough to do double duty as a barbecue cover.
I hope someday our politicians in Canada, some of whom I swear are possible three times extra large candidates or even four times – yes they exist) will take on the tee-shirt industry. They could at least get them to come up with new designations after large such as “beach size”, “tent”, “blanket”, “moo moo”. At the very least, get rid of that ridiculous “extra” specification. The connotation of that awful descriptive term suggests that the wearer of such a garment is walking around in an “extra large” body, for example.
I have been looking for a cause to champion and realize all the really good ones are gone. With the advent of the tee shirt/beach blanket/moo moo, I think I might have just found the one that suits me to a tee.
This week, Canadian Lawyer magazine published a list of the best and worst judges across the country and editorial writers have been lining up to condemn the legal profession ever since. Judges, the newspapers say, are in the business of dispensing justice. They shouldn’t be involved in popularity contests to win the approval of lawyers.
But maybe we’ve been a little too quick to jump at the throats of the lawyers. Because, after all, they’re about to get as good as they’ve given. Next week’s issue of The Average Joe magazine, coincidentally, will carry an article about the best and worst lawyers in the country. Following is a sample of some the ones the magazine says are the worst.
Mr. Bob N. Weeve
The lawyer who said his client didn’t mean to toss his best friend over Niagara Falls, arguing the accused had been momentarily overcome by an attack of Rushing River Fever, an obscure disease which grips its victims with a terrible urge to throw other human beings into large bodies of water.
Ms. Sue De Panzoffum
The lawyer who acknowledged that, yes, her client did confess to stealing 47 television sets during a one-night wild spree of break-ins, but who went on to argue that when he was a boy, his parents abused him by denying him his own television in his bedroom. He finally snapped and was simply acting out the juvenile anger brought about by this childhood deprivation and which had been festering inside him all these years.
Ms. Bea Leevit-Iffucan
The lawyer who said that, incredible as it may seem, her client was indeed sleepwalking when he got up in the morning, went downtown and bought a gun, hijacked a bus, shot up the town, took four hostages, burned down city hall, stole a car and smashed into the mayor’s house, finally waking up in the cruiser on the way to the police station and saying, “Hey, wait a minute. What’s going on here?”
Mr. I. Deltok
The lawyer who said that, while it was certainly a rotten shame that Junior had blasted Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Sis, Rover and his poor Aunt Bessie out of their beds in the middle of the night, to punish the unfortunate, misunderstood lad for his one, momentary mistake might rob him forever of the feelings of dignity and self-worth which he would need in his struggle to carve out a useful life for himself.
Mr. Bill E. Dinghart
The lawyer who said it was pretty evident to him that most of the people with whom young Brutus Bilgewater had had anything to do with in the past five years before he blew up the courthouse had been guilty of name discrimination. Studies show, the lawyer said, that less than one-tenth of one percent of all jobs in Canada are held by people named Brutus and an astonishing 99.9 per cent of all jobs are held by people of other names. Quotas are needed, he said, so that by the year 2000, every employer with more than 10 employees has at least one Brutus on staff.
On the bright side, the best lawyer award went to Ms. Dawn Toourth, the solicitor who told her clients to quit their scrappin’, forget about suing each other into the poorhouse and go home and grow up.
At least that’s what she told me when I wanted to sue my neighbour who I saw peeing behind his shed in broad daylight, thereby robbing me of my ability to enjoy my property and probably contaminating the groundwater in the area.
I really thought $50 million might ease the distress.
I have mentioned before that I know exactly how I will die someday. The last image I see will be the big ugly face of an angry bear. I am deathly afraid of bears and they say that what we fear we attract, so I am doomed.
But I was reminded today that there may be an alternative exit waiting for me.
My neighbour asked me to come over to his house and replace a light switch. I am as qualified to do electrical work as Donald Trump is to run a country, but I am nothing if not up for a challenge. I told him to make sure the power was off.
I showed up for the job with wire stripper in one hand and needlenose pliers in the other. I wanted to show my neighbour the awesomeness of my electrical skills. Ten seconds into the job, the one strand of hair that is left on my head stood straight up, my eyes turned into lasers and I could see right through the wall. I also broke into song – the Polish National Anthem, I believe it was.
The hydro was still on. Oops.
Undaunted, we finally found how to turn the power off for real and I finished the job. Funny thing though. I went to put a frozen meat pie in the oven for supper but after holding it in my hand for 30 seconds, it was done.
This is the fourth time I have electrified myself over the years. I am starting to think it’s good for me. I feel completely energized afterwards. Seems to jazz up my heart. And I can read in bed after dark without turning on the light. So that’s a bonus.
In light of all this, this is the likely outcome: I will be electrifying myself by accident some day with more juice than I can handle when a murderous bear will break in just at that moment.
I went for my daily walk yesterday morning and had a few things on my mind. I can’t remember what things, exactly, but I know one thing that I wasn’t thinking about when I left the house. I had absolutely no plan to get more furniture for the rec room.
Along the streets I walked, turned a corner and there they were: Four, perfectly good, solid wooden TV tables, all standing in a wooden case. Interesting. As I was looking them over, Frank, the crossing guard, who was sitting in his car nearby, said, “If you want ’em you better take them ’cause I’m going to throw them in my trunk when my shift is over.”
“You can have them,” I said, nervously.
Then I continued my walk, and this thought began to obsess me. I had to have those tables. Had to. The thought that Frank was going to get them started driving me crazy. As I walked, I pictured two futures: one with the tables and one without and believe me, the one that included those tables was much preferable to the one without.
I picked up my pace and was practically running by the time I hit my driveway. I ran into the house, grabbed my keys, drove the van like crazy over to the street with the tables and raced down there. Frank’s car was still there, but he wasn’t inside. I couldn’t see, couldn’t see, are they, what is that?
YES!
No one anywhere on Earth at that moment was happier than I was as I loaded them into the van. Funny how something I didn’t even know existed 10 minutes before became the whole focus of my existence until they were safely tucked away in my garage.
Next year, they’ll be sitting out at our curb with a “free” sign on them.
I bet Frank comes by and gets them. I just bet he does.
There is a popular song on the radio these days about a guy who is frustrated that his girlfriend doesn’t share the deep feelings of love he has for her. The singer of the song passionately describes what he would do for this woman. He would catch a grenade for her, put his hand on a blade for her, jump in front of a train for her and even take a bullet through his brain for her. However, he’s concerned that she would not do these same things for him. In fact, he believes that if his body was on fire, she would just stand there and watch him burn.
I am not a professional counsellor but I wish I could spend a little time with this poor lad. First of all, I would advise him that after catching a grenade, cutting his hand on a blade, jumping in front of a train, shooting himself in the head and setting his body on fire, he might be somewhat of a mess and, not to take sides, but after all that, I would think any sensible woman might want to think about whether she would want to do these same things for this guy who would not be much of a prize by then.
So, in that respect, I think she’s probably showing some pretty good judgment where he appears to have no sense of balance whatsoever. Hence, she is quite clearly too good for him and is smart to move on and that’s what he should do too right after he receives some intensive help for these extreme masochistic tendencies of his.
If it was me, I’d choose no girlfriend over a grenade, a blade, a train, a bullet and a body fire any day. Call me selfish if you want, but remember the principle that has guided my life: I’d rather be a live chicken than a dead duck!
So, Hillary Clinton has pneumonia. Lucky for her – and the world – it is the treatable kind. I had pneumonia a few years ago. I could hardly lift a glass of water to my lips let alone engage in a presidential election campaign.
For six nights, I had to sleep upright in a leather recliner. If I lie flat on my bed, I coughed so violently everything in my body shook loose.
My doctor gave me an antibiotic. Maybe the same one Clinton is on. He said it would get rid of the sickness in seven days. He was bang on.
As for Donald J. Trump, it is a little known fact that he is suffering from a severe case of knowmonia. Victims of this affliction are left not knowing anything but sadly, they are totally unaware that they are as dull as the underside of smooth, round rock. Perversely, and this is the scourge of this disease, victims actually think they know a lot. More than anyone else, in fact.
Sarah Palin has exhibited symptoms of knowmonia for years but she also has frequent bouts of dieherheehaw. There is no cure for knowmonia and little hope for sufferers of dieherheehaw.
When I was in the news business, I always bristled a bit when people talked about all the bad news in the media and lamented the fact that we didn’t print more good news. But from my point of view, there is no such thing as bad news or good news, there is just news.
An overabundance of apples on the market might mean cheap apple prices for consumers, hence some good news. But, bad news for apple growers and supermarkets whose profits suffer.
When I taught journalism, to make my point, I sometimes told the following true story, which I think makes a statement not only about journalism but also about life. A lifelong bachelor was the winner of $100,000 in one of Canada’s first lotteries back in the ’70s. Good news, right?
My students always agreed it was a good thing that he won the money. He went out and bought a boat with some of his winnings. Great. He went to church on Sunday, dressed in shirt and tie, and afterwards went to where his boat was moored to take it out for its first spin. He leaned over to start the engine and his tie got caught in the propeller which pulled his head under the water and he drowned.
Was his lottery win still a good thing? No, said the students, not a good thing at all. But a minute ago it was a good thing, good news. Everyone agreed it was. Now, they admitted they had been wrong and as things turned out, it wasn’t a good thing at all.
Then I would ask them, if you were wrong to make the judgment that his lottery win was a good thing, are you now correct in declaring that his death is a bad thing?
To me, we are not meant to judge the events of our lives as good or bad, although it might seem to us that death is an obvious bad thing. We just need to accept the twists and turns. I don’t think we have the ability, in fact, to know when something is good or bad. We think we do, but later we change our minds.
How many famous singers or actors or business leaders recall with glee how down they once were when fired from one of their first jobs driving cab or selling encyclopedias? The firing, of course, was just the course correction they needed to get launched in the new direction their lives would take.
Life is an adventure. If we knew where we were going, it would be something else altogether.
This is one of my fondest memories of growing up on the farm.
One hot summer day, my Dad, my brother and I were standing in a field of young corn, which stood about waist high or lower. I was 10, my brother, 5. The air was still and humid.
Suddenly, Dad saw a whirlwind coming our way because he noticed the top leaves of the corn stalks were twisting. Whirlwinds were common in the summer on the farm. We most often saw them as they picked up dust in the barnyards; they looked like mini tornadoes.
On this day, when the twister got close to us, Dad grabbed the straw hat off my brother’s head and tossed it into the centre of the funnel. The hat shot up quickly as though fired from a cannon. And it stayed aloft, floating in ever widening circles at the top of the twister.
I kept thinking that the hat would soon fall back to earth, but it didn’t. It just kept flying and flying until it was hundreds of feet in the air and drifting southward away from us.
My brother started crying, thinking, as it turned out rightly, that he would never see his hat again. Eventually, to our amazement, a hawk joined the hat in the updraft and the two of them floated effortlessly around and around in a circle that continued to grow wider and wider. In time, hat and hawk became just specks in the sky and finally disappeared from our view altogether.
To a boy my age, this phenomenon cemented the conviction in my mind that my Dad was some sort of super genius as well as hero. But he was born on that farm and had spent all his days on it and was as familiar with its environment as the most wily cat or bird would be.
I didn’t think of this aspect of the story till many years later, but at some point and somewhere, that straw hat would have had to have floated to the ground again, who knows how many farms south of ours. What would have been the reaction of another farmer and his sons if they were out in a field somewhere and saw a straw hat suddenly appear hundreds of feet in the air and slowly drift towards them to the ground?
That poor Dad would have had to think quickly to provide the explanation to a couple of young boys wondering why a hat was suddenly descending from the heavens.
I would like to have heard the story he told them.
I fancy myself a creative writer. But Donald Trump and everyone and everything associated with him is putting me out of business. I do not have enough imagination to come up with anything better than his reality.
For example, the wife of his ethics lawyer was caught having sex with an inmate in the back of a car outside the jail he was a guest in. Wife of the ethics lawyer.
That’s kind of like getting run over by the Welcome Wagon on your first day in your new town.
Besides, Trump employing an ethics lawyer would be similar to my hiring a chauffeur for the limousine I don’t own. Or a herdsman to look after my stable of unicorns.
I wonder if it’s too late for me to get my electrician’s papers or apprentice as a carpenter. With the U.S. president committed to keeping the world entertained every day, it’s just too hard for a simple guy to compete with his keyboard.
I bought a big, new, black, plastic garbage can to put out at the street for collection by my city every week. Thirty dollars or so.
Today I noticed, as I was removing a sticker from it, that it has a lifetime warranty. Really?
I am 61 now. When I am 91 and the thing falls apart as I drag it out to the curb, will I really contact somebody about it to get my money back?
The store I bought it at will probably be gone by then. Maybe even the company that made it will no longer be in business. So how much time am I going to be able to spend by then tracking down the people who promised to replace my garbage can if it breaks before my life is over? And it will break because plastic eventually becomes brittle and cracks, especially in a cold climate such as we have in Canada.
And with our garbage pickup guys treating it like they are roping a wild bull at a rodeo, its lifespan will be limited for sure.
So why print “lifetime warranty” on this thing when everyone knows that except for the first few months or even years, if all goes well, those words hold absolutely no meaning? Unless our garbage pickup guys start treating my can as gently as they would if they were knitting a sweater.
It would have been just as true to have printed on the label: “The makers of this product guarantee a warranty on the lifetime of the buyer.”
To be guaranteed to outlive my garbage can and maybe exist forever is a promise I just might try to collect on.
I like it when sensible things like this occur to me.
My maternal ancestors, the Morrisons, came to Canada from County Mayo in Ireland 160 years ago. As far as I know, we weren’t chased out of the country by a torch-bearing mob of our angry neighbours so it was a peaceful departure.
And while we weren’t reviled, it looks like we might have gotten out of Ireland just in time because the parties celebrating our departure have just gone on and on ever since.
Last week, for example, three Mayo sisters all gave birth at the same hospital in Castlebar ON THE SAME DAY and a fourth sister is due any day now.
Here’s me, a long-ago lost former Mayoan, making an uneducated guess: That was one hell of New Year’s Eve party!
Either that or the Irish in Mayo are a lot more organized and precise than I had given them credit for. So, three first cousins will all share the same birthdays henceforth. A sure savings on balloons and birthday cake at future birthday parties.
But, oh no! When they grow up, there’ll be family New Year’s Eve parties. Extra shifts for the staffs at the Castlebar hospital coming up in a couple of decades or so.
This has been an exciting week for me. The other day, I bought a lovely wall calendar for 2022.
Just in time for September.
It’s sort of like getting your winter tires installed in April but these are the reasons the expression better late than never was invented.
I walked by the calendar store now and then this year and had my eye on a beautiful big calendar picturing a dog for every month. But the store wanted $24.99 plus tax for the privilege of looking at lovely photos of other people’s dogs. I thought, and my thoughts are usually bang on as I have a good brain, I can look at my own dog any time I want for free so why lay out all that money.
But last week, there it was. Marked down to $1.99 plus tax so into the store I ran before some other bargain hunter scooped it up. My find cost me $2.25. As I believe the world would be a better place if everything cost $2.25, I was very pleased with myself though I did feel a bit sorry for the store.
I should invite the owner over to have a look at my dog.
For free.
My calendar is open for the next four months.
And yes, I know I am in the company of those who eat their food after the best before dates but I grew up before best befores and somehow am still alive. We used to crack the lid on a jar, stick our noses in and take a sniff. If we didn’t faint, we ate whatever was inside. In the years since, I have dug out many a green section from my bricks of cheese.
Some readers might say the best before date on a wall calendar happens long before September 1 and even suggest the calendar should be hung on the wall on January 1. I am sure they have good reasons to think this as well as $24.99 plus tax in their pocket to spend, but I never want to get above my raisin’.
We’re getting a new fried chicken restaurant in my town and to be honest, I should be happier about this than I am. In fact, I am a bit on edge about it. Apparently, the food at this popular diner is so good, people go crazy when they can’t get it.
On Monday night, in Houston, for example, an armed group of people rushed the door of one of the outlets demanding chicken sandwiches. Restaurant employees reported a mob of two women, three men and a baby were told at the drive-thru that the chicken sandwiches were sold out, a bit of bad news that apparently triggered the would-be customers, especially the baby who threw a total fit, over the top, in fact, even for a baby.
That is when the hungry gang took matters into their own hands and tried to get inside the restaurant. One man pulled a gun on the employees, but a restaurant worker was able to lock them out. When you work at one of these places, you need to be skilled at thwarting attacks by armed mobs.
Call me chicken, no, don’t call me that, when discussing this topic. Maybe coward would be better terminology. But I don’t want to be walking past this new restaurant some night and have to put up with armed would-be diners, especially baby diners. I can just see me getting involved somehow and I don’t think that would turn out well for anyone.
In fact, if I was hungry, who knows what side I might be on? I might take the baby hostage and demand four chicken sandwiches as ransom.
Our family has two cars. We are living the American dream. Most days, it doesn’t matter to us that our cars are just a touch shabbier than the old truck The Beverly Hillbillies used to ride around in with Granny in a rocking chair in the back. Yes, we do get envious.
We can’t fit a rocking chair in either car. We are only able to keep these junkers on the road because we have a genius for a mechanic. If he was a medical doctor, there would be people walking around our town well into their 150s. He’s younger than us so we are hoping our driving days will be over just about the time he hangs up his wrenches and oil can.
Many people who own beaten down jalopies know a little about cars themselves which is how they are able to keep their wrecks on the road and the right side of the law. Collectively, my wife and I know this about cars: A sedan has four doors and the AC button, if it worked, stands for air conditioning. So, we pay the car bills and keep on truckin’, in Beverly Hillbilly fashion, minus Granny.
However, our ignorance leaves us open to friends and neighbours who like to assess from a distance what is wrong with our vehicles. In short, we believe what they say even though we have absolutely no reason to have faith in them. Our oldest car, manufactured in 1997 and released on an unsuspecting world, started making terrible sounds a couple of weeks ago. The faster the car goes, the louder the sound is. It sounds somewhat like a space shuttle ready to launch without all the smoke and TV cameras, at least so far.
So, a friend drove it. “It’s your transmission,” he declared, shaking his head. “The car is done. I wouldn’t put a new transmission in a car this old.”
Most people wouldn’t put gas in a car this old, so what was his point? “Don’t drive it out of town,” he ordered us. So we don’t.
Friday night, my wife and I were driving along in our other car, foisted on the general public after emerging from the car factory in 2005. Suddenly, there was a terrible clunking sound from the back end, like might be expected if we had somehow driven over a landmine. Our town of 35,000 souls in Southern Ontario, Canada, is not heavily mined. We ruled that out. As we did a rocket attack by insurgents. Fortunately, the local police have kept insurgents on the run in our town and they are not a big problem. Kids on skateboards? But I digress …
We called a tow truck and our car soon disappeared out of the parking lot and on its way to our friendly mechanic’s shop. It was a Friday night, he doesn’t work weekends, and we had all weekend to worry about the fate of what had been the better of our two cars.
We asked our friend of the transmission assessment noted above what might be wrong. “It could be the differential,” he said, with what appeared to be a sad look on his face. “What the hell is a differential?” my wife and I said to ourselves after our long walk home carrying 45 pounds of groceries. I suggested at one point that we should just sit down and eat the groceries and be done with it but my proposal was spurned.
So, we have spent the past two weeks in a morass of transmission and differential worries. Our mechanic called on Tuesday. “Got your car fixed up,” he said, and explained that the problem was a broken spring. No differentials were harmed in the making of this movie.
Today I drove to the mechanic’s in the old jalopy with the defunct transmission, to pay the non-differential bill on the other car. I fully expected to hand over a thousand dollars. The bill was $129. Pleased, I asked him about the other car, the doomed one with the bad transmission, and told him our friend’s diagnosis. He smiled. The mechanic took it for a short spin. “It’s a wheel bearing,” he announced on his return. “No big deal.”
So, between Granny Clampett, landmines, insurgents and the friend who is always wrong about car troubles, apparently, we have made it through another week. We have a little shrine in our home dedicated to our mechanic. We have a framed photo of him on the wall, and below him burns a candle in an old soup can. We pray to him every night before bed.
I was admiring my face in the mirror just now when I almost fainted in horror, something I rarely do when staring at my face in the mirror.
There, as bright as a neon bulb, on the very end of my nose is a pimple. A man of 71 years can’t have a pimple anywhere on his body and especially on the tip of his nose. It is a scientific impossibility.
And yet, there it is.
This development has immediately set off a few worrisome moments because when a pimple sprouts at the end of my nose, it means I have to leave to pick up my date in 15 minutes. As a young man, going out with every young woman who would say yes, this was a regular occurrence. My face would be simply gorgeous, splashed as it was with very strong after shave lotion, my Buddy Holly glasses nice and straight. One last check before I headed out to the car and there it would be: A pimple for the record books, white and ready to burst.
What would follow would be some frantic self-surgery with a tissue pressed against my bloody nose as I ran for the car.
This happened before almost every date. But if it didn’t happen, that was almost more ominous because when the date was over and I arrived back home, it would be to find a lovely big golf ball living large on the end of my honker.
In any case, back to now. There it is, a new pimple. So, I will need to leave soon for my date, apparently. But I am getting forgetful and I honestly can’t remember asking anyone out on a date today. If I did, it would be the first time I would have done that in 35 years.
I think I will go ask my wife. She’ll probably know if I’m going out with anyone tonight.
Sitting in the leather recliner, dog in lap, phone in hand, reading the news about the Idiot for the Ages, when the dog launches off the lap and takes off after the cat, for apparently no reason at all. Except this time there was a reason.
“Oh no,” comes the alarm. “There is a dead mole on the carpet.”
Swear words escape lips at this news and, naturally, the left lens pops out of the new eyeglasses, disappearing down the side fold of the chair. Many things have gone down that fold over the years, only some have been retrieved. Luckily, the lens hadn’t hit rock bottom but it was heading that way.
Unable to see ahead more than three inches, the hunt begins for the handy eyeglass kit with its screws and tiny screwdrivers. Blindness requires the head to be plunged into the junk drawer in search of the kit. Remarkably, it appears quickly.
The rodent, meanwhile, remains deceased on the living room carpet. The need to dispose of it outweighs the restoration of eyesight so double plastic grocery haulers are pressed into use to form a body bag for the poor creature. The cat will dine on mice all day long but he draws the line at moles. He is not to be blamed as moles do not appear to be eatable things. At least a lifeless, bloodless body is not too terrifying to deal with.
Back at the kitchen table to put a screw into the eyeglasses. The original one is long gone so a replacement from the kit is pressed into use. It is too long and too thick but with the application of elbow grease, a half hour of time and twenty well-chosen swear words, the larger screw has managed to force its way into the too-small hole and the lookers are once again able to see.
All of this activity has produced a blistering headache. A new bottle of painkillers are fetched. The manufacturer, just for fun, sealed the bottle so well it cannot be opened. As in never, ever. A sharp-bladed knife is needed to release the tiny pills.
A semblance of calm has been restored. The dog is hiding behind the couch, spooked by all the drama. The murderous cat is down behind the water heater.
I don’t mean to freak anybody out, but I am actively searching for a new place in the world to dwell. I live three miles from the hospital in which I was born and therefore, over my 72 years, I have never gotten very far in life.
Time to spread my wings!
But there are so many places where I could take up residence I am finding it almost impossible to choose.
I love Scotland and can see myself there. In a little place called Dull. It is possible I might be dull enough for there, but I worry there is a total absence of excitement in a place with that name. Same thing with Boring, Oregon and Nothing, Arizona. I’m all for peace and quiet but I sometimes crave a little noise, at least. A summer circus, a holiday parade.
Maybe, as I am just a regular guy, I would fit in with the people of Normal, Illinois.
Then there are places with a little too much oomph for me. Rough and Ready, California, for example. Same with Hot Coffee, Mississippi, Batman, Turkey, and Jot-Em-Down, Texas.
Some places I will avoid as the names just kind of turn me off, for no particular reason, I suppose. I don’t want to have to tell friends and family I am living in Poo, India, Windpassing, Austria, Anus in France, or Fartsville, Virginia not to mention Shitterton, England, Slickpoo, Idaho, or Poopsdale, Indiana.
But I have pretty much ruled out moving to Middelfart, Denmark. Town names get shortened, sometimes, and I don’t want to have to tell people that I am in Midfart.
As an Eyeore sort of guy, I maybe could see myself in Pity Me, England, Lake Disappointment, Australia, or Dum Dum, India.
And I have decided to definitely not go to Hell, Michigan although during my career as a journalist, I was often told to go to Hell.
I am also staying away from the state of Maine and its places called Bald Head, Deadmans Corner, Suckerville, and Purgatory. Same with Cranky Corner, Lousiana, though you never know, I might fit right in there.
Little Heaven in Delaware might be okay, but maybe it’s too soon for that. Maybe I would be welcomed in Humansville, Missouri.
And now that I think about it, five miles away from my current home in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, is a little crossroads called Harmony.
Harmony is small. But maybe, at this stage in my life, I could use a little harmony. In fact, it’s a ten-minute drive away. Maybe I don’t have to move at all.
Maybe I will start a movement to have Stratford renamed Staying Put.
When I go out in the woods, there are a few things I want to see. Let me correct that: a few things I DEMAND to see.
There have to be trees, at the minimum. What is a freakin’ bush without trees? And I expect there to be lots of amazing birds in those trees. And they’d better be chirping their beaks off.
I also want to see snakes in the undergrowth, as well as chipmunks and squirrels. And I think my time has been wasted if I haven’t been able to take a selfie with a fox, a coyote or a wolf. Maybe even a mountain lion.
But I am guaranteed to lose my gosh darn mind if I go for a stroll in a forest and don’t encounter a bear. A grizzly bear to be precise. Just one goddam grizzly bear is all I expect. More than one if they’re handy, but there better at least be one available for viewing.
To walk through a bush and not run into bears is like going golfing after the season has ended and finding there are no pins in the holes on any of the greens.
I could write down a list of big problems in the world but you and I both know what they are. Maybe you haven’t spent much time thinking about it, but bear-free bushes belong on that list. In fact, I am going to guess that you don’t give a hoot about it but your lack of concern should not diminish my anxiety surrounding this issue.
However, there is at least one person in this world who is of like mind and I hope one day to meet that enlightened soul. This week a tourist left some feedback for Yellowstone lodge workers after encountering zero bears during a pricey visit to the U.S. park.
“Please train your bears to be where guests can see them,” read a note shared by a Reddit user on Wednesday. “This was an expensive trip to not get to see bears.”
Finally, someone has had the courage to come out and say it. And to agree with my point of view. After seeing that note, I will bet that there is nothing those Yellowstone lodge workers want more than to have that tourist encounter a few grizzlies on his or her next visit. Maybe they might suggest the tourist forward some of their clothing to the park so the workers can introduce the bears to their scent so their next visit will be more fulfilling. Or at least filling (for the bears).
I wonder if this was the same tourist who wrote to a municipality (true story) complaining that wildlife such as moose and deer were wandering across highways wherever they felt like crossing and not at the sections of the roads where signs showing wildlife crossing points had been erected.
In that case, I think it’s the stupid darned animals that are to be blamed. I think they know right from wrong but just ignore the signs on purpose.
I hope my tourist friend above, when they’re done associating with the grizzlies in Yellowstone, get to meet some good old Canadian moose. Maybe they don’t obey all the signs but goddam it, they’re friendly.
Today is the 28th day of August. On the 28th day of July, I sent a friend a text message. A friendly message, just the kind a friend could be expected to send to a friend.
In the month that has passed since I sent that text, there has been no reply.
Nothing.
Now, I am sure that many of you who are reading this have experienced a similar occurrence and I will guess, some of you might not have known how to handle it. Rest easy. I have had experience with events such as this and have learned how to handle them.
So here we go.
Step 1
The first thing that a person should do in a situation such as this, is to begin the process of jumping to conclusions. This is very helpful. So, when a few hours pass or maybe a whole day and there is no reply, these are the words that are very important to say to yourself.
“She hates me.”
Step 2
This involves examining in detail your relationship with this friend, to see if you really screwed up somehow. It would not surprise you to conclude that you probably did something wrong to earn this month-long cold shoulder. If you are kind of a blabby sort of person some days, did you say some unflattering things about your friend which have since gotten back to her? This is a worthwhile avenue to stroll down for a few days. Try to recall every word you spoke to anyone in the past 30 days. If all that figuring does not produce an answer, you are ready to move on.
Step 3
Did I borrow money from my friend and not pay it back? That theory doesn’t work for me as, at 73, no one I know will lend me any money any more as I never get around to repaying the loan.
Step 4
Cycle back to Step 1 and try once more to figure out what you might have done to make your friend hate you so much as to end all communication. You’re a sensitive type and you hate being hated. In fact, your life’s goal has been to be loved by everyone you know and all those you don’t know.
Step 5
Your phone rings.
“Hi Jim. Sorry I missed your text but I lost my phone.”
I sat in my car yesterday in front of a fast food burger joint. It wasn’t busy but a couple of cars went through the drivethrough and a few people walked in and out of the place.
I thought this was odd as the place closed – permanently – a few months ago. I had been spreading that word to people I met and was more sure of that fact than I am the spelling of my own name.
My neighbour is a regular local news fiend and as he is always out and about and has a real lust for the latest information about our town, he always has lots to tell me after his regular coffee sessions with his buddies. As for me, I am always in and within and have …
Nothing.
He is like that person who sends you a Christmas card every year even though you never send one back.
But I try. I offer this bit of news and that bit of gossip (although hermits never have news of any kind or not the least bit of gossip) and unfortunately, my breaking stories are very rarely true.
“I don’t think that’s right,” my neighbour will say, his face covered in skepticism. “I’ve never heard that.” And if he hasn’t heard that in all his travels, the chance that your little bit of startling info might be true are very slim.
But this time I was definitely right and I proclaimed my information with all the confidence of Moses reading the Commandments.
“So CowNow is all closed up, eh,” I said one day this week. “It has been for months. They couldn’t get enough staff.”
“Really?” said my Regular Informant. “I never heard that.”
“Oh ya,” I said. “The business logo is gone from the main marquee and everything. It’s too bad.”
“Who did you hear that from?” asked the ever nosy neighbourhood reporter.
“Ah, I can’t remember,” I replied. “But it was someone who is almost always right.”
“Hmmm,” was all my neighbour had left to say about that.
So yesterday, there I sat in my car watching hungry citizens of my town make good use of the closed and boarded up CowNow. It was like discovering that William Shakespeare is alive and well and still writing plays.
I’ll be seeing my neighour this week at which time I will have a heapin’ helpin’ serving of humble pie.
I hate that stuff. Seems like I’m always chowing down on it.
My doctor wants me to quit drinking coffee. To be more precise, it isn’t the coffee that bothers him but the cream and sugar I put in the two cups I get at McDonald’s every day. He has dedicated himself to keeping me out of Avondale Cemetery for as long as possible and I am in no rush to go there myself, but we differ on our approaches to putting off the inevitable.
“Could you drink it without the cream and sugar?” he asked me during a recent visit.
“No,” was my answer after I carefully considered the prospect for 2.2 seconds.
Coffee without cream and sugar. Hmmm. May as well eat my breakfast cereal straight out of the box and forget the milk. Or bread right out of the bag, skip the margarine. Or the popsicles I ingest during heat waves. I’ll just scrape all that frozen flavoured water into the sink and lick the stick. Yum!
My doctor and I seem to agree, when we get together, that I need to do a better job of looking after my health. However, he appears mostly concerned with improving my physical well-being while I am practically obsessed with maintaining my mental health.
And here is what I get for the $1.35 I spend a day for a senior’s coffee at Mickey Dees. I go through the drivethrough each morning and joke with the servers at the windows. They all know me now and tolerate my ridiculous attempts at humour. But we have a brief connection and I like it.
Coffee in the holder, I then go sit in my car under one of the many shade trees in the restaurant parking lot and read on my phone all about the maniac American president.
In the afternoon, I take my empty cup back for a free refill but am forced to actually enter the restaurant to get it. No refills at the drivethrough. So I have gotten to know the inside staff as well.
“You’re working a lot of hours,” I said to one young woman behind the counter yesterday.
“Yes, I am here till 11 tonight,” she answered.
“Wow. Look at all the money you’re making,” I replied.
She smiled.
“Have a nice day,” she said.
Then just today, when I went for my second cup, the owner of McDonald’s, whom I have known for years, saw me come in and get into an unusually long lineup. She came right over.
“Just a refill?” she asked, and she took my cup over to the coffee maker.
“It’s great to have friends in high places,” I said to her when she returned with my coffee.
She smiled.
When I was still employed in my career, I had encounters with people all day long – fellow workers and the general public. But retired, I spend a lot of time alone. I don’t mind that but chatting up the McDonald’s staff a couple times a day is a big help.
I could save myself almost $500 a year on my coffee runs (not to mention the gas for my car) by making my own at home. But over the last almost 30 years now, we have had every style and brand of home coffee machine and I believe in all that time I have had the sum total of about a cup and half for all that investment. And that was about one cup too many. Other family members rely on the coffee makers and love what they produce but they all have jobs and are around people all the time.
When I left the doctor’s office the last time, I went up to the reception station and said to the several women busily working there, “The doctor says he has never seen such a perfect human specimen.” They laughed and one of them said, “You must get sick of your wife telling you how perfect you are.” I confirmed her assessment.
So, God bless my doctor. He is definitely on my side and I like him. But getting me to give up my coffees will be about as successful as I have been at getting my dog to quit barking at the poodle across the street.
When Avondale calls, that is one appointment I don’t expect to miss. And on my stone I want engraved: “Finally Quit Coffee!”
I watched the kids dive into the water off the dock for almost an hour. And the big black old shepherd-border collie cross had a great time jumping in after them. Koda (short for Killer Old Dog Attack) loves the water, especially the splash created by the swimmers. From my vantage point, it appeared as though the dog was jumping beside the divers when they left the dock.
So eventually, I thought I’d invite Koda to jump in beside me. I called him over and jumped in. As the water closed over my head, so did something else: a 70-pound dog. Bingo! Right on my wet noggin landed pooch and almost immediately I felt the pain.
But something funny happened as I stumbled my way out of the water. Koda was busy watching the other swimmers but when he saw me leaving the lake he came over for a few seconds to check me out. It was as though he wanted to make sure I was okay.
The nine-hour trip home from our friends’ cottage was a long one as I felt every bump and swerve in the road. I had a mild case of whiplash following a car accident years ago; this is what this felt like.
Today, however, neck and feelings are on the mend. Nevertheless, I am considering a lawsuit against the dog but my family says it was all my fault. Koda wasn’t jumping in beside the divers but right on them. The only reason they got away unharmed was they were diving in and swimming away quickly and not jumping in and staying in one place. I disagree and will say so in my affidavit.
My bucket list isn’t a long and complicated one. A couple of entries involve Sandra Bullock, a Rolls Royce and a credit card with no limit. But nowhere on there is having my head jumped on by a dog in a lake.
I take seven pills a day for various doctor-detected ailments.
One pill is to control my handsomosity as extreme good looks can be dangerous even on an innocent stroll through the mall. I often emerge from my favourite household goods store with my face covered in lipstick, liberally applied by amorous women
Another keeps my geniosity under control. This is necessary to keep my ability to outsmart people, even myself, in check.
A third pill tempers my virtuosity as I am too good to be believed. I’m a Ten Commandments commander.
A fourth pill manages my inventivosity. The others curtail my intelligensity, my profitablosity and my bullshitosity. That last pill, I’m afraid, is not working very well lately.
I need a new pill to counter the effects of my over medicating family physician. That’s right. I am suffering from a very bad case of doctorosity.
I am not talking about political news though that does tend to send me around the bend. Instead, the stories that are doing me in are the ones about people who find incredible things hidden in their homes. Being ever in search of riches beyond imagining as I am well aware that money most certainly can buy happiness, I have practically torn our little blue shack apart, board by board, drywall sheet by ceramic tile, to find something, anything, that would fill up my bank account.
One couple, for example, found a 50-year-old safe hidden in their kitchen wall. What was inside? $51,080, mostly in $100 notes.
A California couple spotted a strange area underneath their bathroom vanity. After pushing on the space, they found tons of pieces of vintage jewelry from Mexico.
An unsigned Van Gogh painting was surprisingly found in the attic of a Norwegian home. I did crawl up in our attic and found some finger paint sketches our kids did in kindergarten and while they are treasures for their parents, they are no Van Goghs.
Construction workers found $500,000 in cash underneath a house and that set off an ugly dispute over who should get the money: Them or the owners of the home. If that happened to me, I would give each of the workers $10 and send them on their way.
An old Action Comics book was found after a wall was demolished in a family’s home. It sold at auction for $175,000.
A Utah man found $45,000 in his house and then he tracked down the rightful owner and returned it. I would, of course, have given the rightful owner $10, maybe 20.
In one home, a figurine of a former Russian czar was found and then auctioned for five million dollars. The best I can do are some figurines of long-retired hockey players but not even the hockey players want them.
One couple found some archaeological treasures buried under their house and the treasures were over 2,000 years old. So far, all I’ve found in our basement is a spider’s nest, and it isn’t that old, and spiders generally sell for a dime a dozen, if you can sell them at all.
It just goes on and on. In a secret room of one person’s home, a box with ammunition, a defused grenade, and thousands of pennies were found.
Another homeowner found an entire servants’ kitchen in the basement of a property that had been in their family for years. I can kind of relate to that. I moved into our house when I was still single and not being a cook, two years went by before I discovered the house had a kitchen.
One couple found a medieval well underneath the floor of their living room. An old briefcase was unearthed inside someone else’s house. It contained money from all over the world, silver, and other treasures. One family discovered an ancient chapel space under their home.
But I think I might just slow down on ripping our house apart after reading that homeowners found thousands of snakes living in the walls of their Idaho house.
Either that, or I will cancel my plans to move to Idaho.
This morning’s headline: Yogurt-eating mice found to have larger testicles.
A few questions: Who left the yogurt out and then who first noticed a mouse run by and commented, “Look at the set on that guy. Holy mackerel!”
To liven up the story, these are elderly mice. So, these old guys are chowing down on yogurt and literally, growing a pair.
Which begs one more query: When you see a mouse, can you tell its age immediately? Does an old one have grey hair, bald patches and a belly? Does it have trouble hearing the cat sneak up on it?
This is all too much for me except for the uncomfortable feeling that my taxes are paying somebody to figure all this out. Somebody who spends his days running along behind old yogurt-eating mice to see how much their balls are growing.
My 18-year-old cat Mario lost his twin brother Luigi a while back and he’s been affected in various ways by the loss. He developed an eating disorder, for one thing, and needs a lot more human attention than he ever wanted before.
Mario and Luigi, over their long lives together, never really put it together that they were two cats and not one. When you’d walk by a comfy chair where they were sleeping, you’d be seeing what could only be described as a pile o’ cat. Legs, tails, ears sticking out all over. It was hard to see where one animal started and the other ended.
So, in some ways, I have been an oversized Luigi since that great guy left this world. My claws aren’t as sharp and my whiskers not as long and Luigi didn’t wear glasses, but Mario seems to think I make an alright substitute. Several times a day, and even in the middle of the night sometimes, Mario and I snuggle in the same comfy chair he and his brother shared so many naps in.
And Mario loves just about anything I decide to do with his body but his favourite thing is to have his jawline pressed against my knuckles. There doesn’t seem to be any point where I can push too hard on that area of his face. In fact, he does a major part of the pressing.
In a way, it takes me back to my days in a one-room country schoolhouse where one of my classmates used to press his knuckles against my jawline on a pretty regular basis. And like Mario, I loved it. But to make things more fun, I would often try to run away when I saw Billy heading my way and hide behind a tree or a bush, but he was very determined and good at finding me and my “four eyes.” Billy was more mini bulldozer than boy and he liked to make my life brighter every day.
But there is a benefit to everything we experience in life and my frequent attempts to run away from Billy led me to take up track and field when I got to high school, and left the bulldozer behind. I would imagine Billy was gaining on me and I’d quicken my pace. However, I soon discovered that I was not the speediest runner in the world which explained how Billy could always catch me. So I switched to cross country running and was actually kind of good at that as there were lots of trees, creeks and bushes to run around even if I wasn’t being chased.
After a good snuggle that can last upwards of 20 minutes or so, Mario jumps down from my lap and crawls under a comfy chair with a big blanket over it which gives him total privacy. And he goes to sleep. I can’t read the mind of a cat, but my guess is, he misses Luigi.
As for me, it might sound strange, but I don’t miss Billy at all.
I am voting for the Rhinoceros party in the next federal election in Canada for various reasons. First off, unlike the other parties, they have a 1,000-year plan and I admire people who look ahead. And they have history on their side. They have been around since 1963.
Rhinoceronians have smart, sensible ideas. If elected, they will move Canada’s capital from Ottawa to Kapuskasing because it is the geographical centre point of the nation. They will privatize Canada’s armed forces and nationalize Tim Hortons. They lean Marxist-Lennonist in their approach (Groucho Marx and John Lennon).
Some members of the party favour the return of capital punishment with one leader saying, “If it was good enough for my grandfather, it’s good enough for me.”
One ambitious plan the party has had was to tow Antarctica to the Arctic Circle. This would give Canada a monopoly on cold temperatures and a big advantage if a Cold War ever breaks out again.
During an election campaign in 1984, the party planned to eliminate big businesses and allow only small businesses which employ less than one worker.
Other smart ideas were to repeal the law of gravity, lower the boiling point of water, make Illiteracy the third official language of Canada and tear down the Rocky Mountains so Albertans could see the B.C. sunsets.
They would also abolish the environment because it takes up too much space and is too hard to keep clean. And they would end crime by abolishing all laws.
Other neat ideas include making the two-lane Trans Canada Highway a one-way road. And if elected, they would count the Thousand Islands to see if the Americans have stolen any.
I went to bed feeling down last night and I am still not my usual bubbly self today.
Last evening, I hauled two big trash cans to the street for pickup this morning and inside one of those cans was a treasure I was finally persuaded to part with. That exalted item was a brand new bike helmet that I bought and its only sin was that it was left outside. Rain, snow, hurricanes – it had seen it all.
Still, it looked as good as the day I bought it. It was a big, round, white affair, not unlike the kind astronauts wear. It had a variety of straps and velcro pads and was about the ultimate in modern head protection. Alas, however, maybe because I don’t have a modern head, I never wore it. Still it was not something I was ready to part with but I was outvoted at a Summit Meeting of the Family Council, so into the garbage it went.
A couple of times during the night, I resisted going out to the street, bringing my helmet back in and hiding it in the shed. However, I live in fear of sanctions from the Family Council.
Morning came, and it was gone.
Those heartless individuals lined up against me at the Summit Meeting made the point that I don’t actually own a bike. They argued that not having a bike pretty much cancelled the need to have a bike helmet. But I couldn’t follow their reasoning.
This afternoon I sat staring at the place the helmet used to sit, and got a bit emotional.
“Goodbye, old friend,” I whispered. “I tried to save you.”
Like always, I save my emotions for the important things.
An Australian man has been hailed a “hero” after repeatedly punching a shark until it released his wife’s leg.
And while I do agree that punching a 10-foot-long, great white shark to save his wife is a pretty gutsy thing to do, lesser known heroes such as I go unheralded and that has me sort of steamed.
My wife and I have swam together in many bodies of water over the years including the Atlantic Ocean, and my fearsome demeanour all by itself has kept every shark in the area from even approaching us, let alone attacking. Yes, I did no punching but punching isn’t needed when the sharks are too intimidated to come near.
But the puncher can have all the glory if he needs it. Personally, I like to keep a low profile.
Not to brag, but we have also strolled through forests without once having been attacked by wolves, cougars, coyotes, wild dogs, bobcats, snakes and bears. Never been bitten by a wolverine, a mongoose or a wildebeest. However, I did have a close encounter with a fearsome wild turkey in my backyard this summer but after taking one look at me as I was running full speed into the garage, he took off.
When the shark puncher can successfully deal with a wild turkey in his yard, I will be suitably impressed.
Australia has one of the world’s highest incidences of shark attacks and there have been five fatal ones in the country so far this year.
Another reason I think I deserve at least a little bit of credit for not moving to Australia and having no plans to ever do so.
Some anonymous guy phoned our house last week with a short announcement, and then hung up.
“You’re an idiot,” said the caller. And that was that.
Except it wasn’t that. The character assessment conveyed by our telephone hero got me wondering whether or not I am, in fact, an idiot.
So, I signed up for a $1,000 online 12-week course entitled, “How to Identify an Idiot.”
Right off the bat, when taking my first lesson, I was a little discouraged to read that anyone who would pay $1,000 for an Internet course to confirm whether or not he is an idiot, is, in fact, an idiot.
But then I felt a little better when the presenter went on to describe how almost all human beings are idiots from time to time. With most people, however, their idiotic moments are brief and few. A true idiot, however, carries his idiocy with him all day long wherever he goes.
Our assignment for this week is to be on the lookout for idiots in our midst and having seen one, bring a description of that person to the next session.
It didn’t take long for me to recognize my first suspect. I was going through the drivethrough at a fast-food restaurant but before I could get to the window, a 40s-something man got out of his parked car and walked up to the window. He had in his hand the largest container for pop ever made and he started arguing with the attendant behind the window.
He appeared to want a refill and he kept trying to hand the young woman his huge cup. She would not take it. It seemed as though this guy thought this was about the biggest outrage anyone had ever experienced. He flailed his arms and shrugged his shoulders, obviously mocking the woman behind the glass.
But, despite being a jerk, he sort of got his way, as he seemed to have been instructed to head into the restaurant which he did.
I am expecting a solid A in class next week for my eagle eye spotting of this idiot.
But a look at the course description suggests there is more to this offering than I at first thought.
Besides exploring the whole concept of idiocy, in future classes we will be looking at many first cousins of the idiot such as the moron, the lamebrain, the fool, and the dumbass.
I am looking forward to learning all about the dumbass, as apparently it is possible to be a dumbass and a smartass at the same time. I have no idea how that could ever be explained. But a picture of Texas Senator Ted Cruz accompanies this topic heading so maybe there is a hint in that.
I am not sure how learning all there is to know about idiocy will help prepare me for the rest of my life, but my hope is, if that guy who told me I’m an idiot ever calls again, I will be able to offer him a devastating retort such as …
“I know you are but what am I?”
My big worry is that only an idiot would not be able to explain what that saying means.
I hope you know what it means because I don’t and never have.
I take my little poodle Toby for a walk up and down our street twice a day. And before we leave, I call to him and say, “Come on, Toby. Let’s go yell at the neighbours.”
And we do, although I leave almost all the yelling to the little sparkplug at my feet. He always leads the way, something I have discovered 14 years too late you should never let a dog do, and barks his head off at strangers and most other dogs.
Toby is a known feature of our street now, and in spite of his crusty exterior, those who know the little dickens get a kick out of him. I always point out that while he is yelling his head off, his tail is wagging up a storm, so he is not angry. He just has a lot of announcements to make.
I have tried to think of something to compare these little adventures to. The best I can come up with is it is like walking down the street with a live “weed whacker” in your hand. We have one of those things. It weighs about the same as the dog, is just as noisy and sometimes has a mind of its own, and will go where it wants to go if you don’t hang onto it just right.
Fourteen years is a long time to carry a weed whacker down the street twice a day and there are times I would rather stay in my rocking chair. But I know the day is coming, and I know it will come too soon, when the whacker will be out of gas and will stop running for good.
Coincidentally, that will be the exact same time my overactive tear factory will open its doors and who knows when they will close again.
And after a month or two in my rocking chair, I will start strolling down the street again, the loneliest guy in my town.
I don’t know if it’s normal to worry about the birds that gather in our backyard every day but when you are a worrier (I’ve been told I was born with a worried look on my face) I guess it was probably inevitable that our birds would be the targets of my anxiety eventually.
I am especially concerned about our many mourning doves who, while they do drink from our water sources now and then, hardly ever take a bath. This can’t be good for their coats. They should look for inspiration from the grackles who thrash away so vigorously in the bath that they practically create a wave pool out of it. Their bodies are black and blue and shiny and they look good.
However, they crap big time in the birdbath and I am afraid the other birds who drink from it might become contaminated though none of them seem put off by it so far.
Also very concerning are the sparrows who never, from one month to the next, bathe at all, although that might be a good thing as I fear they are so tiny, they could drown if they were ever to plunge right in.
And while I admire the fact that these little buggers don’t seem to be afraid of any other flying creature – they march right up to birds 10 times their size and kick them in their knees – I can’t help but wonder if they will pay for their boldness someday soon.
I am concerned about some of the robins who seem to me to be too chunky for their own good. One day I saw what looked like two robins taking a bath at the same time and was shocked to discover that all the splashing about was being made by only one red-breasted behemoth. These guys need to get more exercise or cut back on the worms. Their cholesterol levels must be sky high, pun intended.
I love to look at the cardinals and blue jays but I wonder how their colourful wings, bodies and heads don’t easily attract whatever predators they might be trying to stay away from. (We all have our predators. Mine use our doorbell and landline.) They seem almost to be sitting ducks, though we don’t actually have any sitting ducks at the moment. We do have a couple in the front yard every spring when Fred and Ginger show up for a day or two of waddling around.
The cowbirds have been around a lot this summer and the silly brown things walk everywhere. I worry if they keep doing that they will forget how to fly. Also, they are not suitably afraid of other creatures such as squirrels, rabbits and grackles and even humans. I have almost bumped into them from time to time.
And of the grackles, we used to have 20 of them till a month ago when they all disappeared. So, I worried about what might have happened to them till 10 of them reappeared last week, hungry and obnoxious as ever. Where are the other 10, I fretted. And when the 10 we have now returned, they brought a flock of starlings with them. The starlings are a very rambunctious gang and I worry about our grackles getting mixed up with them and the bad effects that might have on their attitudes.
But maybe my bird fears are misplaced. It’s been a long time since I found a dead one anywhere. And they do seem to have their own lifesaving medics. One day, I happened on a big bird of some sort that was sitting on an arm of one of our lawnchairs, obviously badly stunned. Sometimes birds will fly headfirst into our windows which cramps their style. I could have reached out and grabbed this guy but I kept on walking. A few minutes later, a second bird of the same species landed on the first guy’s back and proceeded to use its wings to beat the hell out of it. I thought it was performing a mercy killing. In fact, it was more akin to CPR. After the assaulter flew off, the one in a coma came to life, shook itself a time or two and took off after its physiotherapist, good as new.
In the end, of course, I don’t know what the future holds for the birds or for me, but if I come back as a winged creature someday, I hope I am a bold little sparrow.
Six months ago, my eye doctor announced that I would be taking a field vision test in August. Six months is the ideal time frame for me to whip myself into a high state of anxiety about a trip to the doctor – any doctor.
Most of my worry came from my ignorance regarding what exactly a field vision test might be. I didn’t have the courage to ask the doctor or the energy to consult the Internet, so my lack of knowledge on the subject underpinned my jittery nerves.
Would I be driven out to a field south of the city and told to count the number of corn stalks I could see in a sixty-second period? Would I be shown aerial photos of a number of different fields and commanded to identify which one was the sharpest?
So many possibilities, so many dangers. Failure to pass the field vision test could obviously lead to my eyeballs being removed and used as doorstops.
I couldn’t even share my concern with anyone else as there was nobody I knew who had ever taken a field vision test.
Tuesday, the night before the test, I felt like Tom Dooley awaiting to ascend the scaffold the next day. I tossed and turned. Slept very little. And showed up wearily on time for the test.
At the eye clinic, I was led into a room with all sorts of fancy hardware. I was seated in a chair and a pirate’s eyepatch was installed over my left eye. I rested my chin on a metal chinrest and the room went dark. I was handed a little joystick and told to press a button every time I saw a little burst of light. Those bursts appeared randomly all over the screen.
I nailed it.
The eyepatch was switched to my left eye and the process repeated. But this time, due I suppose to my poor night’s sleep, I nodded off three times in the middle of the test. It is hard to identify brief flashing lights on a screen when you are asleep. To all future test takers, I would recommend drinking three energy drinks in a row before grabbing that joystick.
I mentioned to the doctor that I had slipped into unconsciousness three times during the test but he seemed unconcerned. Said I had passed with flying colours.
Which now has me worrying at the value of a test which you can pass while sound asleep.
All I know is I am getting new glasses. Whether I will be able to see a flea on a buffalo’s back at 500 paces or not able to see the end of my nose, I have no idea.
I just hope I can still count the corn stalks in the fields south of the city as this is a practice that has always brought me peace.
When you consume watermelon with just a little less enthusiasm than a very hungry warthog might do, you are bound to dribble some of the juicy goodness down the front of your shirt. If that garment happens to be a brand new T-shirt which you have saved up for a year to buy, your distress will be instant and real.
The solution to this dilemma, of course, sits in bottles on the shelves of the local Pennyrama but being frugal, you are not in the mood to shell out many bucks for a container of Stainaway or Slopstop. As effective as these treatments might be, you are sure there is an easier answer in the materials you already have somewhere in your cupboards and on the shelves in the garage.
So, you consult the Internet and sure enough, you already have all it takes to remove any and all stains from your clothes, new and old. Best of all, the remedies are easy and work quickly.
Here are a few practical home formulas for removing watermelon stains and many other non-lethal spots.
1. Mix a solution of blue dish detergent, white vinegar and water.
2. Stretch your shirt out fully in your bathtub. If you do not have a tub, consider getting one installed.
3. Submerge your shirt in lukewarm water, then spread the solution you have prepared over the stains. Rub in lightly with the forefinger of your left hand.
4. Let garment and solution sit for three full days.
5. Remove the shirt and without rinsing it, apply generous amounts of rubbing alcohol over the stain(s). Let sit for two days and then apply one cup of hydrogen peroxide.
6. One week later, hang the shirt on the line and if you have access to an air rifle or pistol, shoot pellets that have been dipped in premium gasoline at the stain. Leave the shirt on the line overnight.
7. Lay your shirt flat on a table and sprinkle equal amounts of baking soda and epsom salts across the stain. Rub in lightly with a toothbrush and if the stain is stubborn, eventually switch to a wirebrush.
8. Rinse the shirt in warm water and then dip the stained section into a mixture of turpentine and motor oil – 5W30.
9. Before the shirt is completely dry, spread crushed ice cubes over the stain, mixed with fine sawdust and play sand, if you have some available, along with a litre of warm cola. Leave sit for two days, then rinse in lukewarm water.
10. This final step is important. Tie your shirt to the radio aerial of your car and drive for one solid hour, slightly over the speed limit. The stain will be gone when you pull back into your driveway.
If, by some chance, these steps do not work, there is a sale on Stainaway at Pennyrama this week. Also, new tee shirts are half price till Saturday at Save a Buck.
There is a story that has disturbed me my whole life and I feel the need to address it as best I can. It involves the account of an old lady who swallowed a fly. Why anyone thought this was worthy of a news item I will never know but the journalist who brought the incident to light did a very poor job of reporting, in my opinion. And as a lifelong journalist myself, I feel my viewpoint should have some validity.
First off, that an old lady would swallow a fly is not an earth-shattering event so I really think the reporter should have found something more important to examine that day. But then the journalist said he didn’t know why the woman swallowed the fly. Well, a very poor job he did and I think I might have fired him if he brought that story back to the newsroom on my watch. He should have asked the subject of his story why she swallowed the fly. But he never did. And then he made the incredible prediction that because she swallowed a fly, the woman was likely to die. If she did, I believe she would be the first person on record to die from ingesting a fly, but the reporter was an alarmist and ignorant as well.
My fear is he told the old lady she was probably going to die because the first thing she did was chase down a spider somehow and swallowed that, in the hopes it would catch the fly. This could not have been easy for her to do with likely eyesight and mobility problems but she found a spider, opened her gob and popped it in.
Realizing she now had a spider and a fly inside her, she panicked, I think, and chased down a bird which she swallowed to catch the spider. Her alarm must have heightened even more as she then grabbed a cat and swallowed that, in the hope that the cat would catch the bird she had sent down her throat. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to swallow a cat but it is a sign of her distress that she would put herself through that. And I think she did that because that alarmist reporter put the idea into her head that she might die from swallowing the fly which I don’t believe she would have.
The incredible story the reporter ended up with then goes on to detail how the woman swallowed a dog to catch the cat. How much dog could one woman swallow, I wonder. I hope it was not a Great Dane.
In any case, the woman was desperate by then and found herself a cow to swallow to catch the dog. Now, any fifth grader could have told the poor lady that cows do not normally try to catch dogs. I hope it wasn’t the reporter who suggested to her that they do. In any case, she swallowed a cow.
And then, she went just one crazy step too far. She decided she had to do something about the cow and so she found a horse, stuffed the poor creature into her mouth and swallowed it, mane, hooves, tail, the whole shebang. Again, she was obviously starting to lose it because horses never try to catch cows.
And this is where the story took a tragic turn. After swallowing the horse, the old lady died. And all the reporter could say was, “She died, of course.” Of course? The reporter knew the horse would kill the woman but apparently he didn’t think to warn her. I just hope he didn’t encourage her.
So, to wrap up, one life was lost when the woman swallowed the fly. The unfortunate fly died, “of course”! Problem solved. Or at least it should have been. But because the old lady was acting on poor information and probably out of panic, the lives of six other creatures were also lost including that of the old lady herself.
I don’t want to sound mean, but I almost wish the old lady had survived swallowing that last big entree long enough to swallow the damn reporter to catch the horse. It would have served the silly scribe right to have suffered the indignity of slithering down into the old lady’s innards.
“I don’t know why she swallowed the fly,” he had written.
Dude, all you had to do was ask her. So much misery could have been spared.
I call journalistic malfeasance. Maybe an investigation is warranted. We have a dead old woman, and deceased fly, spider, cat, dog, cow and horse. The only one to walk away was the reporter.
Sounds a bit suspicious to me. From my experience as a newspaper editor, I know that some reporters will do anything for a good story. Anything
As a man gets on in years, he requires a metric or two to measure whether or not he is still on the righteous path he tried to trod so many decades ago. I think I may have discovered just such a marker by which a senior male can chart his progress or lack of it.
The possibility awaiting all men, we may as well be clear, is that he will slowly but surely slip into a state some might describe as grumpy but is better known by its proper name, curmudgeonitis.
Curmudgeonitis is a few steps beyond grumpy. Even kids, teenagers, and middle-agers can have bouts of grumpiness. But only old men can lay claim to the state of grumpy times ten.
To be a true curmudgeon, a man has to be able to get mad at things that no one else in the world could possibly get upset with.
So here is my test. You have erected a large plywood platform upon a steel pole in the backyard to serve as a bird feeder. A big tub of feed is dumped in the centre of the feeder each morning, topped off with a small cup of unsalted peanuts.
For a couple of months, the feeder is filled with a wide variety of birds from sparrows and chickadees to grackles, bluejays and cardinals.
Fantastic.
Then a pair of doves show up. Doves as a symbol of peace my ass. These greedy fat brown creatures decide the whole damn feeder is theirs and any other species uses the feeder at the same time at the risk of extreme pecking.
This is an intolerable situation and so you find yourself at your kitchen window, yelling at a pair of doves. The yelling has no effect.
So, I submit that when you reach the stage in life where you are yelling out your window at doves, curmudgeonitis has taken root. However, just to add another layer of complexity: It is not the yelling that is the indicator, it is the idea that a man shouting out his window at doves could conceivably have the effect of causing the doves to rethink their behaviour and to say to themselves, “Well, I guess we better cut that out!”
Next stage: Cursing at the clouds that now and then prevent a perfect view of the baby blue sky.
Here’s another thing that didn’t happen to you this week but did to me.
I was witness to the worst case of lawn rage I’ve ever seen. A guy speeding down my street yesterday went nuts when he saw that the road was blocked for construction but he didn’t let a little thing like a gigantic truck get in his way.
Instead, barely even slowing down, he detoured up onto my lawn, drove on it the whole width of our double lot, past our two maple trees and out the other side to the street again.
A neighbour and I happened to be standing on the lawn at the time watching the construction. Our angry driver came almost close enough to us to have run over our feet. I don’t know if he even saw us.
Obviously, our hero was on his way to the National Genius Convention in Toronto and must have been late.
The only thing that bothered me about the incident was I was supposed to catch a ride with him to the convention where I am to be a guest speaker but, in his haste, he must have forgot to pick me up.
I will go out on a limb and venture to say that you did not do this yesterday. If I am wrong, let me know.
I was at our back fence when I saw our cat Mario lurking by the composter. A few minutes later, I saw him streaking madly for the garage. With a mouse in his mouth. This meant only one thing. A half eaten rodent was soon to be deposited on the garage floor and I would be on my knees cleaning up blood and guts, a job I do not have a lot of good feelings for.
I took off running. I surprised myself and discovered that I am able to outrun a cat with a mouse in its mouth.
I got to the garage door and slammed it shut, then noticed the window was open too. I quickly closed it.
Mario was left frustrated outside with his bounty which he was bringing to me as a gift.
It’s funny. I hobble down the street every day and tell the neighbours (who also run away), how much my hip hurts. However, my true Olympian spirit showed in my high-speed, mouse-deflecting sprint to the garage, and my bones were not a factor.
The score so far is Mario, 35, Jim, 1, but at least I’m on the board.
I like to read the comments on Internet news sites but I am not always sure how seriously to take them.
I like those sites that require commenters to register and use their real names. But anonymous postings don’t bother me if the writer has something worthwhile to say.
However, I could not read the comment submitted by Throbby the Slobber Worm today. I just couldn’t.
And I hope, during my remaining days, however few or many they may be, that I never actually have to meet and converse with Throbby the Slobber Worm. Or Mrs. Throbby. Or any of the rest of the Slobber Worms. I really do.
I don’t idolize just anybody but these guys really impress.
The world is running out of heroes, but maybe it’s still too early to count out the human race. In New York, there lives a man whose recent accomplishment shows that there isn’t much we can’t achieve if we put our mind, and in this case, our mouth, into it.
This week Joey Chestnut became the world’s hot-dog eating champion, knocking off six-time title holder Takeru Kobayashi and my hat is off to him. Chestnut, competing in the annual Fourth of July competition, broke his own world record by inhaling 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes – a staggering one every 10.9 seconds – before a screaming crowd in Coney Island.
“If I needed to eat another one right now, I could,” the 23-year-old Californian said after receiving the mustard yellow belt emblematic of hot-dog eating supremacy
Almost as good as the event was the newspaper story describing it: “The two gustatory gladiators quickly distanced themselves from the rest of the 17 competitors, processing more beef than a slaughterhouse within the first few minutes. The two had each downed 60 hot dogs with 60 seconds to go when Chestnut, the veins on his forehead extended, put away the final franks to end Kobayashi’s reign.”
You know, we all come to our rightful place in life after a while and Joey Chestnut, obviously, has found his mission as a speedy consumer of tube steaks. There are worse fates. And there are worse foods to be ingested in a hurry.
I can happily live out the rest of my life taking a pass on seeing how fast I can gobble up some of the disgusting things people will eat, but to further the development of homo sapiens as a species, there is a record involving one particular sandwich for which I would be willing to compete. And that is the grilled cheese, a few of which I’ve put away in my life, especially during my bachelor years.
There are annual contests in the U.S. with prizes nearing $30,000. The current world record belongs to Sonya Thomas who devoured 25 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes in a contest in 2005.
Stand back. Sonya, my dear. I’m sure I can do better than that.
When you spend as much time studying wild rabbits in your backyard as I have these past two years, you can almost not help but get to know them pretty well.
I am especially on some sort of rabbit-man wavelength with My Bunny, a smallish female who thinks I’m okay. She will sometimes come right up to me when I call her and she has fetched me when her food supply is low.
Consequently, I have learned how to communicate with this bunny in particular. That is how I knew what I had to do when I saw her come bounding out of our tool shed yesterday afternoon. In circumstances such as this, you need to be stern and project seriousness. So, I spoke to My Bunny in somewhat of a scolding voice while still being friendly.
Bunny froze when she realized I had seen her emerge from the shed.
“Hey Bunny,” I said. “What are you doing in the shed? You’re not supposed to go in there. I’ve lost track of what might be lying around. You might eat something you shouldn’t. So don’t ever go back into the shed. Okay?”
By the end of my message, Bunny had turned her head and was looking right at me. She was really absorbing my commands and I felt good that I was getting through to her. I don’t like to talk down to her but it’s not easy to do anything else with a creature that stands less than a foot tall.
I was glad I had gotten through.
And once she fully understood what I was saying, Bunny turned around and hopped back into the shed.
Apparently, my serious words did not register. Next time I will try to remember to wipe the smile off my face when I deliver my verbal discipline.
It is possible that bunnies don’t do well with mixed messages.
As we all know, there are many paths that can lead us to experience true joy, the feeling that can only be absorbed and rarely explained. Many thousands of books, in fact entire religions, have been developed to show the ways to attain what can only be thought of as the ultimate human emotion. Usually, the formulas offered have something to do with helping others.
And while I am on board with all that, I would like to offer an often-overlooked direct route to joy.
In our town, we have regular “treasure hunts”, whereby citizens can set items we no longer want on our boulevards with the understanding that anyone who might want those items is free to stop and take them home. We have a wonderful brown pop fridge I picked up 20 years ago on somebody’s curb and which has been keeping our beverages cold every day ever since. I paid zero for it. It is one of our prized possessions.
And while picking up someone else’s castaways can perk up a person’s day, the other side of those transactions can sometimes be even more meaningful. Many an unwanted thing has disappeared from our possession thanks to a car slowing down and a trunk opening up.
But a bit of patience is sometimes required. We had a beautiful wooden headboard for a single bed that needed to go. It wouldn’t fit in our car so I couldn’t donate it to a second-hand store. Our only hope was to drag it to the end of the driveway with a big sign “FREE” on it and wait for a Good Samaritan to relieve us of our burden.
Every day for two weeks, I dragged the headboard to the street and propped it up against a tree. And every day, the many passersby ignored our former treasure. Every night I dragged it back into the garage, discouraged and frustrated. I started to entertain the idea of cutting it up and making something other than a headboard out of it.
Last Thursday night, I forgot to bring the darned thing – yes, it had become a darned thing – in from the street. At 2 a.m., up for one of my early morning peanut butter runs, I thought of going out and getting it but decided to just let it stay where it was as an effort such as that might or might not involve putting on pants.
The next morning, I went out to see how it was doing. The darned thing was gone.
Not believing my eyes, I checked to see if someone else had brought it back up to the house. They hadn’t. I looked next door to see if hooligans had smashed it in the parking lot there while I was demolishing my third tablespoon of peanut butter. Finally, I realized that it was truly gone.
I felt pretty darned good for the rest of that day.
We all make our choices, many of them a day sometimes. Some better than others.
Take the Texan who saw an armadillo on a road Thursday. Immediately, he chose to do what I know I would have done. He pulled out his gun and shot the armor-plated animal.
Once a bullet leaves a gun, you can’t be completely sure where it might end up. The bullet the gunslinger fired bounced off the animal and hit the man in the head.
This is the second person shot by armadillo-ricochet this year. A few months ago in Georgia, a man shot at an armadillo and the bullet bounced off and hit his mother-in-law.
It is therefore obvious that the government needs to crack down on armadillos, maybe ban them. Americans wanting to shoot themselves and their mothers-in-law should not have to aim at armadillos to get the job done.
But one thing is clear, to some people, at least. Any time we see a live wild animal we need to jump out of our truck and kill it.
I was beyond irritated with whoever left the back door open as night fell (it was me). Our old cat Mario can operate the screen door beyond the steel door and when he gets outside after dark, he turns from docile domestic kitty to fierce feral tomcat faster than Clark Kent becomes Superman. And once outside at that time of night, getting him back into the house requires the guile and cunning of a search party and a swat team. It can be 2 a.m. or later before he reappears.
But I had to try anyway.
“Mario,” I yelled into the darkness. I followed this up with six or seven more Mario calls, each one more desperate than the one before, all of them dripping with anxiety and frustration. But, of course, I had to be careful to not let the cat know I was angry.
But this night, after a few calls, I was glad to sense an animal approaching the screen door in the growing darkness.
The creature showed itself at the door.
And there stood My Bunny, the friendly backyard rabbit that sometimes comes when I call her but is obviously oblivious to the fact that her name is not Mario.
I was happy to see her, even if she wasn’t the cat, and I talked to her as I always do, asking her what she was up to, and telling her I love her, as I do every time I speak to her. I have found that no matter how much you show a wild rabbit how much you care for her, she still likes to hear the reassurance of some terms of endearment.
So, I babbled on like this for a few more minutes until I heard a distinctive “meow” behind me. I turned to see Mario at the bottom of the steps, leading to the rec room, looking to be fed.
When I turned back to the screen door, Bunny was gone.
The other thing I’ve learned about bunnies is they never like to share the spotlight with any other critter.
No matter how much you express your love for them.
I walk for 35 minutes each morning as per doctor’s orders. As I walk, I stoop to pick up garbage which I put in a shopping bag. No, I am not a saint though I expect to be made one soon, except one of the requirements is that you be dead first and I am not in a rush.
I pick up garbage for the exercise of bending down to the ground which is good for my back and legs. (And to cement my saint application.)
One morning recently, I looked down to see a familiar blue piece of paper on the sidewalk and happily deposited a Canadian $5 bill in my pocket. That night I went to an outdoor bluegrass jam. Now, I have never had one of those neat little electronic tuners that clamp to the end of your guitar but have long wanted one. Every player, it seems, has one these days.
A friend paid $25 for hers. This night, she pointed me in the direction of a guy who was selling the same one she uses. “How much?” I asked the guy. “Five dollars,” he replied. “I bought too many and I just want to get rid of them.” I whipped out that morning’s $5 from my pocket and said, “Sold!”
On the miracle scale, not quite loaves and fishes or water to wine, but kinda quirky. I think it’s called serendipity.
I like to watch videos on the Internet. I spend an hour or two late at night doing that. The range of subjects I follow varies, almost randomly, over a kind of vast array of things. A lot of politics. Hockey. Discoveries of statues on Mars, supposed evidence of time travel, what Ancient Rome really looked like, and history. Lots of history. Videos of great musicians and of animal rescues. And Got Talent shows.
Recently, I’ve been bitten by the ghost-hunter craze, because scaring myself half to death in the middle of the night while I sit all alone seems like a reasonable thing to do. I saw one of the creepiest ones I’ve ever seen the other night where the spirit explorer was going through an old haunted house. He came up to a door to a room and someone was obviously, frantically, trying to open that door from inside the room, turning the knob and pulling on it. The brave ghost hunter ran to the door and flung it open. There was no one inside the room.
So, I went outside for a breath of fresh air and to collect my frazzled thoughts and darned if there weren’t ghosts running around all over our backyard. I dashed back to the safety of my couch.
It was exactly midnight.
Suddenly, there was a knock on our front door. It was a persistent knock but not a loud one. Almost as if whoever was knocking didn’t really want the occupants of the house to hear it.
But then the doorbell rang. Followed by several more knocks, a bit louder now and more insistent. Then more doorbell.
I don’t mind sharing that I was freaking right out by this time. In a panic, I woke up another family member and the two of us went to the door. To find a police officer there.
As it turned out, he was seeking a suspicious character and he saw someone in our backyard. Could he have a look back there.
I told him it was I who had been behind the house just then.
I forgot to tell him I had been busy back there fighting off a bunch of scary ghosts.
And how they all looked like suspicious characters to me.
I had an interview with my dietitian on Monday. The consultation was very useful but I became confused with the various mixed messages she kept sending me.
I should have taken a notebook and pen with me and written a few things down because since I’ve arrived back home, I have been unclear about a few details regarding my way ahead food-wise. I could be wrong but I believe she advised me to drink at least eight glasses of pop a day and consume two family-size bags of potato chips weekly (not daily).
I am also to eat one pound of bacon every two days, nothing but white bread, and if possible, a medium-sized (not large) slice of chocolate cake with every meal.
It is also important that I eat at least one cherry pie every week and to treat myself, a cherry cheesecake once a month. (If you get too serious about your diet, you won’t keep it up.)
A bag of chocolate chip cookies should round out my weekly menu and between meals, I should aim to eat a chocolate bar, but not worry if I miss once in a while.
It is also apparently vital that I have a bagful of caramel popcorn (all to myself) while I am watching TV three or maybe four times a week (she was not very clear on this point).
Pancakes and sausages for breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays but I am to use real maple syrup only, none of the fake stuff. This is important.
Oh, and I believe she said I was to eat as much pizza as possible every week, maybe three or four times, but no more than seven toppings on any one pizza. Also, I should work in three or four visits to hamburger joints every seven days for the protein.
I hope I haven’t forgotten anything.
Oh yes, I did.
I am supposed to have one carrot a week – no more.
At our next meeting, I am going to ask her to clarify some of these items to make sure I have them right. We will be talking about exercise at that session but when the subject came up on Monday, she frowned. I have a feeling she is going to advise me against it.
I ordered my meal in the restaurant and asked for a Coke. I expected a glass of pop but instead, the waitress delivered my order in an old-fashioned glass Coke bottle, a little skinnier than in the old days, maybe, but close enough. OMG, the clouds had parted and Heaven shone down upon me.
I have rattled on and on for decades about how Coke (or any pop) out of a can or plastic bottle tastes nothing like the Coke of my youth which came only in glass bottles. Now that was when a Coke was a Coke!
I couldn’t wait to lift this miracle to my lips and treat my taste buds to something they had been deprived of for so long. I raised the bottle, and let the first swig trickle down my throat like shallow creek water over rocks after a winter’s thaw. Glug and then a couple of more glugs.
Well, half in tears and full of emotion, I am here to report that this beautifully bottled Coke seemed to me to taste no different than the stuff that comes in cans and plastic containers. It was like finding out Paul McCartney really did die some time in the sixties and was replaced by a look-a-like. Or that the moon landing was staged somewhere in Arizona.
How could this possibly be? I am despondent. It is a cruel world. I was raised on the bottle. Now nothing makes sense anymore.
I lost my keys and needed the key finder I was given at Christmas, but (and you know this is coming) I can’t find the key finder. I need a key finder finder.
So, for a month my keys were gone. That hurts. I had to beg keys from other family members who increasingly had a difficult time disguising their contempt.
“Did you search the couches?” I was asked.
“Of course I did,” I replied and under my breath, “What kind of knucklehead do you think I am?”
But just to be sure, I checked again. Nothing. Didn’t bother with the leather recliner. I never sit in it.
Another man, perhaps one who is not as tight as bark to a tree, as my mother used to say, would have borrowed the needed keys from family members and paid the price to have them reproduced.
That is not my way.
So I searched in every imaginable place on our property without any luck at all.
Finally, on Saturday, a smiling family member, sitting in the leather recliner, called my attention to something she was holding in her hands. She had my car keys. They had been buried down in the ridiculous folds of the recliner. The one I hadn’t checked.
I was happy at the discovery, of course, but also a little taken aback at the triumphant look on the face of the human key finder. She had told me several times to check the furniture. I did not completely follow instructions.
So I had a lengthy period of gloating to put up with, and I had it coming so let ‘er rip. Then that same family member got up from the recliner, walked away and said, “Now if I could only find my phone.” Immediately, I saw the phone, sitting right in the middle of the recliner seat. It had been under her, under her, … well, just under her.
So, lots of ha ha’s all around and all of a sudden I was the gloater and not the gloatee. I was fully enjoying my new status.
Then another family member entered the kitchen from outside and he was filled in on the startling developments of the past few minutes. He laughed derisively at the two family members who, it seemed to him, were degenerating into dottering old fools. I could see this sudden turn was not going to work to my advantage.
Then, I remembered a request this same family member had made of me that very, hot afternoon.
“Do you know where the oscillating fan is?” I was asked, as it was wanted for the shed. “I have searched everywhere. Do we even have one anymore?”
I wandered out to the garage but I knew it wasn’t out there. I was sure we still had one. My mind’s eye started to reveal a location. I went into the bedroom of said family member and there was the fan, sitting atop a bookshelf, where it has been for over a year.
So, I have lost track of who has gloater privileges in our house and who has none. I don’t know if other homes operate this way, but in ours, it is very important to stay one step ahead of the pack. You never want to look over your shoulder and see them gaining on you.
My name is Jim. Actually, James. Things were kept simple in my day so my Dad’s name was Jim too. Just for fun, I have a middle name, Joseph. And a third, Catholic confirmation name, Patrick. So, if you are in a hurry, I am Jimmy Joe Pat.
But I was named in the boring old 1950s, before rock ‘n’ roll and strolls on the moon. Was I to be named today, who knows what my parents might have come up with?
In the United States, in 2017, name choices for babies were pretty wild. Some might say crazy. But at least no judge stepped in to stop any names that I am aware of. Years ago, somewhere in the southern states, a judge forbid a couple, huge Disney fans, from naming their kid Zippidy Do. Their last name was Daub. So, they named their baby Zip.
Here are some of the names that were bestowed on U.S. kids last year.
Tesla (130 girls, 11 boys); Fanta (24 girls); Beretta (21 girls); Maybelline (20 girls) Evian (10 boys). Sports minded parents named 12 girls and six boys Espn. The name Denim was given to 141 boys and 53 girls; five boys were named Suede.
Some spiritually minded parents chose: Halo (149 girls, 25 boys); Om (96 boys); Amen (75 boys, 55 girls); Calvary (16 girls, seven boys); Lucifer (24 boys); Getsemani (11 girls); Yogi (six boys). Yes, 24 boys will soon be walking around having people call them Lucifer. My guess is they will be little devils.
And if you are into nature: Koi; Lemon; Alp; Maize; Fennec.
Then there are the attitudes:Vanity; Envy; Brazen; Riot; Havoc; Shooter; Arson; Yoyo; Furious; Slayer.
And for history buffs: Cleopatra; Jezebel; JesseJames; Cuauhtemoc; Attila; Stalin; Casanova; Charlemagne; Capone; Godiva; Osama; Adolph.
Mythology: Eros; Ra; Beowulf; Isis.
Enough with the plain names. Let’s get a little crazy. Last year, 21 boys were named I-am, 19 girls were named Nil, 28 boys were called Boy; six boys were called Son; 19 girls were legally named Girl; eight boys were named Babyboy; seven girls were called Babygirl; 18 boys were named Mister; 16 girls were called Paw, 13 girls were called Man, 11 girls were named My, nine boys were called Papa, eight boys were named God, seven girls and six boys were named Moo, six girls were called Abcde, and six girls were named Any.
Okay, I’ll just vomit up the rest of the names that were given to 410 boys and girls in the U.S. in 2017: Artreyu; Nubia; Jetson; Savvy; Mazikeen; Zorawar; Aerabella; Porfirio; Candelaria; Bereket; Calcifer; Solaris; Eureka; and Aesop.
Sometimes you are right about people. Sometimes, you’re not.
I was heading for the coffee shop this afternoon and while I left my house in a good mood, I was a cranky old fart when I reached the drivethrough, thanks to three idiot motorists who fried my bacon to a crisp on my way there.
I placed my order, then motioned the car beside me to go ahead of me as it was an open question which of us was next. To add to my misery, the woman in the car ahead of me brandished a bold bumper sticker that announced she was not a very nice person. Why anyone would willingly drive around telling the world you suck is a question I am unable to answer.
I looked for evidence that she was, in fact, the jerk she wanted everyone to know she is, and wasn’t long in gathering my incriminating fact. The server at the window handed her a coffee. She gave it right back and was soon given a larger drink. Crabby is as crabby does.
However, I was soon to discover there was a reason she handed back the coffee.
It was the cup I had ordered.
When I got to the window, I was handed my back-and-forth coffee by a smiling young server who didn’t want any money for it.
“The woman in the car ahead of you paid for it,” she smiled. I flashed my lights at the disappearing car ahead of me to say thanks.
Anyone who buys me a coffee, in my books, is an angel.
When I was 20, if you gave me a million dollars, I might have drank myself to death.
When I was 30, if you gave me a million dollars, I might have bought a Ferrari and drove it into a tree some night.
When I was 40, if you gave me a million dollars, I might have bought a mansion.
When I was 50, if you gave me a million dollars, I might have wandered all over the world and forgot about home.
When I was 60, if you gave me a million dollars, I might have gone into politics and tried to turn that million dollars into a billion dollars.
Now that I am over 70, if you gave me a million dollars, I would help my son and daughter and then look for needy people (and animals) to give the rest to.
Not because I am a good man, but because I am a satisfied one. And that came about in spite of, or maybe because of, the absence of your million dollars.
If there has ever been invented a simpler piece of clothing than the T-shirt, I would like to know what it is. Maybe the sock. But on reflection, no. A sock has to have a mate to make any sense and it often requires a search to find it. If it even still exists.
Underwear. Can’t go too far wrong there though it is possible, on a sleepy morning, to try to fit both legs through the same leg hole. And it is near tragic, in a hurry, to realize you’ve put your underwear on front to back.
No, the T-shirt has it all, pretty much. It can be put on backwards, but even if it is, that doesn’t fall into the category of a wardrobe malfunction. It would take a very clear-eyed (and nosy) observer to detect a backwards T-shirt. And it is not something anyone is likely to phone the police about.
Five seconds after I put on my first T-shirt so many moons ago, I knew I had found the perfect, lifelong covering for my torso. And on the rare occasion that I am invited to a formal occasion, there is a simple wardrobe solution. I go to the store and buy a new T-shirt.
But in my eighth decade of ripping around this old world, my perfect T-shirt solution to every problem is somehow breaking down. On more than one occasion, lately, I have arrived home from an adventure on the town (grocery hunting) to discover that I left the house wearing an inside-out T-shirt. To the casual observer, this is unmistakable and, for some, unforgiveable. Except for the fact that, having realized the error of my ways, I am not usually very upset about it. At least on those occasions, most of my other clothing is on the right way around, so what is a little inside-out T-shirt among friends?
In fact, it bothers me so little that removing the shirt and putting it back on the right way is not an automatic, reflex reaction. I have to decide whether or not the effort is worth the gain.
That is the way with a lot of things in my life these days that have decreased in importance the older I get. Perfectionism is no longer the character trait it once was with me, though it rears its head now and then still.
The T-shirt might be, and most definitely is, the most perfect piece of clothing ever invented. The guy who wears it, however, is apt, some days, to have more loose threads than a fabric shop after a tornado.
Sometimes you are right about people. Sometimes, you’re not.
I was heading for the coffee shop this afternoon and while I left my house in a good mood, I was a cranky old fart when I reached the drivethrough, thanks to three idiot motorists who fried my bacon to a crisp on my way there.
I placed my order, then motioned the car beside me to go ahead of me as it was an open question which of us was next. To add to my misery, the woman in the car ahead of me brandished a bold bumper sticker that announced she was not a very nice person. Why anyone would willingly drive around telling the world you suck is a question I am unable to answer.
I looked for evidence that she was, in fact, the jerk she wanted everyone to know she is, and wasn’t long in gathering my incriminating fact. The server at the window handed her a coffee. She gave it right back and was soon given a larger drink. Crabby is as crabby does.
However, I was soon to discover there was a reason she handed back the coffee.
It was the cup I had ordered.
When I got to the window, I was handed my back-and-forth coffee by a smiling young server who didn’t want any money for it.
“The woman in the car ahead of you paid for it,” she smiled. I flashed my lights at the disappearing car ahead of me to say thanks.
Anyone who buys me a coffee, in my books, is an angel.
It is with great pride, even though you are well aware that I don’t like to brag, that I announce I have the cleanest wild rabbit in my town.
A few days ago, My Bunny darted out of some bushes while I was watering some newly seeded lawn. I inched the mist spray from the water wand close to the rabbit, then directed it right over her head. (I know she is a female as I have been witness to a few sessions of bunny hanky panky in our backyard and … well, we’ll just leave it at that. She was not an unwilling participant.)
The bunny sat under this shower for about five minutes before darting away.
Yesterday, I saw her rip across the lawn and stand in the same spot where she had enjoyed the raindrops falling on her head. I was up at the house but I said to a family member, “I am going to give that bunny another shower.” And I did.
This time, Bunny sat still for at least 15 minutes and became thoroughly drenched. She shook her head when it got too soggy, blinked her eyes and licked her lips to drink the cool, fresh water. It was a very hot and humid day yesterday and she is not a dumb bunny, if, at the same time, perhaps and over-sexed one.
My Bunny didn’t show today but I know she will be back. When she does return, I will direct the spray close to her but not above her. I want to see if she will willingly move under the shower.
I enjoy these summer days but have a little trouble answering when someone asks what I’ve been up to. And while this might seem a little quirky, it makes me feel good to think that I helped that little critter get through her day a little happier.
Besides, she’ll be all spruced up for the next hanky panky session which I expect to occur soon. When I see it starting to happen now, I go into the house.
Yesterday, while walking the main street of a nearby town, I noticed a small sign attached to a brick wall outside a shop. The sign read, “No Dog Peeing.”
Now, the sign was not at my eye level but instead, about two feet above the sidewalk, about eye to eye to an average dog.
This got me thinking. Was this sign intended to be seen and read by dogs? If so, I will go out on a limb and claim that this town has the most intelligent dogs on the planet. However, if they are that smart, the dogs will already know enough not to pee on the sidewalk because the pee will run on the hard surface and soak their paws.
Hence, there is no need for the sign. And yet it is there. And some human being somewhere actually took the time to make it while another one got down on his or her knees and attached it to the wall.
This is what your life has come down to: advising dogs against peeing. I wonder how well the multiple people behind this sign know dogs. Dogs do not pee on flat hard surfaces like concrete, but on grass and trees (with the exception of fire hydrants) where the pee soaks into the ground and doesn’t spread out like a puddle.
However, they will lift their legs against metal and plastic items such as recycling boxes, bicycles and steel poles that hold signs. In other words, they like to pee on items such as plastic/metal signs affixed to brick walls telling them not to pee.
I don’t believe in magic. Everything can be explained. With one exception. My Magical Jar. I wish it contained silver dollars and hundred dollar bills, but it doesn’t. It contains screwnails. It’s a one-litre peanut butter jar I cleaned out about 30 years ago and into which I tossed the few screws I had at the time.
Since then, that jar has never run out of screws nor has it overflowed but it has almost always had just the screws I need for any project. On Sunday, for example, I needed six weather-treated deck screws, exactly one-and-one-quarter inches long. I had no idea whether or not I had any deck screws in the jar, let alone that length. But I dumped all the screws out and went fishing. A few minutes later, in my hand, were the six screws I needed, exactly the right length. The funny thing is, there were no other screws like that in the jar.
This happens all the time. I go to that jar several times a week and remove some of its contents. But no matter how many screws I take out, the level of them in the jar, which is always about half full, never seems to change. A loaves and fishes kind of thing.
I might need two, one-inch brass woodscrews. There they are. Four, two-inch metal screws. Ditto.
I never consciously go to the store to buy screws to top up the jar. But I do buy new screws on occasion for a project and I guess the leftovers go into the jar. Also, I accumulate screws from various items we buy for the house and which seem to be unneeded.
However the screwnails get into that jar, the jar is always forthcoming. Like a golden goose or a pot of gold. Maybe even a genie and a lamp. But that would be just my luck to waste one of my three wishes on six deck screws.
I have many of my Dad’s handtools and shovels, rakes etc., which I will pass on to my son and daughter someday. I don’t know who will get the screwnail jar. Maybe they’ll have to flip a coin from my coin jar which, alas, is always running on empty.
I live across the street from a neighbourhood newsman. Almost every day, we meet on the sidewalk, and he shares information with me that I am glad to find out. He always presents this news while looking around and over his shoulder and in a low voice as though someone in authority was watching and listening. It is all very conspiratorial. All very interesting.
One day last week was especially fruitful. He had two big pizza shop announcements to make. Two shops are moving out of the downtown area (sad to hear that) to outlying malls.
I spent my career in community news but I was only half as good as my neighbour. He always reassures me that he doesn’t know whether or not what he says is accurate, it’s just what he heard, but then he tells me how many sources he has. I rarely had as many sources for my stories as he has. He is right more often than wrong. His sources are a bunch of guys he has coffee with every night. Just a bunch of local guys but sometimes they are joined by a retired police chief or retired fire chief, so the next day’s news is almost guaranteed to be jam packed.
I have often been invited to join the nightly sessions but I have begged off so many times I don’t get asked any more. One night, I happened to be there when a full, official meeting was in session, so I wandered over and joined them all. I wasn’t long in realizing I didn’t belong. To begin with, I wasn’t wearing a baseball cap.
I have better things to do. I hope that doesn’t sound like I think I am better than them, but really … And yet, every morning, I find myself, without reason, standing on my sidewalk at the end of my driveway, waiting for my daily report. I often have a broom in hand and pretend to be sweeping up.
Sometimes, the newsman, doesn’t appear. Or almost worse, he shows up, but has no news. Every conversation starts the same way. “So, what’s new?” I ask. “Not a thing,” says my neighbour. If he doesn’t look around him, worried about being overheard, I know there is no news. But if he adopts a tone of conspiracy, I am usually in for a haul.
I then take all the news back inside the house and share it with my family. I am careful to lower my voice and look over my shoulder before I do. Which reminds me. I have yet to tell them the double whammy pizza shop news. I don’t want to spoil everyone’s day. But this is big.
I’ve always sort of envied the great singer Frank Sinatra. He had regrets, but just a few, too few, in fact, to mention. I think he was lucky that way.
As for me, while I am not flooded with regrets, I think I might outdo Old Blue Eyes in that department. I won’t go through the whole list with you, though I am sure you wish I would mention them all, unlike Frank, but I will touch on a few of the things I’ve done that I wish I hadn’t.
When I was about ten years old, I ate horse radish. I really wish I hadn’t done that and regret it to this day. But we had a rule around our kitchen table. A boy could not reject a food without trying it. I regret that rule and I have never forgiven the horses who made the radish. Or maybe it was made from horses, as I thought. I don’t know.
I regret jumping into a pond and coming out of there with blood suckers attached to my legs. Those creatures were literally bloodthirsty. I regret accepting a hitchhiker’s ride with a speed demon who buried the needle on his speedometer at 120 miles an hour before he agreed to let me out. I also regret that the hair started falling out of my head that day.
In my first year of university, I regret dating two sisters at the same time. The words of the Lovin’ Spoonful song, “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?”, still ring in my brain today. The sisters, upon finding out they were dating the same guy, made up my mind for me. I further regret that the three of us were in most of the same classes that year so I was able to relive the error of my ways almost every day.
But that was a long time ago, and I have piled up new regrets. One of them involves a tee-shirt I bought a few years ago. It’s a very nice shirt but it had an oversized tag inside the collar that scraped against my neck.
So, I ripped it off.
I really regret doing that because when I put on the shirt, which I do almost every day, I don’t know which is the front and which is the back. And I regret that there is such a thing as the law of averages because 90 per cent of the time, I pull the darned thing on backwards.
But, like Bugs Bunny said when he defied the law of gravity in one episode, “I never studied law.” And I regret having never studied it too.
Still, not as much as I regret eating horse radish.
With all the awful things going on in the world right now, maybe we could bow our heads and spare a thought for this poor schmoe.
A Missouri drug possession suspect hiding from police farted so loudly, he led cops straight to him. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook a picture of deputies searching for the suspect in question, along with a warning that if you’ve got a felony warrant for your arrest, the cops are looking for you and you pass gas so loudly it gives up your hiding spot, you’re definitely having a shitty day.
The cops ended the post with a poop emoji.
Police added, “We’ve gotta give props to Liberty PD for using their senses to sniff him out!”
I am just now drinking a bottle of lime pop. Tastes okay. I haven’t had one in many years. I wonder how much lime is in it.
The ingredients are listed according to the amount with the biggest amounts at the start, dwindling down to the smaller ones. No surprise, carbonated water forms the biggest part of this drink. Second, of course, is sugar/glucose-fructose. Third is citric acid. “Citric” might be lime, but I don’t know.
Then comes “natural flavour.” I wonder what that is. Then modified corn starch. Sounds reasonable. After that, sodium benzoate. I’m guessing salt.
Acacia gum?
Then we leave the fairway and are into the rough: sucrose acetate isobutyrate, glycerol ester of wood rosin (there’s wood in my drink?), brominated vegetable oil, colour and guar gum.
What is ester, what is brominated, what is guar? When I was young, I would go into pubs and emerge a few hours later inebriated. Never did I ever get brominated, at least I don’t think I did.
The point is, nowhere in the ingredients is the word “lime” listed. How can you make a lime drink without any actual lime being included? But what would I know?
Somewhere there is a lime pop tycoon tooling around his mansion, probably sucking back a drink of freshly squeezed real lime. Probably wouldn’t drink this pop I am holding in my hand on the threat of death.
A groundhog is living in our backyard. Not just any groundhog, either. This fat brown beast is the stupidest groundhog in the world. I admit I have not met all the other groundhogs and have therefore not been able to make an assessment of them, but I feel pretty good about my judgment that this silly critter is one dumb bunny, if you can call a groundhog a bunny.
Why do I say this? Here are the deets, as they say nowadays.
A groundhog digs a hole at each end of its tunnel, for airflow and for escape if being chased by a predator. Now our GH guy is either dumb as a post, as previously stated, or a terrible urban planner. His two holes are thus located: Hole #1 is under the edge of our shed. Not a terrible choice, perhaps. Hole #2 is not so well chosen. It comes up right in the middle of the neighbour’s firepit. Smack dab in the centre.
Once a week, my neighbour starts a huge bonfire on that pit, a fire that was so big one time, the fire department roared up to put it out. I wonder how life is in the hog’s home when these massive fires are burning. A little on the toasty side, I suspect.
But dumb as he may be, he’s no quitter, I’ll give him that. I filled in the hole he dug under our shed. Two days later I went back to find the hole had been dug out again. You can’t keep good a hog down, I guess. However, if he wanders out of the hole he dug out at the neighbour’s place at the wrong time, he might be the main feature at a community pig roast.
I would try to feel sorry for him, I guess, but really, what was he thinking? As smart as I think I am, I have never been privy to the thoughts of the mighty groundhog.
Last Christmas is long gone and we had a good one. Too many gifts, too much food, movie after movie, song after song. We never let that event slip by unnoticed.
And for me, the gifts seemingly never end, in spite of the months that have passed.
I came in the house last night to announce our backyard has been turned into a playground for skunks. Not being a fan of the smelly creatures, though some think of them as cute, I raced to the Internet to take a course at the University of Google as to how to chase away skunks. Suggestions were there aplenty.
But one in particular caught my eye. Skunks like darkness, so along with removing birdseed from the ground and dumping over the water sources, my next assault could only be lots and lots of light. So, I dashed about flicking on outside lights till the Blue Jays could have played a night game back there.
No dice. Skunks laughed at my efforts. Skunks laughing is a sound you don’t want to hear so I won’t describe it for you.
“If only I had a really strong flashlight I would shine it right in their faces,” I said. “They hate that.”
My wife left the discussion, ran downstairs and re-emerged with a Christmas present she forgot to give me. A heavy duty flashlight that could spot a tick on a black cat at 200 metres.
Joy unending. And the light worked. Skunks ran away faster than Blue Jays celebrating a win.
But my enthusiasm took a beating when I later realized that it took me talking about skunks to make my wife think of me. And her gift, of course.
However, on reflection, I realized it didn’t matter that she didn’t think of me until the discussion of skunks came up. As long as I was finally noticed, the hurt began to subside.
I’ve been madly seeking attention all my life, so if it took being associated with skunks to deliver some, I would be one ungrateful cad to raise a stink about it.
“Well, as you can see, our shop is full of albatrosses. Could you be more specific?”
“Sorry, of course,” I reply. “I am looking for a stand-alone cabinet with four shelves, two of them adjustable. I would like it to be made of pressed board, in other words, very cheap and wobbly.”
“And what do you want it for?” asks the clerk.
“To hold other, smaller albatrosses, many of which I have bought over the years in this very shop.”
“Certainly, sir. And how long do you see yourself owning this albatross?”
“I would like to trip over it three times a day for the next 10 years,” I reply. “At the end of that time, I will bring it back to you and donate it to the shop, hopefully with all the other albatrosses it will have been holding all those years.”
Clerk goes in back, comes out with big albatross.
“Oh, my. That would be perfect,” I comment. “How much?”
“Ten dollars,” says the clerk.
“You’re joking,” I say. I pay for it right away in case he changes his mind, load it up in my car and bring it home. What a bargain!
I was walking along the sidewalk on the way to the dentist this afternoon when I looked down and saw a hammer. A lightweight one with rubber on the yellow handle. Pretty cool. I am now the owner of a yellow hammer with rubber on the handle.
It occurred to me to leave it where it was in case the rightful owner returned, but I doubt that would happen and someone else’s toolbox would be one hammer fuller tonight. So I walked into the dentist’s office carrying a hammer.
I imagined I saw fear in the eyes of the people who work there and read their minds: “Old Jim’s finally gone nuts” as they are aware that I think dental bills are too high and I wonder if they thought I’d come to seek revenge. I explained the story and all was well. But they still looked at me as though I had hit myself in the head with the hammer 50 times before I walked in.
The reason I kept the hammer was this: Years ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop (when they still had stools) and I was right next to the cashier. There was a lineup. I looked down to see a $20 bill on the floor. I picked it up and said, “Anybody lose a twenty?” A young man in line instantly yelled, “I did” and grabbed the bill out of my hand. A young woman in front of him with two little kids at her legs frantically started searching in her purse, I believe, for the missing twenty. The jerk behind her got it.
So, if I had held that hammer up today and called out, “Anybody lose a hammer?” I know that guy or a jerk just like him would come speeding by on a bike, grab the hammer and take off.
Besides, I think Life throws you a free hammer every now and expects you to take it. So I did.
I was startled to read last year that the best food for wild rabbits and the one they love the most is timothy hay.
Having taken a keen interest in the half dozen bunnies that inhabit our yards, I mentioned to the family my finding about the hay. I have to be careful about what I discuss around my family because on Dec. 25, 2022, I got a bale of hay for Christmas. If there was another person in the world that got a bale of hay for Christmas, I want the details.
Shortly thereafter, someone asked me what I got for Christmas and, of course, I replied: “Twenty pounds of grass.”
The other night, I was standing not far from the shed, heading that way to close the door for the night. But My Bunny, the one that thinks I’m her overgrown Dad, raced me to the door and got there first. I talked to her and asked her what she was doing in the shed and I soon saw that she was snooping around the bale of hay, bits and pieces of which we parcelled out to the bunnies all winter.
Then she hopped right up on the bale, turned and faced me and all but declared, “This is my hay! Get your own!”
But to be safe, if I find out this year that what wild bunnies need most of all is a 50-gallon drum of molasses, I am going to keep that information to myself.
Some families are super cautious. We all know the type. They install deadbolts on the insides of the doors to their bathrooms, lest a home invader wander in while a family member is having a bath. All the drawers on their filing cabinet have locks lest a stranger makes off with their lawnmower manual and warranty. They throw out food a week in advance of the best before date because you can never trust those best before people. They have motion-sensor lights and cameras everywhere and have all the security forces – fire, police, ambulance, etc., on speed dial.
Then there are the careless types who live their lives as though they are the only occupants of a desert island and would be shocked if another human being took their stuff.
My family belongs in the cautious group, though it seems we avoid the extremes. However, while I was cleaning out the car today, I re-evaluated where we are on the Careful Careless Scale. I hope there is a prize for this because I have a feeling we might win.
The first thing I did on my cleaning job was to pull out the heavy winter mat from the floor of the driver’s side. I shook it out and set it on the roof of the car. I dove back into the car only to discover a second winter’s mat in the spot where I had just removed the first one. Curious, I inspected the rest of the car only to find that this car is outfitted with eight winter mats. Underneath the multiple winter mats, I discovered the nice black carpet that was laid by the people who made the car back in 2006. So, the logic seemed to be that the original carpet needed to be protected like the gown Elizabeth I wore to her coronation in the 1500s.
Yes, I revealed that little gem. Our car is 16 years old. We paid $2,000 for it, but that is deceptive. We bought it within the family so were given a break. It has been a wonderful vehicle in the three years we’ve owned it with a near pristine original carpet. I am just glad we didn’t pay $5,000 for it because I can only guess at the precautionary measures that would be taken for a car so much more valuable.
On the careful-careless scale, I sometimes fail to read warning signs so tonight I brought up the case of the eight winter mats at our weekly Family Council Meeting, and in full careless mode, suggested we might be able to get by with just four mats. I won’t go into details about how my suggestion went over except to say I was sad when the meeting was over.
This afternoon I was in a tire store and there before me I beheld a display of rubber winter mats, made to fit any car. My wife’s birthday occurs just before winter. If eight mats keep my people happy, I am imagining their joy at 12 mats.
Sometimes my ideas aren’t great, but this one’s solid gold.
It started out innocently enough. Someone from Vernon Directories Ltd., when he or she was preparing the 1985 City of Stratford Directory, felt sorry that I didn’t have a wife at the time. So, he or she or it – it might have been a computer – decided to give me one. Therefore, when the hardcover, comprehensive directories appeared around town that year, Jas. J. Hagarty (that’s me) was listed as living happily ever after on Cobourg Street with his dear wife, Evelyn.
It took a few days for the remarks to die down in the newsroom where I worked. Comments such as, “What are you and Evelyn doing this weekend?” and “Will Evelyn be coming to the company party this year?” And in time, I almost forgot I was married. I’ll admit that was a leap because I had never before been married.
But strange things started happening. Evelyn began getting phone calls late at night from a husky-voiced man who hung up as soon as he heard my voice. An old boyfriend, I presumed. And my dear devoted spouse got calls from other women, inviting her to dinnerware parties, gold parties and bridal showers. Then there were girls’ nights out, the status of women committee meetings and cooking classes.
Before long, I began to feel left out. If she’d wanted to be free as an eagle, she never should have got married. Christmas cards came addressed to Jim and Evelyn and other couples started asking us out. Neighbours invited her over for afternoon tea and soon, it began to occur to me that I might as well be living alone.
I knew things had gone too far when I started leaving the front porch light on for her at night before I went up to bed. But the whole thing really got out of hand when plainclothes detectives visited me one day for a chat. Neighbours were concerned, they said, about Evelyn. They hadn’t seen her around in a while. Not in weeks, they said, months in some cases. Where was she, they wondered.
I tried to explain, in a good-natured way, how a misprint in a directory had led to the confusion. The cops weren’t buying it. What had I done with her, they wanted to know. Nothing, I said. I hadn’t touched her.
“Aha,” they exclaimed. “So, you admit she exists?” It all got extremely ugly after that and before it was over, the three of us took a trip to the basement and to the backyard to see if anyone might have been recently laid to rest against her will.
My name was cleared in the end and the phone calls from Evelyn’s friends and neighbours eventually stopped. I adjusted to single life again. But when a note was left in my mailbox two weeks later asking me to call the directory company with information for the city’s 1987 directory (they publish every two years), I was ready.
“Evelyn’s packed up and left,” I told the woman on the phone. “We had a terrible squabble and she’s gone. Gone forever, she is, and between you and me, I’m darned glad to be rid of her. So, when you’re writing me up in next year’s directory, please leave her name out.”
“That’s fine,” the woman said. “But should I still go ahead and list the names of your four children? Or does Evelyn have them?”
I’ve tried pretty hard over the years to not get too far from my rural roots, of which I am proud. I recently bought a nice baseball-type cap at a store which caters to rural people with “Farm Boy” written on the front of it. I think it suits me.
But when you live in the city, the hayseed schtick has to be reined in a bit. When I am in my backyard, which is surrounded by a six-foot-high privacy fence, I will happily wear my farmer’s straw hat, which I should wear to keep the sun from further damaging my tender skin. And if the day is hot, I might even take off my shirt. (On reflection, maybe that is why the house next door has sold over and over again for the past 15 years. Hmmm.)
But as backwoods proud as I am, I don’t seem to be able to summon up the courage to go straw hat clad and shirtless in my front yard. To me, that would be kind of like giving up the facade I have developed. I want to be a city slicker and country bumpkin all at the same time. To be honest, I’m not sure I am either one at this stage in my life.
Nevertheless, having lost my nicely toned physique somewhere in my 30s, I am reluctant to foist images of a topless me on the brains of innocent passersby who would have otherwise done nothing wrong but walk by my house at an inopportune time. So, if I am in the backyard wearing a straw hat and no shirt, I will don a shirt and a baseball cap before I go to the front yard to water flowers or cut lawn. Seems only fair to everyone involved, including me.
But last night as I went for my walk, I was confronted by my neighbour George, a widower slightly older than me, who was out cutting his lawn in a huge straw hat and with no shirt on. Taking a quick glance, if I was his fashion consultant, I might have recommended a shirt, as George has shown up for every meal for many years, just like I have. But if being half naked in full view of passersby bothered him, he wasn’t showing it. Maybe he was counting on people not noticing his state of undress as they stared at his oversized cowboy hat made of actual straw.
You know, I will admit to a certain admiration for George. He lost his wife a couple of years back and now, sitting in his driveway, is a convertible he bought a week ago, something he and his wife always planned to do. He also has a new lady in his life. I think there is a connection between the convertible, his new friend, the hat and the toplessness. I think he probably just wants to live the rest of his life not worrying what all those passersby might think.
“I’m going through my second childhood,” he told me, with a chuckle. “I’m still finishing my first one,” I replied.
So, if you see me semi-naked under a big straw hat cutting my front lawn, you can assume Childhood No. 2 has arrived. For confirmation, check to see if there is a sports car in my driveway. And a Buddy Holly CD in the stereo.
We have a thief in our neighbourhood and it’s troubling.
So far, the culprit has made off with only small things – rhubarb plants (removed by the roots), steel bars, old panelling, used two-by-fours. But the absconder is getting more brazen.
A new house was being built directly across the street from our place after the house that was there burned down. One day, the concrete trucks arrived. They poured the footings. Came back a few days later and poured the walls.
The stealer man noticed that each time the concrete truck left the site, the workers left behind a neat little pile of wet concrete on the ground. They should have put a sign in the pile, “Free.”
Shovel by shovel, the neighbour stealthily removed great quantities of the concrete which he put to good use as mortar for his stone porch which was getting wobbly.
However, he made one critical error. He stopped for supper one night and when he went back, the concrete in the pile had set.
I feel like Grover Monster from Sesame Street who was featured in a great kids’ book, There’s a Monster at the End of this Book. All the through the book, poor Grover gets more and more worried about the monster he will meet at the end of the book and he tries to get the reader to stop, so the end won’t be reached. But alas, he makes it to the final page, only to find the monster is himself.
Ten years ago, a big hole appeared under my shed. A groundhog had taken up residence in the hole but he was evicted thanks to my garden hose after I heard that a groundhog can mess up a little dog such as we have.
Even when the hog was still there, I filled in the hole a couple of times, and he dug it out. I even put a rock in front of it after filling it in. He pushed the rock aside.
But ten years have passed. The groundhog is gone, but the hole is still there. A little grassed over and from time to time, it looks like someone has moved in, but it soon goes dormant again.
However, two days ago, I just about fainted when I saw that some animal has not only cleaned out the hole but expanded it. There is enough fresh dirt kicked out onto the lawn to half fill a wheelbarrow.
This is an instance when you wouldn’t want to own the imagination I was cursed with. My first thought was that a bear cub could fit in that hole with room to spare. Maybe two or three cubs were living under my shed. But I am also able to access the logical side of my brain, weak though it might be at times, and decided bears would need more room to create a den under my shed.
The next obvious candidate was a wolverine. For some reason, I was raised to have a terrible fear of wolverines. We did live on a farm and maybe at some time in the last hundred years one did wander though and ate a goose or a calf but my siblings and I got repeated warnings about wolverines to the point where I half expected to run into one on the way to the barn to do the chores at night.
Wolverines are nasty creatures, for sure, and how one got under my shed I will never know. But I wasn’t happy about it.
Then I remembered we have five bunnies ripping around our yard – two adults and three babies – so maybe they are down there. But I doubt that. The wolverine would scare them off.
I discounted the idea that another groundhog had taken up residence as I think I made myself pretty clear ten years ago that groundhogs are not welcome.
So yesterday, summoning up all the courage I don’t have, I went behind the shed and stood by the hole. Almost immediately, I saw a nose emerge from the hole and then two oversized eyes and a head. Then the thing came right out and started zipping around. Fortunately, it didn’t see me.
I suppose there are some who would say the threat level arising from a chipmunk is pretty low. That would seem to be right but some species of chipmunks have been around since the dinosaurs.
So, if they can outlive the dinosaurs, I think one of these hardy guys, if he got in a lucky first shot, could really mess me up.
I have been on a few job interviews in my life. Some went very well, some badly. My most memorable bad one occurred when I was offered the job but then told the interviewer I would need some time to think about it.
“What kind of guy interviews for a job he’s not sure he wants?” asked the ticked off interviewer, who subsequently hired me. Then fired me later.
But at least one job seeker in Kentucky seems to have gone about things in perhaps exactly the wrong way, though this is just an opinion. A young man walked into a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in a Lexington mall this week and asked for a job application.
An interview was scheduled for 4:30 p.m. He showed up 10 minutes early which I would say shows initiative and interest. If I had been interviewing him, I would have been impressed.
But in the interview, the job seeker, in my view, made a critical error. If you are looking for work, you might want to avoid making this mistake.
Our young hero told the manager he had a gun and he was there to rob the place. When the manager informed him that he did not have access to the safe, the young man apologized and then got very upset and left.
Two mistakes: Don’t try to rob your prospective employer. That approach does not usually result in a good first impression. And don’t show too much emotion during the interview. You want to project stability.
The man left and apparently had better luck when he robbed a dollar store down the street and got some cash. He hid in the store and waited till it closed before demanding money from the clerk.
But still no job.
I have always found it is a mistake to hide in a place of business until after it is closed. Above all, job interviewers do not seem to deal well with surprises.
If you are going to be a curmudgeon, be a good one. No half-hearted attempts. I am developing an online how-to course on the subject so look for that soon.
But I would like to share one little piece from the coming curriculum. To be a decent curmudgeon, you have to find a few things to hate that no one else in the world would take the time to hate or even think to hate. Like apple pie, for example. Hopefully you love your Mom because if not, there goes the whole “Mom and apple pie” bit for you.
I hate apple pie but I loved my Mom so I am batting .500 on that.
But I also loathe an annual flower called impatiens. I will go out on a limb and suggest you don’t know of anyone who hates impatiens and even I can’t think of anyone else who despises them. No sense trying to figure it out. Just go with it.
Every year our flowerbeds get planted with a nice variety of annuals but eventually, they are flooded by impatiens, like way too much whipped cream on a piece of pie. The coloured ones I can almost tolerate but the white ones drive me crazy. It is like going out for ice cream and finding the shop sells only vanilla.
I complain mildly every year, for all the good it does. Sooner or later, we have impatiens.
This year, for reasons that are still not clear to me, the job of planting the flowerbeds was assigned to me. I pretended to be mildly unhappy about the order, but secretly, I knew this was my chance to set things right.
Off to the garden centres I raced. Three of them in all. The last one suited me the best. They had all kinds of pretty flowers and I set my sights on one beautiful bunch. There were several trays of them but when I returned the next day to buy them they were all gone.
I looked at others. Some were too expensive. Some needed sun, no shade, and our beds are under a maple. I finally was drawn to one section that had lots and lots of very pretty blooms. Purple, orange, red, pink and even white. The price was right. I grabbed a bunch of them.
“What did you get?” asked my wife, who has always looked after the beds, when I brought my bounty into the backyard.
“Impatiens,” I answered, and here is the reason we are still married after 31 years.
“Oh, they’ll be nice,” she said, giving up her golden opportunity to remind me of how much impatiens hating I have done over the years.
I planted them. And as flowers have a tendency to do, even impatiens, I guess, they’re growing on me. Even the white ones.
It was so hot and humid out today and I worked like a trooper outside for hours to get ready for Canada Day.
In the process of doing this, I happened to squeeze out every last ounce of moisture that my body had managed to capture and I was left desperate to replenish the lost fluids. Little did I realize the tragic circumstances I would face in my search for something to drink.
There was no lemonade in the fridge and no orange juice. There was a little bit of apple juice but apple juice is not high up on the approved list of thirst quenchers. Lots of cold pop but I have never turned to pop to rehydrate myself. Maybe some orange pop, now and then, but we didn’t have any.
I made a mad dash for the freezer, hoping to find popsicles. There were only a few banana popsicles there and those things are the devil’s handiwork.
So, I was beat.
Then I noticed a tall pitcher of something in the fridge which I had overlooked. The pitcher was filled to the brim with a clear liquid. Almost in full panic attack by this time, I filled a large glass with this liquid and headed out to sit under the maple tree.
I sipped away at this odd material until ounce by boring ounce, it disappeared. I was to learn later, upon inquiry, that what I had consumed was water.
I was surprised to find that it went down fairly well on a blistering hot day but it’s bland as baby mash and the sugar content seems to be very much on the low side.
However, I am glad to know that should I ever again face death by dehydration, I could, as a last resort, try a glass of water.
I shouldn’t complain but water doesn’t seem like a very manly beverage so if you don’t mind, I would like to keep all this between me and you. Thanks a lot.
“This week?” asks a cynical reader. “You spread that stuff every week.”
Ouch!
To answer more clearly, perhaps, I have been dumping a lot of cattle manure on our flower and vegetable gardens as I work them up. I can’t honestly say I know for sure whether or not any actual bulls were involved in producing the cattle crap sold in big 28-litre bags, but I will go right ahead and assume a few of the big brutes lent their lovely sewage to the mixture of cattle feces and compost.
My parents have been gone almost 40 years now but if by some miracle, Dad could call me up to ask what I was up to today, I can’t begin to imagine what his reaction would be to the idea that I drove to a grocery store and brought home four big bags of cow poop which I willingly paid for.
Nevertheless, back then, on our farm, we were well aware of the value of the stuff our 300 big beasts pumped out every hour of every day. We used tractors and manure spreaders to fling the smelly golden goodness all over the fields where the soil was greatly enriched once the poop was well worked in.
Unfortunately, as a family, we were not enriched in the way we could apparently have been if we’d bagged up the stuff and sold it for $2.50. And if I had even suggested we do that, assuming I could have foreseen that this would someday be a thing, I think farmers everywhere would have taken to shunning me in church and at the general store.
It is probably just as well I didn’t raise the issue. Besides, there were enough hard jobs to handle on the farm without running along behind ornery cattle, trying to train them to poop inside big plastic bags.
It’s funny how life goes. You can be right as rain and the next moment, you’re staring at a big black stain on the heel of your left foot. It won’t wash off. Soaking your foot in a pan of hot water does nothing. Hmmm. You try to figure out where it might have come from, but nothing occurs to you. You spend a nervous night in bed tossing and turning in bewilderment and fear.
By morning, two more spots have shown themselves, on the tops of toes on both feet.
So, nothing left to do but consult Dr. Internet. He puts his head together with Dr. Google and they soon present some very bad news. You have a deadly form of skin cancer called Melanoma. The symptoms all line up. There is a second assessment suggesting it could be Tinea Nigra, a less serious condition that results from coming in contact with compost. You have been working a lot in the gardens this week. You don’t wear socks in the summer.
But in situations such as these, it is best to go with the most negative evaluation available and so skin cancer it is. A wave of self-pity washes over you. But you’ve had a good life. No complaints. Never been to Disney World, but oh well.
Your family is alerted. They do a careful inspection and your daughter takes photos of all the spots. The suggestion is made to go see your family doctor. You phone. He can see you at 2 p.m. The quickness of the appointment suggests urgency on his part. When you leave your house to drive there, will you ever see home again? You forgot to say goodbye to your son, the dog and the cats.
Your family suggests a vigorous shower before seeing your doctor and your daughter offers a special soap she uses for stubborn cleaning jobs. You sit down on the seat in the shower, take a rough washcloth, and start scrubbing. You scrub harder than your Mama used to scour you in the kitchen sink on Saturday night in preparation for church the next morning.
A miracle takes place.
You phone the doctor, embarrassed, and call off your appointment, explaining that every bit of the stains came off during the vigorous self-cleaning. You were suffering from, not Melanoma, nor Tinea Nigra, but Dirty Foot Syndrome. All is quiet on the other end of the line. The nurse cancels your appointment and has a story for her co-workers.
There are several levels of lazy. I am sure you are acquainted with some of them, if only because you have watched the slackers around you tweedle deeing when they should be tweedle doing.
You, of course, don’t have this problem, and I am proud of you. So proud. But please, in the name of every sloth currently hanging by its toes from a tropical tree somewhere, uninterested in any activity involving movement, I beg of you not to be too smug. Because all the Laziness Levels eventually touch most people’s lives and even if you are strong enough to escape them, you might not be able to evade the Hall of Fame level – The Laziness of the Retired.
And while you may think right now that you will have well devised strategies ahead of time to combat the temptation to sit like a frog in a pond all day and wait for insects to fly too close to your tongue, you might find yourself drawn to Total Idleness on only your second day after retiring.
I just don’t have the energy to go into all the ins and outs of Retirement Lazy, but maybe this example will do.
Leaving the bathroom after your premiere morning visit, you feel an old familiar nether region cooling wind and realize your fly is open. Now, closing your fly is something you were always pretty good at attending to, but retired, zipping up the he-man hardware is just one of those things that can be attended to later.
After all, you rightfully reason, The Queen and Prince Philip don’t arrive at your home till Sunday and this is only Thursday. No panic.
You drive all other family members to their non-retirement destinations such as school and work, then hit the coffee shop. There is a breeze, somehow, under your table, and once again, the fly trouble calls for a solution. But you are wearing a long winter coat, no risk of sudden exposure.
However, two hours later, upon exiting a grocery store, a blast of Arctic air works its way up into the unadjusted apparel and suddenly, the wages of your sin seem much too high to pay.
So, four hours after first identifying the issue, the matter is dealt with. Tomorrow, you will brush your teeth. The day after that, there will be a meeting of clippers and fingernails but only those nails in dire need of trimming shall be attended to.
The Queen would not be amused but just watch her decadent decline once she, too, retires. Which, and there is a lesson in this somewhere, she just hasn’t gotten around to doing.
I never used to cry. I think I went a whole decade or two in my earlier life without shedding so much as a tear. Now, some days, I’m a blubbering idiot.
The other day, reflecting on my upbringing on a farm, I wrote a poem about cattle and I bawled louder than a calf lookin’ for its mama all the way through the writing of it and for an hour after. I’m tearing up right now just remembering it.
The slightest thing can set me off.
But it’s the strangest thing. There doesn’t seem to be much sadness associated with the tearbursts that come over me like a sudden rainfall in spring. Maybe a bit. But it seems like the waterworks are associated more with gratitude than with regret.
I have been an incredibly fortunate man and have lived what seems to me to be five lifetimes in one. I am not sure what my goals were at 20, but I surely never imagined a life as good as the one I have been given. I used the word “given” on purpose. The Universe has been kind to me.
I spent a lot of years, I think, not feeling much. Hunkered down in the chase after all the things that are supposed to matter to a man in mid-life. Success, recognition, financial stability, accumulation of possessions, accumulation of experiences like the kind that travelling the world can bestow. Too busy living life to be absorbed with much reflection.
But now I remember moments. I remember people. I remember favourite pets and favourite trees and favourite places on Earth that have brought me joy.
And sometimes when I do, a tear or twenty escape their normally locked-tight holding cell. These days, there seems no need to keep the door locked on my feelings.
That is the thing I am most grateful for. Because mixed in between the tears is laughter, laughter like I have never known before.
Tears and Laughter originate from the same sacred holy ground called Perspective. Whatever advantages young people have in life, and they have many, Perspective seems to be the prize waiting near the finish line.
I left the windows down in my car last night and it rained sometime before dawn. So, I had to get a blanket to put on the seat and the windshield was all fogged over so I wound up the windows, turned the heat onto blast and headed out at 6 a.m. for a coffee.
Already a little grumpy, my mood took a further nosedive when I realized I was sharing the cabin of my car with a flying creature of some description which began buzzing my bare legs and the back of my neck as I putted on down the main street.
I finally got a semi-look at the intruder. It appeared to be a moth if a moth can be almost the size of a small hawk. Yet it was too small to be a bat.
Oh my God! I have a car that is even too old for the classic car shows so I had to reach all the way over and manually wind down the passenger side window, then the driver’s side, all while piloting my bucket of bolts to Coffee Land.
The moth took the opportunity to escape the crazy man it had so recently met. I am not a moth psychologist – they are known in the business as mothologists – but something tells me my unwelcome visitor was happy to be free.
And nothing against moths, but I was pleased to see it go.
Meanwhile, my coffee was needed and well worth the trouble by the time I got to drink it.
I had a birthday in January and since then, I’ve been bemoaning the fact that I am 69 years old.
Where the heck has the time gone? This just can’t be.
I was out with some friends Wednesday night, and repeated my complaint to them. “I can’t believe I am 69,” I said, or something to that effect. As my friends are all older than 69, they were not full of much sympathy and couldn’t see what the big deal could be.
But to me, if just seems crazy that I could be 69.
Last night, I took this problem to bed with me and was tossing and turning over the dilemma of somehow now being 69, when I got out my mental calculator, a device not in much use anymore since the advent of all the mechanical and digital ones at my fingertips. I took this year, 2019, and subtracted the year of my birth, 1951, and came up with 68.
I almost flew right out of bed at the realization that I am actually one year younger than I thought I was. What an amazing relief.
But it left me wondering what other delusions I might be operating under. I have a feeling there might be a few.
Most people don’t know when they will draw their final breath and what will have happened to have caused them to do that.
Like most people, I too don’t know the when, but I suspect my date with the Grim Reaper will be soon.
I am pretty sure, however, that I know what it is that will bring about my end.
I used to always think that the last thing I would see on this earth would be a frying-pan size black bear’s paw covering my face. While that still is a possibility, especially considering the fact our family insists on holidaying every August in Bear Country up in northern Canada because none of us wants to die of natural causes, in light of recent events, I have recalculated.
I now believe that my executioners will be two different vile creatures.
I wrote about a four-foot-tall wild turkey that landed in my backyard recently and that spent a half hour inspecting every square inch of that part of our property. An Internet search revealed that these guys are aggressive and not afraid of humans. And they have sharp talons.
Then, a few days later, while walking our little doggie, I saw a massive airplane-like shadow on the ground around us and knew that imprint could have only been made by a wild turkey, though I couldn’t catch sight of him.
Since then, a family member has seen two of them on the wing around our place and counted eight of them in the trees in a park near our home. They are so heavy, they are breaking some of the branches they land on.
And two days ago, I found a feather on our front lawn, which, and I did the comparison, is the same length as a barbecue spatula. Naturally, I took this as an ominous sign that one of those guys is coming for me, much the same thoughts I might have if I found a horse’s head in my bed.
So someday soon, I am going be in my backyard sunning myself when a turkey will descend on me, knock me to the ground and peck the hell out of my face, neck and throat. It will then fly away cackling and as I lie there under my maple tree, counting down my breaths from ten to zero, I will gaze up into the tree to see a bee’s nest I hadn’t seen before and won’t be the least bit surprised when I am suddenly swarmed by a dozen murder hornets. These evil bastards don’t normally attack humans but will do so if they are disturbed and, of course, that awful killer wild turkey woke them up with all its maniacal gobbling.
So, think of me for a moment as my doom approaches and if you feel the need to shed a little tear, that’s okay.
I’m feeling kind of sorry for myself at the moment too.
My almost total absence of sense of direction is a standing joke in my house. It is a wonder I can get from the bedroom to the bathroom in the middle of the night without getting lost.
If I don’t have an able navigator in the car beside me on a trip, the destination I have in mind is only a pipe dream.
However, I outdid myself a couple of weeks ago when I managed to get lost behind my own house. One street over from our home and almost directly behind us is an ice-cream palace. We go through the drivethrough there from time to time and have for years. We access it by way of a laneway off the street which runs behind the building and out the other side. Simple.
But this day I pulled into this laneway to get quite a shock. There, blocking my entrance, was a new garden shed, right in the middle of the path. There was absolutely no way to get around it with a car.
“Wow,” I exclaimed. “Looks like they’ve cut off the drivethrough.”
My son had a better explanation. “Dad, you’re in the wrong driveway.” Well, waduhuno? I was. I had entered the driveway into the laundromat, instead of the ice-cream hangout.
In my defence, I have lived in this neighbourhood for only 26 years and am still getting to know my way around. Nevertheless, I am crossing “tour guide” off my possible career moves list.
My father-in-law was a very good pastor, artist and woodworker. We inherited seven or eight of his big, heavy woodshop machines and have had them in the shed for the past year. A few months ago, it became clear to me that they would be better situated in our finished and heated garage where we can make a proper workshop.
Since then, I have fretted and worried about how this transfer of machines would be accomplished. I knew I needed help but foresaw a number of problems with the project. Broken windows, scratched doors, injured helpers, damaged machinery. Where would we get a dolly we would need to carry the heavier pieces?
I wonder, if I could put all that anxiety together, whether or not it would take up two hours or three or four. Maybe.
Tonight, my son and a bunch of his 17-year-old friends happened to be over at our place for burgers and pop. Afterwards, I asked them if they could help me move the machines, thinking they might get three or four of the lighter ones moved. Sure, they said. And they did.
All the machines were moved, settled, done in 10 minutes. Then they hopped in the van and drove off. Nothing broken or scratched, no pulled muscles, no dolly needed. They just got together and got it done, as though they were doing the dishes after supper.
A few minutes later, I took the dog for a walk and I noticed that old familiar tension behind my eyes and wistful tears sitting there. Oh, to be 17 again. To not look ahead and behind. To not think there are things you can’t do. To live every day as an adventure with your pals. To be forever in the moment.
What happens to us to take that away? Do we get too cynical, or too bored or too tired?
Last year I took a van load of those guys to Port Huron, Michigan, for the day. It was the most fun I have had in years, just listening to the banter, the joking, the expressions of joy and anticipation of good things to come. The talk of cars and girls and music. The finer things in life.
It was decided the grackles were unwelcome and had to leave our property. They were eating us into poverty (four dollars per day in suet cakes alone), they were crapping on everything – cars, lawnchairs, picnic table, laundry on the line, they were aggressive when the food supply was low and would bang on our windows to smarten us up, and they chased away the birds we used to have and would like to see again.
So, as I often do these days, I enrolled in a short course at the University of YouTube and after only one video, I knew what I had to do. The guy in the video is probably the smartest man on Earth. He said, brilliantly, that if you want to stop attracting nuisance birds, quit feeding them. What a concept. I wish I could hire that guy as my life coach. I bet he knows other stuff too.
The next morning, I put out no bird feed at all and before long, all the feeders were empty. The grackles were getting anxious in the same way I do when there are only crumbs left in my potato chip bag and all the stores are closed.
I watched with delight as the hours passed and the grackle population dwindled. Good riddance!
About that time, I was sitting in a lawnchair under a maple tree when I heard a hell of a racket on a branch above me. Without even looking, I knew what it was. It was a baby grackle wanting its mama to feed it.
“Fat chance,” said Mama. “That old miser Jim has taken away all our food.” Those are the very words she used.
“So now I hate mamas and babies,” I thought. Just then, she led her little one out of the tree and down to our water hole where she taught the yungun to drink.
I watched the pathetic scene for a few more minutes until I could stand no more.
The Hagarty Conservatory for Grackles will open for business on Monday morning. There will be teeshirts for sale with a picture of an unsmiling me with grackle poop on my head (it has happened.)
You might not know it to look at me, but I am a rebel. I have been all my life. I do not like authority. I hate people telling me what to do.
So when I was caught for speeding about 15 years ago, I was some sort of mad. I paid the fine, whatever amount it was, and made a promise that this was never going to happen to me again.
Around the same time, I returned to my car in a parking lot to see a ticket for letting my meter run out. I do remember paying a $15 fine for that. Again with a promise to never go through that again. Not one more single penny will I ever pay in fines to the city I was born in.
I have made three solemn vows in my life. My wedding vows, my speeding vows and my parking vows. So far, all three are holding up pretty well.
And this is the ultimate rebellion. To refuse to get caught breaking the law by being determined to never break the law. Yes, a few other drivers want to run me off the road when I travel 80 kmh in an 80 kmh zone. But they just don’t appreciate or even know how a true rebel works. They probably think a real rebel drives 120 in an 80 zone or takes a parking ticket out from under his wiper and puts in on the car beside him, assuming that person will pay the fine without even examining the ticket.
To be a scofflaw is easy. Any frivolous man can do that. But inside the chest of a real rebel beats a heart that is committed to obeying the rules. To defeat the system by co-operating with every bit of it.
I just smile now when I drive by a peace officer who is pointing his radar gun at my car and at the officious official marauding the parking lots looking for expired meters.
I am a rebel’s rebel and these poor souls don’t even know the extent of my revenge.
I’m always a little embarrassed at the dollar store checkout when I set down my half dozen chocolate bars on the counter. I make my standard joke about my doctor having diagnosed me with a severe chocolate deficiency, worst case he’s ever seen. The kid thinks I’m serious and doesn’t laugh.
But my days of feeling guilty about my addiction are over. In fact, in light of new information, I will now feel guilty if I don’t indulge in the yummy stuff.
A new study says eating two chocolate bars a day can lower heart disease and stroke risk. These findings came from a 12-year study of 25,000 men and women in Norfolk, England, the happiest town on Earth. Also, 300 dentists have practices there.
Last year, an American study found chocolate can fight obesity and weight gain. And the brains of chocolate eaters are healthier.
But best of all, scientists at the University of Calgary found that chocolate improves the memories of snails. This is great because eating chocolate will help my pets Pokey, Speedy and Stop Sign, remember to put away their snail toys at night. Unless they’ve just been pretending to forget all this time. Snails can be sneaky like that. I just hope they didn’t fool the researchers.
So, Mom jumps in the little blue Chevy and heads for the grocery store. A few minutes later, Dad crawls into the much bigger van and goes to the store too, having thought of a few things that he needs. He doesn’t know which store Mom has gone to.
Keeping track of Mom’s whereabouts can keep Dad busy some days.
His shopping done, Dad comes out of the store to discover that his van is missing. Most likely stolen. His laptop was inside, so he is unhappy.
He wanders the store parking lot, desperately searching for the van. No luck. However, he notices a little blue Chevy sitting there and checks the licence plate.
“We’ll I’ll be,” he says. “That’s our car.”
As it did for the man who stayed up all night to watch the sun rise, it finally dawns on him. Mom left the store, saw the van, jumped in and rode away, thinking that was the vehicle she drove to the store.
Married life might not always be a laugh a minute, but it is very rarely dull.
Well, friends, my ship has finally come in. I have been waiting on the shore for many years now, scanning the horizon for any sign of my ship, and I have now caught sight of it.
Some of you might have noticed how glowingly I sometimes write about one of my heroes, Warren E. Buffett. I think he is a genius and a good guy.
Today, Warren sent me an email explaining how, as an American business magnate, investor and philanthropist, he is giving away some of the billions he has earned to randomly selected people throughout the world. Somehow, my name was chosen.
“I am the most successful investor in the world. I believe strongly in ‘giving while living’ and using my wealth to help people,” Buffett wrote.
All I have to do is respond to Warren’s email and I will soon be the lucky recipient of $1.5 million.
Yahoo!
I knew this day was coming, though others doubted my faith in a fulsome future.
Apparently there are a lot of levels in Hell and the worse you were here on Earth, the farther down you go, closer to the fire.
I hope, and in my prayers tonight I will recommend, that the person who invented the “gable-top” milk carton spends eternity hopping around on the hot coals he or she deserves because this little carton is truly evil.
I wrestled with another one today as I sat at my table in a sub shop and if it hadn’t been for the prominent sign over the door which read, “No Screaming Allowed”, I would have let loose.
A person needs the hands and fingers of a brain surgeon to open these stupid outfits and unfortunately, my paws are almost as big and delicate as a bear’s mitts.
I know there is a way to open these awful things as I have been shown all the tricks many times by someone several decades younger than me. But he has always demonstrated it so quickly I could never quite get it, like a magician reluctant to show you his whole method.
So, there I sat today, ripping and tearing at this horrible little box like the aforementioned bear might have had he been in the sub shop at the time. (Had he wandered in and saw the look on my face, I think he would have run away, maybe even screaming, in violation of the sub shop code.)
By the time my milk was accessible, it was sitting in a pathetically mangled container and being chocolate milk, it was then I realized it needed to be shaken up. So I tried to close the wreck and give it a shake.
Milk spewed everywhere. When I finally did get it open again and put it to my lips, the milk dribbled down my face and onto my jeans.
You know, I hope I do go to Hell so I can hop around next to the idiot who invented this abomination and spend my eternity screaming in his ear, official policy be damned.
I have decided not to take my .357 Magnum Revolver to bed with me any more. For years, I have slept more peacefully knowing I could take action if and when (only a matter of time) my neighbour breaks into my house to try to steal my TV. He was over once and admired the 42-incher sitting in the corner of my living room and I knew in that moment that he would sneak into my place some night and take it.
I love that TV and can’t imagine life without it.
What has made me decide to keep my pistol in the fridge from now on instead is the news that an Illinois man accidentally shot himself while dreaming that his home was being broken into. On April 10, police arrived at the home of Mark M. Dicara, 62, and found him with a gunshot wound to the leg.
Dicara said he had a dream that someone was breaking into his home, retrieved his gun and shot at who he thought was the intruder, only to shoot himself, which caused him to wake from the dream.
The bullet went through Dicara’s leg and lodged itself into his bedding.
I wouldn’t want a bullet in my leg but I would pay holy hell if I ever shot up my bedding. And I won’t bore you with any details of some of the horrible dreams I have some nights but there is bound to be a firefight at 3 a.m. in my bedroom one of these times.
My neighbour can have my damn TV. I’m tired of worrying about it. In fact, I am going to call him tomorrow and help him move it to his place.
I might even lend him my revolver in the event some other neighbour starts cooking up plans to steal it from him.
Instead, I will spend my evenings watching the 19-inch flatscreen that sits on top of our filing cabinet.
Six months ago, our family enjoyed a Sunday supper at home of delicious Chinese food from our favourite restaurant. When the meal ended, five fortune cookies were randomly given out to us all and one by one, we went around the table, cracking them open and reading the messages on the tiny papers contained within them.
The ritual started with my son to my left and continued around the table till it was my turn. I cracked open my cookie, to discover there was nothing inside. This led to much hilarity and questions from me about what this could possibly mean. To this day, those questions have gone unanswered.
A few weeks ago, we sat down again to another feast of fried rice, egg rolls, guy ding and chicken balls and the cookie reveal was once again saved till the last. One by one, each of the five family members read out their fortune till it came to me. I cracked open my cookie to find, once again, no fortune within.
How could this happen when the cookies, on both occasions, were distributed at random? Surely, the message-less cookie could have been delivered to someone other than me.
So, I am left to wonder once again at my luck or lack of it. But being an optimistic person who always looks on the bright side of things, I brought out my Last Will and Testament the next day to see if there was a loophole or two that needed fixing. I did notice one or two of my most treasured possessions that I failed to gift to anyone, specifically my favourite baseball cap that looks as though it was recovered from a Kentucky coal mine that had been closed for a hundred years.
But try as I might, I am unable to get past my repeated misfortune. The other members of my family have gone on their merry ways, but I am left in a Chinese stew.
However, I think I do have some explanation now as to how it is, after seven decades of striving, I have managed somehow to avoid accumulating the fortune I always thought I would surely have by now. It was never in the cards for me. Not even in the cookies.
I like the woman who cleans my teeth every few months. She is older than the other hygienists and, in my opinion, more gentle. She is also interesting. Whether that’s because she has a little more life experience than the others or a variety of interests that happen to coincide with mine, I cannot say.
So, when she was finishing up with me today, I asked her how her garden was coming along. We have that in common. She said she was having a few problems with moles digging things up and she is looking for a way to send them packing.
At that point, I fell asleep. I had stayed up too late last night pondering the wonders of the universe. When I came to, my hygienist was still talking.
“There are so many holes,” she said. “We’ll have to fill them all in.
“I don’t want to use poison.”
Now, I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a minute or two but when I woke up, I forgot we had been discussing moles in her garden.
I thought she was still talking about my teeth. I immediately freaked out about all these cavities I apparently have now and it will be a frosty day in July before I let them inject poison in my gums.
Call me hard to get along with, but I hate poison.
You know, we all have experiences in life that we think of as good or bad, but not many of us have found ourselves inside a whale and somehow lived to tell about it.
Michael Packard, 56, a Massachusetts commercial lobster diver was seriously injured Friday morning when he was caught in the mouth of a humpback whale feeding off Race Point, his sister said.
“I felt this huge bump and everything went dark,” Packard said. “And then I felt around and I realized there was no teeth. And then I realized, ‘Oh my God I’m in a whale’s mouth … and he’s trying to swallow me.'”
I’m not sure what the poor diver did at that point but had I been in this situation, I am sure I would have been concerned.
“Then all of a sudden he went up to the surface and just erupted and started shaking his head. I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water,” he said. “I was free and I just floated there. I couldn’t believe it.”
Fortunately, humpback whales do not appear to favor lobster fishermen.
Imagine you are bdelloid rotifer. You’ve been taking a good long nap for the past 24,000 years and then some pesky scientists come along and wake you up. The meddlesome jerks. You couldn’t be blamed if you reacted kind of grumpily to this.
But now you’re awake, what is your first priority? A nice warm shower? A hearty breakfast? Some sunbathing, perhaps?
Nope. If you are a rotifer that has spent the past 24,000 years frozen in the permafrost of Siberia, the first activity you want to get right at is sex. I guess 24,000 years of no sex might make a tiny, multicellular, freshwater creature such as a rotifer kind of randy.
In fact, once revived, these little guys got busy reproducing right away. Not much foreplay was witnessed.
“We revived animals that saw woolly mammoths,” Russian scientist Stas Malavin told the New York Times. “Which is quite impressive.”
However, the poor revived rotifers came close but are in second place when it comes to longest frozen creature. The title of longest nap goes to the nematode. In 2018, scientists revived some of the microscopic worms – also yanked out of the Siberian permafrost – that had been frozen for 42,000 years.
Woken up against their will, my guess is the nematodes took a look around at the world in 2018 and begged to be allowed to go back to sleep. A few, however, might stick around to join extreme right-wing political movements, the views of which, coincidentally, have been underwater and frozen, also for 42,000 years.
The world is watching us all these days, it seems. Literally watching. This matters not to a fine upstanding young man like myself who obeys all ten commandments every day and would follow ten more if somebody was to command them. In fact, I wish somebody would.
But even a saint can get tripped up now and then, I suppose. And so it was with me when a big red steel dumpster was delivered to the business next door to our house. Each day, employees of the store tossed in refuse of every description until after week or so, the thing was filled to overflowing.
Around this time, we had bought a new firebowl for the backyard. It came in a massive cardboard box and was encased in brittle white foam. When it was unpackaged and assembled, the firebowl stood there on the patio looking great but the big white slab of foam leaned forlornly against the house. How the heck was I going to get rid of that thing?
As it turns out, the Universe had delivered the answer right on time. The steel garbage bin next door. So one recent late night, when everyone was in bed and there seemed to be no lights on in any of the neighbours’ houses, I grabbed the foam slab and snuck over to the next-door business. I tossed it high in the air and it landed on the very top of the already-too-full bin. It stuck out, kind of like the cherry on a sundae.
I snuck back inside my home without being detected. But every day from then on, until the bin was removed and unloaded, I worried about the slab of foam and felt very guilty about adding it to my neighbour’s trash. I had even thought of returning to the bin and fetching it back again some night but worried I would be seen and reported for stealing from the dumpster. I breathed a little easier when it was finally taken away.
Yesterday, it was brought back empty to the business, to be once again filled up.
Today, I happened to be over at the business, talking to the owner, and I remarked on the sign he had posted on his door announcing that his establishment was being monitored 24 hours a day by video surveillance.
“In fact, we even have a camera set up outside,” he said, pointing to a little wandering eye situated near the roof. It happened to be pointing directly at the big red steel garbage bin.
If there ever was a time for a joke, this was it.
“Oh, I am glad to see that,” I quipped. “I was thinking of going dumpster diving.”
The owner laughed. A little too long and a little too hard. And way too knowingly, it seemed to me. Like someone would who spends part of his days going over video surveillance footage.
I am spending today, going through the Commandments, trying to figure out which one covers great big slabs of hard white foam. So far, I haven’t seen anything that fits.
But chalk it up to my bad luck that the very first time in my 67 years that I ever did anything wrong, my evil deed would be captured on film.
Of course it would be. So, it’s back to the straight and narrow for me. You can bet your big red dumpster on it.
I’ve been getting a lot of help with my mental health this weekend from my favourite psychiatrists, Dr. Claw Hammer, Dr. Hans Sawyer and Dr. Shuv Hull (all of them Swedish).
Dr. Lief Rake made a brief appearance as did Dr. Finish Nailz (from Finland).
We held several sessions outdoors. Dug deep into my issues, cut through a lot of boardom and I think we pretty much nailed it.
I am feeling much better tonight. A few more sessions tomorrow.
All of these great mental-health professionals work for peanuts which works out well because Dr. Colm Poster just eats all that up. Sometimes I feel like they’re just shelling out, but it’s okay.
Not a news flash, but it rains a lot in Ireland and one time when I was there, I saw a painter painting a storefront in the pouring rain. It wasn’t raining too heavily and the part he was painting was probably not in threat of getting very soggy, but the thought of painting in the rain brought a smile to my face. Dancing in the rain, maybe, but painting?
Being of Irish descent and prone to exaggeration, I have now extrapolated this little scene into a general theory which I often mention to people. When the subject of Ireland comes up, I always work into the conversation the “fact” that it rains so much in Ireland the painters have to paint in the rain. All because I saw one guy do it.
So, please forgive me Irish people, for “painting” you with an unflattering brush.
I especially beg forgiveness in light of the fact that on Friday, I painted my shed in the rain. It wasn’t raining when I started the job but halfway through, it started to come down. I cleaned up my brushes, roller, etc., but within an hour, the rain stopped. The sun even peeked out from the clouds. So, I took out all my equipment again, ventured out to the shed, felt the walls to see how dry or wet they were, and started up painting again.
After a few minutes, the rain started again, but I didn’t want to quit. I was determined to get this done. I painted over some wet surfaces so I hope the whole thing doesn’t peel right off by Wednesday.
Did you know that it rains so much in Canada, some fools have been known to paint in the rain? It’s true. I saw a Canadian guy do it once.
There are a lot of things in life, I will freely admit, that I know next to nothing about. Examples of this spring readily to mind. Sailing (never been on sailboat), love triangles or quadrangles or however those things go, bull riding (not to be confused with bull writing, about which I do know a bit), and grandparenting.
But maybe the biggest mystery to me has always been money laundering. Maybe because I have never had any money, I have had no need to launder it, whatever that is.
However, in the life experience I have had, I have heard rumours about small businesses that serve as fronts for organized crime and money laundering. They never do any business, have no customers, and yet never close up shop. Hmmm.
I’ve even heard it said some mom and pop corner stores are involved in this and today, I think I finally got some proof. As I approached the counter and cash register in one of these variety “stores”, I noticed a jug of hand sanitizer and a big plastic bowl next to it, filled with a clear liquid. And in that liquid was cold, hard and very wet cash. Bills, coins, the works. A steel tongs lay by the bowl, with which the man there, standing behind a clear plexiglass screen (probably bulletproof), was taking currency from his customers and putting it in the liquid.
I was shocked to see him so brazenly laundering money, as though he believed he would never get caught. I wondered if he was paying off the police so they would look the other way. Another indication that he was up to no good was the fact that, amazingly, he was wearing a bandit’s mask.
Not only had I never seen a money laundering operation before, but now I was looking at an actual money launderer and he didn’t fit whatever image I might have had in my mind for such a criminal. There was a tall woman behind the counter, watching proceedings. Now she did sort of look like the type.
I don’t know what to do. If I report them to the police, and they are in on it, what trouble might I get into?
So I left the store. Shaken, but maybe a little wiser. Also, unable to process what I had just witnessed. So I went back to doing what I had been doing before I entered the place which was daydreaming about love triangles.
Whatever they are.
(Update 2024: This story probably made a little more sense when it was written, at the start of the recent Covid-19 pandemic.)
Our ironing board fell on my head this morning. Don’t worry, the ironing board is fine, though I’ve spent most of the day a bit wobbly on my feet as a result of the blow to my cranium.
As I usually do in such situations, I looked on the event as a teachable moment. You can either get mad over a matter like this or just laugh it off.
I recommend getting mad. Profanity helps, preferably in a loud voice. It also pays to hit the ironing board as that will teach it a lesson.
Next comes the search for a culprit – there must be a culprit – someone who left the ironing board in such a precarious state as to easily fall on my head when I was looking the other way.
But it’s amazing, in a four-person household, how no one has touched the ironing board in weeks, in spite of the fact that people leave the house in the morning dressed in very neat clothes that have obviously been pressed by a hot iron. I know for certain that I am not the culprit as the ironing board and I are practically strangers. I used it once to flatten out a pair of dress socks about 30 years ago but concluded the effort was not worth the reward and gave up the practice. Besides, I never leave the house, neat or otherwise.
I will get to the bottom of this, never resting till it’s all been smoothed over and not a wrinkle is left to worry me. I fully intend to press the issue and if I get a little hot under the collar, so be it.
Because if I don’t find the answer to this latest unexpected object to smash me on the noggin, these sorts of incidents will probably in-crease.
Jim Hagarty’s neighbours are a prosperous gang and he is happy for them.
One neighbour has a big new pickup truck, a $70,000 pricetag but he got a break on it. What a wonderful machine.
Two doors down, another neighbour bought a beautiful motorhome last summer. Hagarty had a tour inside. He speculates it comes with room service. Or should.
Across the street, one man has a Corvette. It’s used, but still, it’s a CORVETTE! The neighbour beside him has a shiny, fancy motorcycle. Hagarty is not sure of the make but it’s extremely noisy so that must be good.
Still another neighbour directly across the street has a widescreen TV that appears to cover one whole wall of his living room. If the blinds are open, and even if they aren’t, Hagarty can see all the shows his neighbour watches. He seems to be into action movies.
Next door, just yesterday, Hagarty smelled some wonderful cooking aromas coming from those neighbours’ verandah and he looked over to see that the couple there has a very fancy new barbecue. Not sure if it has a sink and running water, but it might.
Farther down the street, in the driveway, sits a new, candy apple red Kia Soul. A few doors to the east, is a new Toyota Rav4. Black. Very sleek.
Hagarty is not envious of any of these people and the proof of that is the fact that he discusses all these glorious new acquisitions with his neighbours when he sees them out and about.
But he worries that they are jealous of him. Because he has a brand new plastic pooper scooper with which to gather up his doggie’s offerings on their twice-daily walks. It is a marvel of modern engineering. Black. Easy to use. Very efficient.
And not one of his neighbours has made any comment to Hagarty at all about his new device. When people will not even acknowledge something new you have, you know they are burning up with envy.
To be honest, Hagarty is a little disappointed in this obvious character flaw in the spendthrifts living around him.
When I was 55 or so, I walked into a fast-food restaurant and placed an order. The kid who served me, who appeared hardly able to see over the counter, took the details of my simple request and then asked me, “Would you like a senior Coke?”
In the few seconds I had to process this request before I gave my answer, I pondered what on earth a senior Coke might be, having never before been offered one. Was it a Coke served by a little old man named Perkins wearing a beanie hat with the restaurant name on it after he emerged from a small room where some senior citizen servers were kept, or was it a Coke that had been formulated in 1945 and, like a bottle of fine wine, was just now ready to be uncorked? Or, would a portion of the cost of this Coke be given by the restaurant to a benefit organized to help needy seniors in the community?
I was confused.
So I asked, “What is a senior Coke?”
Well, as it turned out, it was a small Coke given for free to seniors.
Which begged the next question.
Why was I, a young whippersnapper still wet behind the ears, being offered a senior Coke?
Perhaps the youngster who offered me this thought I might want it for some old guy standing right behind me who he mistakenly thought was my grandfather. I looked behind me to see no one there.
“Yes,” I finally decided. “I would like a senior Coke.” It wasn’t my fault the kid had screwed up so badly.
Fourteen years later, I don’t even have to ask for a senior Coke anymore. They just plop one down on my tray like they might include a toy if I was a kid.
But there were a few years there when my status as a bona fide senior was in doubt. This restaurant had other specials for seniors and if I wanted those, it took some planning.
I would stand back and size up the servers. If a kid took my order, I was a shoo-in as he or she had not likely ever seen anyone who looked so ancient. But if the server was an older adult, I might have to produce five types of identification before I could score a cheaper hamburger and fries.
So, I would hang back, and hope to get a younger server. I got pretty good at that over time.
Alas, probably because shysters such as I were ripping them off too badly, the restaurant dropped all special pricing for old folks except for the senior Coke.
But it’s a just world and there are always compensations. A few years ago, they introduced a junior menu. It feels a bit strange ordering a junior burger and a senior Coke, as though one might cancel out the other, but so far, so good.
Besides, I have a ball at night playing with the free toys.
I’ve lost interest in hockey and probably couldn’t even make the cut in the beer belly league now. Same with baseball. Never was big on soccer, tennis, bowling. I was terrible at football.
But there is one sport I am thinking of taking up and it’s one I think I might even be good at. That is the sport of shin-kicking and over the weekend, a Vancouver man was crowned world champion at the Cotswold Olimpicks in Chipping Camden, England.
I’ve always been good at kicking and am usually mad enough to want to hurt somebody’s shins. And here’s the clincher: I have been to Chipping Camden. If that isn’t a sign for me to take up this cool activity, I don’t know what is.
The sport is 400 years old. It involves kicking your opponent’s shins as you try to throw him to the ground. That must hurt, you say? Maybe, but participants do get to shove hay down the legs of their pants for protection.
Growing up on the farm, it seemed at haying time I always had hay in my pants. The sport was waiting for me.
I’m a bit disappointed the shin-kickers have gone soft over the past 200 years though. They used to cap the toes of their boots with metal but that is against the rules now.
Today’s shin-kickers might be wimps but with some practice, I think I could take ’em. Yes, wind me up and I would gladly kick the shin out of all of them.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is helping me a lot these days. I have been reading his biography for the past couple of months and will continue to do so for a few more at least.
And while my bank account has not magically expanded, I have learned one major thing about him. Reading the words on 816 pages detailing the life of Warren Buffett is the best sleep inducer I have ever found.
It is not that his life is boring; far from it. But trying to follow the minute details of every deal that resulted in his achieving a net worth of $60 billion is a challenge that this human, for one, cannot meet without passing out.
The other night, for whatever reason, I lie in bed wide awake. Tossing and turning, stopping and staring at the ceiling. It looked like a long, restless, sleepless night awaited me. I was frustrated.
Then I remembered Warren. I dashed upstairs and grabbed his hernia-inducing tome. I crawled back into bed, book in tow, and began reading. Two to three paragraphs later, I couldn’t have kept my eyelids open with toothpicks.
I turned out the light and slept like a billionaire.
It worked again last night. I am hoping that eventually, just the sight of the book on my bedside table will bring on the slumber.
There are 40 houses on my block in the Canadian city where I live, bounded by Romeo Street on the west end and Burritt Street on the east.
When I moved here in 1986, I was number 40 on the list of homeowners on my street. Mr. Newbie. As fresh as they came. All 39 other homeowners had been in their houses before me, were here when I came.
That is 26 years ago and now, as far as I know, I am number 5 on the list. Thirty-four of the 39 homeowners that used to be ahead of me have moved on, one way or the other.
I am gunning for number 1 so I can legitimately be called the King of Albert Street, although I suspect that’s what everyone calls me now anyway (because of my vast wealth – and the moat I dug around our castle.)
Before I got here, I had moved 11 times in my life. When I first walked in the front door of the house I’ve called home for the past 26 years, I said to myself, “They can carry me out of here someday.” That prospect is looking more and more likely, not because I am deathly ill (I’m not) but due to my absence of itchy feet. I like it here.
Around the time I moved to Albert Street, I encountered the saying, “Bloom where you are planted.” If you drive by my place and see a guy in a straw hat, whistling, that’s just me, blooming the best way I know how.
If you’re lucky, I might even give you a royal wave.
I was watering a section of new lawn at a back corner of our lot yesterday when My Bunny came dashing out of the long grass.
I hadn’t seen her there.
Some background. I gave this friendly little wild rabbit three showers with my garden hose in the very same area of our property on the hottest days of last summer.
So here we were again. She stopped by the tree and I slowly brought the mist over her, so as not to scare her off. She sat there absorbing a lot of water, eventually licking her lips and blinking her eyes.
Now here is a new wrinkle in these shower stories I presented here last year.
Seemingly all showered out, My Bunny dashed into some bushes by our wooden fence, a few feet away. I wasn’t surprised by that and just carried on watering the grass.
But I did a double take when the little critter left the bushes and returned to the very spot where I had just finished administering an over-the-top soaking. She stood there, facing me, looking right at me.
So, I did my duty and brought the mist over her again. For the next five or so minutes, she took in all the water I could toss her way.
Finally, she returned to the bushes.
But I had to water the grass back there too and I could see her little bum sticking out of the weeds, so I put the mist over her again.
No complaints.
I shouldn’t be surprised. This is a rabbit that comes and gets me when she is out of food and occasionally, will come hopping up to me when I call her.
But for my little friend to ask for “more water, please” is the strangest – and nicest – encounters I have ever had with a wild animal.
You might get the feeling that you live in a small town when your aunt calls you up and asks if you don’t have a better picture of yourself you could put at the top of your weekly column in the local newspaper where you work as an editor.
“A woman I know asked me the other day if that’s what you really look like,” my aunt said to me, “and I told her, ‘No way, he looks a lot better than that.”’
That said, how it is you really know you live in a small town is when you take your relative’s word for it and get a new picture taken so she won’t have to apologize to the neighbours about her homely nephew anymore.
So, you can thank my aunt for the new mug shot of me at the top of my column in the newspaper today.
(Some of my cousins who read this will wonder which of our many aunts tuned me in 37 years ago about my headshot in The Beacon Herald, the daily newspaper published in my hometown city of Stratford, Ontario, Canada. I won’t be able to be of much help to them because I honestly cannot remember which one it was. Whichever aunt called me, she did me a favour. My new photo was much better than the first one – the darkroom boys did wonders and even added a touch-up or two by means of which I was suddenly endowed with a full head of hair – and maybe even helped me attract the woman I married two years later.)
As you know, I like to provide periodic crime updates from around the world.
In the latest news, it appears that clues are coming together in the mysterious death of a person found in a pit in Spain. Authorities are suggesting the victim died after two heavy blows to the forehead.
This is a cold case – the victim is 500,000 years old – and the perpetrator has had lots of time to get away. But there is hope yet that the mystery will be solved.
So, if you see someone suspicious walking around, call CrimeStoppers immediately.
One identifying feature of the suspect will be that he or she is pre-human, a human ancestor, in fact. You know, high brows, caveman-like. He may be trying to pass himself off as an enforcer on a hockey team, a rock star bodyguard or a gun enthusiast in Tennessee.
Approach carefully if you encounter him, but make light conversation and if he answers to the nickname “Bubba”, we might have our guy.
Some might say there are current unsolved murders that are more important than the oldies, but how would you feel if your ancestry search led you directly back to that poor woman in the pit a half million years ago?
By the way, no word on whether or not a reward was ever posted as a way of helping find the murderer. But it has been speculated that a prize of ten coconuts might have been offered.
Everybody jokes about blind dates. There is something exciting, if also a bit frightening, about going out for an evening with someone you have never met, with an unspoken expectation that maybe these two total strangers could become a couple.
I went on a few blind dates in my younger days. Some were good, some not so great. The truth is, I forget now almost all the details of those dates except for the one where my female companion said goodnight by telling me what an awful person I was.
But nothing I experienced back then compares to the poor man in Arizona who went out on one date with a woman and then decided not to pursue a relationship. The woman, however, fell in love, found her soulmate, said he completed her.
To emphasize the strength of her feelings for him, she sent him 65,000 text messages including 500 in one day. Things really got out of hand when he came home one day to find her freshening up in his bathtub. A lot of people (me included) might be delighted to discover a blind date freshening up in their bathtub, but this woman had never been to her date’s house and didn’t have a key.
Police found a very long butcher knife in her car. If she couldn’t have him …
On second thought, all my blind dates were simply wonderful.
It is an enduring stereotype that describes Canadians as too polite. I see that idea challenged regularly by road ragers on Canadian highways, but, in general, it seems to be true that we are a patient nation.
I don’t have to look far to find proof of the too polite notion. On Sunday, I went out in my backyard with the weekly flyers from two hardware stores. Others have their novels; I have my flyers. As a consumer, I am always on the lookout to consume something but I want to do my consuming as cheaply as possible, another well-noted Canadian characteristic.
I didn’t get too far along in my reading and had just started checking out the bargains on garden hoses when a family member dropped in. When I got up for some reason, he sat down in my lawnchair. No worries, as they say in Australia. I chose another chair.
As we chatted, I started loading up our firepit with twigs to maybe get a little inferno going. My guest loves backyard fires and immediately got in on the act. If he somehow ended up on the moon, he’d have a campfire going within an hour of leaving his spacecraft.
Eager to help, he picked up my unread flyers and started ripping them to pieces and rolling them up, sticking them under the twigs in preparation for starting the blaze.
Now, this is where I realized how Canadian I really am. I didn’t say a word as I watched my cherished flyers disappear. Ten feet away, there was a box of old papers that could have been used, but I just couldn’t bring myself to ask the flyer shredder to stop destroying my reading material.
It was a nice fire my family and I enjoyed Sunday night.
I picked up a two-by-four at the Two By Four Store today. Here is what the two-by-four specialists did with my new board before they put it in my car. And they are quite open about it if you ask them.
First, they fired up a bulldozer and ran over it six times. Then they went to a gym downtown and fetched the biggest body builder they could find and hired him to come and whack my two-by-four a dozen times with a sledgehammer. For fun before he left, he took a heavy chain to it and gave it 12 more beatings.
Then they took my board up to the highest part of the roof and threw it into a pile of rocks. Finally, they shut down the Two By Four Store for a while and every staff member came outside and jumped up and down on my board for five minutes.
“Is this one okay?” asked the young man as he slid the poor wooden mess into my car. I looked it over carefully.
“Yes, that’ll be fine,” I said, and as I drove away, because I was born and raised in Canada and am not allowed to emigrate to another country, I called out the window to him as I drove away, “Thanks!”
And as I did, my receipt for the board flew out my open window and now I couldn’t take it back, even if I did find something wrong with it when I got it home.
A fitness place has opened up next door to my house. Not five doors down – next door. Among the members of this establishment are about 25 young, beautiful women who need fitness training like I need caramel popcorn training. And on several days of the week and at various times of the day, these women emerge from the fitness centre wearing skintight outfits and jog up and down the sidewalk right in front of my house, about 20 feet away from me. They all lope like pony-tailed gazelles down to the end of the street, then turn around and jog past my house again, return to the fitness place and then do this all over. Ten or 20 times at a stretch. They don’t run as a big group, but one at a time with about 10 paces between them, like a speeded up fashion runway, if the fashions were all painted on.
I have never spent much time on our front porch. It is too hot there in the afternoon when the sun beats down. But lately it’s been hot out there in the morning and evening too, and yet I find myself sitting out there a lot more than I ever have in the past. Pop and chocolate bar in hand, dog by my side, unread book at the ready.
I swear I didn’t train him to do this but the dog sits by the front window all day and barks like mad when the joggers start, which is our cue to go out for some fresh air. Doggy appears to sense that an outside visit at those particular times seems to have the effect of improving my mood.
Sadly, now and then, a group of young men replace the women for a while so I text a neighbour a few houses up the street and she goes out on her porch to catch the parade. I go inside to refresh my drink. In a world that depends on good systems to keep society functioning well, this arrangement seems to have few if any flaws. I do not believe there is a statute anywhere in the Criminal Code which forbids a man from sitting on his front porch and looking towards his street from there. On the other hand, if I went to a fitness centre downtown, sat in a lawnchair by the door and took in the scenery, my lawnchair and I would be arrested inside of five minutes.
There are a few thousand houses in my town. Almost none of them has a fitness place right next door to them. I can’t explain it. Just another happy Mystery of the Universe. There must be someone, somewhere out there that I need to thank for this.
Cardiac arrest might be just around the corner, but what a way to go!
My life insurance company, not content with their monthly haul from our home, wants to sell me another policy which will pay $250,000 to my estate if I die accidentally. No medical tests necessary. So, I read the fine print. Apparently, it will be no slam dunk for my family to collect on this policy after I accidentally kick the bucket.
For starters, I can’t die while breaking into a bank, which is likely to happen in the absence of the $250,000, kind of a Catch 22 if there ever was one. Presumably, I will be shot by police during the heist or fall out of a window on my head.
I also cannot die while involved in any other criminal activity so I am going out tonight to disassemble my meth lab. As well, the company won’t pay if I take my own life “while sane or insane.” But what if I am not sane or insane when I do it?
I can’t use illicit drugs to die, although it looks like I can make it work if I can talk my doctor into giving me something deadly. I can’t swallow any poison around the house “whether voluntarily or otherwise.” That means if some rat poison accidentally gets mixed into my spaghetti sauce (not an impossible development), and I eat it not knowing it’s there, no dollars.
How is that fair?
I can’t inhale any type of gas “voluntarily or involuntarily” so there goes the whole car in the garage thing.
If I die during a visit to the dentist, the company won’t pay up. How do they know what my dentist is like, I wonder. No mention of who pays if my dentist dies during one of my visits.
I can’t die after contracting an infection so I may as well go back to washing my hands after changing the kitty litter before meals.
And this one gets me. If I fall out of an airplane or the plane crashes and I die, too bad, so sad – no moolah for my family. (This does not apply if I pay a fare and am on a regularly scheduled flight.)
And to top it all off, if I get killed in a war, no money. So, if the U.S. decides to retaliate for losing the war against Canada exactly 200 years ago this year and invades us, I’d better quick build a bomb shelter and get in it or the insurance company gets off scot free.
In other words, where can I sign up for this policy? It’s just too darned good to pass up!
I need to confess something, not that it is a thing that will earn me jail time, just a thing that’s always been my thing. I love artificial light. Ever since I was a kid, pushing a button or pulling a chain and having light instantly appear, has fascinated me.
So, imagine how my mind blew when I discovered a few years ago that light bulb inventor Thomas Edison used to live in a rented house just up the street from the school my kids would eventually attend in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, where I was born. Tommy, as I affectionately refer to him, was only 18 when he lived in my town and hadn’t invented artificial light at that point, but it had to have been on his mind where, no doubt, a light bulb went off in his head one day, just like in the cartoons.
Anyway, long story short (too late), I have never seen a lamp I didn’t want to turn on, daytime, nighttime, no matter. You can keep your sun if you want it – all it ever did for me was burn my skin and hurt my eyes. Artificial light is where it’s at, Baby, and in my advanced years now, I get to call pretty much everybody I see Baby.
So here is the problem, and, of course, there has to always be a problem.
For the past almost 30 years (I will be married 30 years this fall), there has been an invisible force following along behind me turning off all the lamps I turn on, especially during the day. During all this time, I have never actually witnessed this taking place, and a times, I thought my eyes were playing tricks, or maybe a lot of bulbs were mysteriously burning out on their own, but, no, it really has been happening.
A half hour ago, for example, at 10:30 a.m., I turned on two lamps beside my computer by the kitchen window through which a truckload of natural light was pouring. I went outside to sneeze and when I came back in, my beautiful lamps, the ones Tommy and I worked so hard to invent, were extinguished. And yet, no sign of a human being anywhere, so that couldn’t have been the cause of this sad turn of events.
Some sort of evil light killer is following me around all day and to be honest, it’s beginning to freak me out.
Oh boy do I wish Tommy were here. He’d know what to do. He’d probably invent a lamp that couldn’t be turned off.
I am not sure who is the sharpest tool in the toolbox. I know it isn’t me.
The other day I complained to my family about a fitness centre located next door to my house. I noticed that the members of the centre started gathering for their morning’s workout shortly after 6 a.m., which seemed to me a ridiculous hour, coming as it does exactly one hour after 5 a.m.
“Why do they even go there?” I asked at the supper table. “They all look in great shape, none of them seem to need it.” I thought my reasoning was airtight.
My daughter replied, “They look that way because they go to the fitness centre, Dad.” Well, that thought hadn’t occurred to me.
On the other hand, I am not the dumbest guy on the planet. And maybe this guy isn’t either but he’s in the running for the title.
The Florida man to whom I refer leaned in to kiss a rattlesnake the other day. The eastern diamondback snake, I guess, was resistant to the man’s romantic offer of a kiss on the lips and it bit the rattlesnake whisperer on the tongue. The man had to be air lifted to hospital.
I feel some sympathy for the man as no one appears to have gotten him to slow down long enough to advise him in the matter. I was fortunate to be raised better, and I say that without bragging. I do not know how many times my father told me not to kiss a rattlesnake on the lips. I’m not aware if there is anywhere else on a rattlesnake to safely plant a harmless buss but my Dad’s warnings sort of put me off rattlesnakes, at least as objects of potential romance.
I have not lived an exciting life but I also have picked up not even one rattlesnake bite along the way. Swallowed a few flying bugs by accident, but that’s about it.
I love garage sales, as long as I am the buyer and not the seller.
A few years ago, we held a sale in our driveway with less than stellar results. We should have done better – it was a mini-block sale with two houses across from ours both participating. We kept an eye on the progress of those sales and were embarrassed to see that the stuff was flying off the tables over at their homes.
It hurts when strangers turn their noses up at your crap even when it was you who turned your nose up at it first. These are people out looking to buy glorified throwaways and to think that yours isn’t worth a second glance kinda hurts.
We watched in dismay all morning as shoppers parked along the street, took a quick look at what we had on display in our humble driveway and then strolled over to the much better selection at our neighbours.
One neighbour in particular was selling his stuff like crazy and we watched as item by item, he was cleaned right out.
But that wasn’t the worst part. As he was packing up, he started to take down the table on which all his hot bargains had been arrayed before being hauled away in the trunks of a lot of cars. Sure enough, someone came along and made him an offer on the table he was busy putting away and he sold it right there and then.
We were a bit surprised someone didn’t make an offer on the clothes he was wearing, leaving him naked at the end of the day. Or the toothpick he was chewing on the whole while.
Four winters ago, the speedometer in our car quit. It just sat there on zero and wouldn’t move, no matter how fast we would drive it down the highway, at whatever speed we were driving it, who knows?
It was a dilemma. So, as I do with most dilemmas of this nature, I sat down to figure it out. And this is what I concluded.
1. This thing was unfixable. No question about it. Speedometers cannot be fixed.
2. On the unlikely chance that it could be fixed, it would probably cost at least $1,000 to fix it, maybe more. Maybe $2,000. That latter figure is about what the car was worth at the time.
3. Anyone, supposing he or she had the smarts, who could do the improbable and fix the speedometer, would likely have a shop in California or somewhere in northern British Columbia. It would cost another $2,000 to go to either of these shops to have it fixed.
4. And finally, and most importantly, this thing was unfixable. Even if I drove to California, the guy there would look it over and tell me he couldn’t fix it.
So, what to do, what to do?
Given all the above certainties, it was obvious that the only thing to do was drive the car into the ground without the benefit of a speedometer. There is a certain art to that, a skill I learned in time.
Other family members were not so adept at judging speeds without the benefit of a speedometer, and the speeding tickets began piling up. I paid them dutifully as the cost of doing business.
But a revolt was underway and I could see it coming. Finally, no one but me would drive the car. Fortunately, we had another car with a functioning speedometer and so that one saw a lot of use.
But this could not go on.
I dropped into a car dealership one day and asked them about fixing it. As I expected, repairing a speedometer in a car like this involves pretty much the same level of skill as leaving the space shuttle on a tether to jig a broken windshield wiper.
However, this news. There is a place an hour’s drive away called Canada Speedometer.
That was encouraging to hear and so I spent another month thinking about that.
Thursday, I phoned them and arranged to take the car in on Friday morning. I drove there, handed a young man my keys and that was the last I saw of my car. I sat in the waiting room as he examined the unfixable speedometer, and waited patiently for him to return with the bad news.
An hour after I gave him my keys, the lad came into the room and handed them back to me.
“You’re all set,” he said.
Had he said, “It’s twins, a boy and girl. Congratulations,” I could not have been happier. But I didn’t understand.
“You mean it’s fixed?” I asked, and as he explained how he had fixed the unfixable thing, I stood there stunned, thinking up names for the twins. I was leaning toward Kenneth and Carol. I have always liked Carol.
The bill was $226. And the speedometer is guaranteed for as long as I own the car, which, coincidentally, is now worth $226.
But I have found that life is pretty much one big, long regret. Had I gone to the phone five minutes after the speedometer broke four years ago, I would have been up and running and could have avoided endless hours of worry, multiple brushes with the law and a near violent revolt by members of my family, even the one who vowed to love me and support me till I am dead.
I have not been able to stay out of the car since Friday. I am out driving up and down the roads just for the pleasure of seeing that speedometer rise to 20, then 60, then 80 …
I remember bits and pieces of our wedding rehearsal party in 1989. Nothing too wild stands out. Went to the church, maybe had some sandwiches after. Pretty dull affair, I guess, compared to some that are held these days.
Like the one in New York recently where a massive brawl broke out, started by a brother of the bride-to-be who punched a brother of her future husband square in the face.
Before long, like in a movie, the whole group was smacking away, including the two fathers involved who also squared off.
The $350,000 wedding, scheduled for the next day, was called off. A pity, really, as this was obviously a match made in Heaven.
Lawsuits are flying back and forth and the poor would-be husband wants to be paid back for the $125,000 he spent on his fiancé’s ring.
Unfortunately, both families were brought low by a terrible attack of affluenza.
I am grateful nothing like this took place at our rehearsal party. Being a longtime, registered, card-carrying scaredy-cat, I would have jumped in my car and took off. I might still be out there driving around, 28 years later.
I long for the days when stores weren’t open at night. Or early in the morning. Or 24 hours a day.
On Thursday, I was wandering around a grocery store at 7:30 in the morning looking for a loaf of bread. Later that day, at almost 9 p.m., when I should have been snuggling in my onesie with the dog on my lap watching some ridiculous TV show, I was instead the designated senior out shopping for milk and eggs with my old man discount.
I finally got through the checkout, and as I placed my booty in the basket, the egg carton peeked open, revealing brown eggs. I thought, rightly, that we always get white eggs.
So I went back to the woman at the checkout who wasn’t pleased. “Give me your receipt,” she said. I fumbled through my overladen pockets and produced the already crumpled receipt. She checked it over, then wondered aloud how we were going to do this.
“What if I just give you the cash for the brown eggs and then you can use that to buy the white eggs,” she suggested. “Aren’t they the same price?” I wondered. No, the brown are more expensive. The chickens have to be in a fowl mood to poop out the brown ones, I guess.
So, the clerk gave me $3.50 in cash and then trundled off huffily to get the white eggs. But, before I could be on my way, she produced a form I had to fill out, to prove I am not some sort of evil serial egg exchanger. I had to fill in my full name, address and phone number (in case the egg inspector or one of the chickens needed to call, I guess.)
So, after the paperwork was done, I gave the woman some coins for the white eggs, and departed, leaving her less happy than when I arrived. I have seen this look before. I wish I could say this was the first time a woman has become unhappy after dealing with me for a while.
I don’t get in a bad mood very often these days but when I do, I am like a car driving off a cliff. I go down, face first, very quickly. I was a raving lunatic by the time I arrived home.
So these were the bookends of my day. Early in the store for bread, late in the store for eggs and milk.
They say life was simpler in the old days. It was. You sat down, made a list, drove to town, bought all your stuff and drove home. Went in the house and never came out again. What would have been the point? NOTHING WAS OPEN! Even the goddamned chickens were sleeping. (See, I’m still mad.)
Most days, these days, I feel like a human guinea pig. Those who practise the healing arts are at me like tigers on a wildebeest.
On the positive side, if I didn’t have a body to try to keep alive and functioning, I would have no social life at all.
I see my opthamologist twice a year, my optometrist, once a year. I am in the dentist’s chair four times a year, the same number of times my family doctor wants to go over the bad news with me. Four times a year I get my blood drawn and tested. Sometimes I pee in a bottle.
I wander over to a nearby big city at least twice year to see my dermatologist and a couple of weeks ago, I went to a hearing centre to find out why I can’t hear the people in my family anymore. Not even the dog.
Also, some of these specialists send me to see other specialists, more special than they themselves are, I guess. I have ultrasounds taken of my belly and a while back, a CT scan. I don’t even ask why. If you know why, don’t tell me!
I think it is a great thing that all these folks are working feverishly to keep me out of Avondale Cemetery, but the effort leaves me a bit tired, to be honest. Not to mention the fact that sooner or later, they’re all going to fail.
One reason for my weariness is I get scolded, almost mercilessly, by everyone of these practitioners whenever I am in their office. I pretty much never do what I am told to do. It isn’t that I can’t see the logic in all their careful instructions to me. It’s just that I forget them before I get home. And I am lazy.
Not to mention the fact that things are getting complicated. My dental hygienist told me I should be brushing my tongue to reduce the bacteria in my mouth and thus, save my teeth. So, she gave me a toothbrush. I joked that what I needed was a tongue brush. Turns out, they have them. Now I have one. A week later, it is still in its package.
My dermatologist has given me three different creams – two for my head and one for my face. I apply these every night. Also, she has instructed me to use only one kind of soap and one shampoo and I also have a special cream to apply to other dry areas of my body. Once in a while I dab some of that on, on the places I can still reach, that is.
I will be honest with you. I don’t know where I picked this up, but being scolded is not my favourite thing to endure. But what choice do I have and don’t tell me I could avoid all this by just doing what they say. I tried that one day and hated it. It was my worst 24 hours ever.
So here I sit, coming on to the midnight hour, preparing to swallow the 14 pills (not exaggerating) I was supposed to take at noon. For some reason, though most of them are small, I have a hard time choking down all those suckers. Sometimes they come back up.
An electric toothbrush was ordered, so I will need to use it before bed, starting with the gums. And into my eyes I will squirt a couple of messy eyedrops. In the shower, I pour baby oil in each ear and wash it out with warm water, as per my family doctor’s instructions. Then I slip on the baby oil on the shower floor and practically knock myself out.
With all this expert care I am receiving I am going to be the best-looking guy at the funeral home someday.
The big question, however, is how badly do we want them? To what lengths would we go to get a thing we want?
I think I discovered an answer to that question, at least for myself, this afternoon. It was a wake-up call, of sorts, but I am only human.
The driver’s side sun visor gave out on our very old car recently (ten years ago, to be exact, but in the history of the universe, that is pretty recent.) Today was the day the repair was going to happen. It started off as an idea and grew within an hour to a maniacal obsession.
The old visor broke one sad day and since then, it has flopped around like a hapless hockey goalie trying hard to bring Toronto a Stanley Cup, something it last won when I was 16. I am now 73. It was as useless as would-be milk-producing flexible fixtures on a bull.
Wide-eyed and determined as a new Toronto hockey coach, I drove our old bucket of bolts to the auto recyclers. I hate going there because the first thing they ask me when they see what I am driving is how much it would take to get me to leave it there. An even older vehicle I took there a couple of years ago fetched me $300 and bulged the left pocket of my jeans as I walked home.
But I fended off any such question this time by walking in with my useless sun visor in hand, cleverly having removed it before entering the premises. They said they could get me one from another ancient automobile for $20.
“Sold,” I yelled and was invited to follow a young fellow through the office and out into the junkyard. This rusty old car and truck cemetery was a massive collection of hazards for a sometimes stumblebum like me. But treading carefully, I managed to make it to a car similar to ours.
Similar, but different, in a few respects. It had no doors, and no seats. Ours at least has those.
But it had a crackerjack of a sun visor. With one flaw. The mirror on it had been removed and sold to an earlier customer. No matter, I thought. I don’t need a sun visor to indicate what a fine-looking fellow am I.
But then came a wrinkle. The auto recycler guy who stood before me asked me if I could take his screwdriver and remove my treasure myself. He had hurt himself and was in some pain. At that point I would have stood on my head in the greasy mud we had waded through to get there and sang the national anthem backwards. In French.
Now here is where a man knows he really wants something. The driver’s seat was missing, of course, which meant I would have to sit on the floor while unscrewing the sun visor. Because the car doors were missing, recent downpours of rain had left quite the sizeable lake on the car floor.
Did I object, hesitate even? Did Lincoln give away his ticket to Ford’s Theatre that fateful night in April?
I worked feverishly, trying to minimize the soaking my clothes were absorbing as I sat on a car floor covered in several inches of water.
But as I walked away a few minutes later, “new” sun visor in hand, I paused to check out a few other cars, some missing a hood, a steering wheel, tires, even engines, and I thought how good any one of those beauties would look in my driveway.
It was a sloshy ride home as I sat on a big shopping bag. But the sun setting in the west didn’t even bother trying to blind me with its brilliance. And with my new visor, it never will again.
Times such as this lets a man know what a winner he is. A sitdown kind of guy ready for his next challenge.
Today is the deadline for submitting my census questionnaire to the Government of Canada. I sat down at my computer a half an hour ago to complete the forms online. I decided, for once, to read every word of the instructions before I began.
Here is the first line of the instructions:
“Completing an online questionnaire is easy.”
I now believe this line is the equivalent of a doctor or nurse telling me to, “Relax. You’re not going to feel a thing.” After I receive that advice, I immediately feel a thing.
Following “completing an online questionnaire is easy” are 2,707 words, broken up into 25 sections, explaining to me how easy this is going to be.
Wish me luck as I strap myself into the car on this roller coaster ride.
(Whoops. I just found another eight easy instruction items. A total of 1,111 more words. And I skipped a section of Frequently Asked Questions which consumes 1,089 more words. That means the details for the easy online questionnaire are laid out in 4,907 words which is almost twice as many as the eulogy I am writing for the prime minister of Canada to read at my funeral someday far into the future. The tribute to be given by Justin Trudeau begins, “Jim Hagarty was an expert at completing his census online.”)
P.S. I just completed my census online. It was a breeze. Took 20 minutes. I didn’t feel a thing.
Sometimes history repeats itself but it can take a long time and a keen eye to recognize when it rolls around again.
Sixty years ago, between planting the crops and when the time came around to harvest them, we would often keep ourselves occupied fixing the fences on our farm. To a boy of 13, those fences seemed to go on forever and were constantly in need of fixing.
I was the designated helper, my Dad the chief fence fixer.
“Here, hold this,” I’d be ordered, as I dutifully held a tool, or a post or some wire. It seemed nothing that would involve using my brain was assigned to me. Mostly I held things while the chief fence surgeon performed his operations. Nevertheless, depending on what I was told to hold, it sometimes required me to hold things, like a fence post, straighter than I seemed capable of holding it. But I tried.
Most times, my job was pretty boring, but Dad had a terrible aversion to the passing of time and sun going down and we often worked till it was almost too dark to see what we were doing. Still, he would persist.
“Hold that straighter,” I’d be commanded, though I was by that time barely able to see what I was holding, let alone whether or not it was straight.
An added complication at the point was how the evening would grow chilly as the night fell. And still we worked. Many times I would glance enviously at our farmhouse, where I knew some of my siblings, especially my four sisters, were probably watching TV.
Oh, how I longed to be in that warm, lamplit old house watching TV at those moments. Shivering, trying to hold things straight …
So, one day last week, now at 73, I was helping my son on a project to erect a new privacy fence around our home in the city, farm life and my Dad many years gone from the scene. Several times, I was told to hold a tool, or a board, or a post. Once again, I was not the brains of the operation.
And darkness began to settle in. Along with a drop in the air temperature. I was not dressed warmly enough for this adventure.
I looked with a growing longingness in the direction of our house, not far away, where I imagined other, luckier family members were watching TV. My son had obviously inherited his grandfather’s imperviousness to the absence of light and the drop in air temperature.
However, there was one difference I noticed and appreciated.
You might be getting the idea by now that I think the gun culture in the United States is insane, but you could not be more wrong. More guns, everywhere, is the only answer.
Everywhere, say, like up your butt.
And why not? Did nature not design the human buttocks as a perfectly formed holster, where a loaded pistol would fit wonderfully? Of course it did.
And that is why a 21-year-old New Jersey man shoved the stolen, automatic .25-caliber handgun up where the sun don’t shine when police suspected he was hiding something. They found the weapon, of course, killjoys that they are.
If I were Darquan R. Lee, I would be scared to death that one of my big sneezes or hiccups or other bodily noise emissions might cause the weapon to blow my brains out. Then I realized that it would be impossible to blow out Mr. Lee’s brains even if he’d shoved a bazooka up his bazoom. To be effective, a gun must have a target, and I believe it is missing in this case.
But if it did go off, that would be one heck of a bowel movement, wouldn’t it? No better laxative exists, I suppose.
I went to make myself a piece of toast on Friday, only to be horrified to discover the toaster was broken, which might suggest to you that it doesn’t take a lot to horrify me. The plunger that carries the bread down into the guts of the machine to be toasted wouldn’t stay down.
I took the bloody thing out to my workbench in the garage where I realized fairly quickly that I have no idea how to fix a toaster. So, I went back into the house and announced, much as I might yell, “The toast is done,” that “The toaster is done.”
This news was not welcomed by the horde of toast-loving family members so I assured them to not fret. I would take care of things, as I always do.
The next day, with Mother’s Day less than 24 hours away, it suddenly occurred to me that a new toaster would make a perfect Mother’s Day gift. So out to the shops I went and found a really nice one in my price range. My price range, by the way, starts at a dollar and ends when I start crying.
I was delighted at the reception given to the new toaster by the family, especially the mother among us. She immediately set it up and marvelled at it several times that evening.
Uncharacteristically, I was feeling pretty good about myself.
I collect user’s instructional manuals like Trump men collect wives and in my filing cabinet I have several very fat files stuffed with every kind of document from thin to thick. I asked my wife where the manual for the new toaster might be. She produced it and I read it after everyone had gone home from Mother’s Day.
Imagine my surprise when I read the section in the manual about how the plunger would not stay down if the toaster was not plugged in. Immediately, being not as dumb as you might think I am, I realized why our old toaster had failed.
The next day, I fished out the forlorn old toaster from the garbage can where I had discarded it. Fortunately, nothing disgusting such as dog poo had touched the machine. I brushed it off, plugged it in, and presto chango, it worked just as fine as it had always done.
Immediately, my mind went to somewhere it shouldn’t have ventured, I now know. I will take the new toaster back to the store.
But here are a couple of realities I soon became aware of. You don’t rip a new toaster out of the hands of a recent celebrant of Mother’s Day. And as the new toaster had been put to good use all day Sunday toasting up bread slices, bagels and even hamburger buns, the objection was raised that the machine had already been put to use and it would be wrong to let some unsuspecting soul buy a used toaster, thinking it was new.
So, between the realization that mothers do not like to have their Mother’s Day gifts torn from their hands the day after, along with the morality of returning a used toaster, pretending it was unused, I was condemned to suffer a dark depression all day. Much like the colour of bread that has been left in a toaster too long.
This is where an addictive personality and desperation meet. I have been hooked for almost two weeks on a TV series. Five seasons have been filmed. The first three are available on Netflix.
So, I burned through those 30-plus episodes like newspapers in a fireplace. “MORE!!!!” came the scream from me into the ether in the middle of the night.
I went searching for seasons four and five. They are legally available through a number of sources, in Canada mostly on Super Channel. But my need for these remaining episodes of this program overwhelmed any sense of morality I have tried to encourage in myself over almost seven decades.
If I could have found these shows burned onto an old videotape, I would have traded them for my car in a back alley from a mean-looking guy in a trenchcoat.
Therefore, I went searching the Internet and found them streamed there for free. But not on one website. It was like picking broken glass out of your granola breakfast cereal. This morning, I sit here with no more of my show to watch. But this is what I had to endure and was willing to put with.
On several of my bootleg shows on the Internet, the sound was somehow slowed down, so that every character in the programs had very deep and drawly voices, even the women and kids. They all sounded like monsters in a horror flick. I got used to that.
Other shows appeared backwards. I knew this by realizing that any words printed such as store signs, etc., were backwards. Small price to pay.
And in a couple of others, the entire image was magnified so only about 80 per cent of the actual footage showed on my monitor. I had to imagine what I was missing on the outer edges of the picture.
In a couple of other shows, the audio and visual elements of the program were completely out of sync by about five or ten seconds. The characters would move their mouths in silence, and then later, when they might not even be still in the scene, their lines would be heard.
And in the final show I watched, a Christmas special, the image was blurry, for some reason. But I charged ahead, watching as though I had left my glasses on the highway for someone to run over. The only thing I can compare this ordeal to is being so desperate for a chocolate bar and realizing all the ones in the off-the-beaten-path gas station have best-before dates long expired. You rifle through all the bad ones available to try to find the most recently out-of-date one. You hope, as you unwrap it carefully, that the chocolate hasn’t turned white, not that you would reject it if it had. This is an experience I have had.
So here I sit, filled and empty at the same time. There are still three shows left in the current season. They aren’t even available yet illegally. The next one airs tonight. Guess I will be forced once again into that back alley to look for my friend in the trenchcoat.
Then I will spend the rest of my day wondering why bad guys love trenchcoats.
I was a bit late and frazzled. I had a meeting downtown that I expected might last two or three hours so I needed a parking meter that allowed lots of time.
Meter reading is done privately in our town now so the meter hawks are swarming everywhere, waiting to pounce on any prey, and I am determined to never again get another silly $15 ticket. I drove around and there it was – a meter that allowed three hours and not far from my meeting spot. Perfect.
Before I left the house, I reached into the change jar and filled one of my pockets with nickels, dimes and quarters. When I finished parking, I rejoiced when I saw 40 minutes left on my meter. Fantastic. So, I started stuffing in the coins and the time started adding up – one hour, two, then three. Yay.
One last check before I left revealed a problem, however. I had filled the wrong meter, for the car parked behind mine. Crap.
I quickly searched my suddenly lighter pocket for my remaining coins and started dropping them in the right side of the stupid machine. Success. Three hours.
To the coin collectors: You’re welcome (you thieving bandits).
In my younger days, I pursued young women like Sydney Crosby chases the Stanley Cup. But if I was Crosby, I was out on the ice in my galoshes with a broom for a hockey stick. No Stanley Cups on my mantle.
Then out of frustration I talked to a wise friend who wore a lovely Stanley Cup ring on his left hand.
“I want to ask this woman out, but I can’t figure out what she would like to do,” I said.
“Who cares what she would like to do?” came his shocking reply. “Decide what you would like to do and find a woman who would like to do that too.”
That was the day I took off my galoshes and threw away my broom. Next time you see me, ask me to show you my Stanley Cup ring.
A friend of ours almost fell down laughing one day when my fiancé and I told her we were all excited because we were getting together that night to watch the U.S. vice-presidential debate on TV. Not the presidential debate. The vice-presidential debate. And both of us are Canadians.
Birds of a feather …
(Update 2024: Thirty-six years together. A son and a daughter. Still watching U.S. debates.)
My groundhog was out wandering around our backyard yesterday, looking for all the world like a Kennedy on vacation at Hyannis Port in spite of the fact that I stuck a garden hose down his hole under my shed the other day and flushed him out the other hole these wily gophers make sure to excavate for emergencies such as this.
After a few gallons descended on him, he came shooting out of his trench like a seal at feeding time.
Not since I first caught glimpse of the all-you-can-eat buffet at a popular local pizzeria have I seen any creature move so fast. (The second in line almost overtook me but I fought him off bravely.)
If the fire department came over to my house and for some reason filled it up with water while I was inside, I’d probably get out too and be reluctant to return, especially if my cherry pie was ruined.
I assumed the groundhog and I would share the same thought process on that but I was wrong. Either I don’t think like a groundhog or he doesn’t think like a man.
So, today, my ugly little friend (sorry, but he’s no George Clooney), it’s just you and me in combat once again now that you have returned. I will be armed this time with a bag of dirty cat litter, which an Internet search tells me you hate, and a big heavy rock to place over your hole after litter and soil have filled it in.
Have a nice summer at the neighbour’s, Buddy.
By the way, I don’t hate the groundhog but I can’t take the chance he’ll mess up our little poodle which is about the size of the hog and as bold as a stand-up comedian. Our veterinary hospital charges a bundle just to poof up his eyebrows so I shudder at the thought of how much it would cost to put a gopher-mangled dog back together again.
I will let you know how things work out. I only hope my next status update is not sent from a jail cell or the inside of a dog crate at the local Humane Society.
(Update: As I was advised would happen, the groundhog left and built a new home in the neighbours’ yard. I feel as guilty about that as I did when I beat out that guy second in line at the pizzeria.)
Our cat Luigi and I have different opinions regarding the ownership of my office chair on wheels. Simply put, he believes it’s his, I think it’s mine.
And while the chair belongs to him, apparently, the strange thing is, he never wants to lie in it overnight when I am also not inclined to use it. It seems to me that part of his motivation in occupying my chair all day is to deprive me of the privilege for some unknown cat reason.
Luigi and his twin brother Mario are big, big boys. People who come to our door are startled to see these two lazy felines with bodies as big as a small dog, saunter over to greet them, maybe flop down for a bellyrub. So, when Luigi jumps into my chair, he spreads himself out in order to take over 95 per cent of the surface of the seat. And there he sleeps – all day. Or tries to.
When I want to use the chair, I either have to share it with him, which is not a lot of fun, or throw him out of it which is akin to peeling off a blood sucker while swimming down at the pond. He does not go easily. I can tip over the chair to a 90-degree angle and still he hangs on.
So, a lot of the time, we share it. He takes up 80 per cent, I get the front 20. And he shows his annoyance with frequent loud and disgusted grumbles.
I grumble back, but it doesn’t do me much good. As it doesn’t in my wider life beyond our chair.
It can be hard to live – and die – in Greece. Especially die. Because the judicial system there is tough on dead people and it’s not easy to defend yourself when being dead prevents you from showing up in court to argue your case.
This week, a judge there convicted a dead guy of stealing electricity. The guy’s lawyer argued that his client’s current state of deadness should get him off the hotseat but the astute judge, ever wary of the criminal trick of dying to avoid justice, wasn’t having any of it. “Guilty as Charged!!!” I don’t know if “Charged!!!” was related in any way to the fact that the item stolen was electricity, but I don’t think it was.
In any case, sentencing has been postponed. The death penalty is not being considered as that would seem to be a bit redundant in this case. Overkill, if you will. So, house arrest, maybe. However, it is rumoured the defendant has gone underground to avoid paying for his crime. But, I think he has boxed himself in. I think he is in deep.
Thank God the judge sees through all that. And I am looking forward to the rulings he makes after he himself has died. I expect they will be groundbreaking.
P.S. You may be thinking that it does not make sense to convict a dead man of a crime. This just shows your ignorance of legal matters. The law has several functions beyond the simple one of deciding penalties. A bigger one is to prevent the establishing of precedents that can result over time in injury to the social fabric. In this case, if one dead guy is able to get away with stealing electricity, this will be open the door to similar abuses by other dead guys. Soon, people who are no longer alive may start stealing other commodities, committing other crimes, all the while thinking they will pay no penalty.
It is important to show that people cannot get away with anti-social behaviour based on the flimsy excuse that they are dead. We are fortunate in Canada where our legal system contains few loopholes and electricity theft by the dead is not a significant problem here. A death certificate is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
My neighbour was out polishing his Corvette today so I told him he was doing a good job.
“Everybody’s got to have a toy, Jim,” he said. “Life is short.”
I agreed with him and said I wondered what my toy would be. My laptop? My guitar?
“Whatever happened to your sports car?” he asked. I told him we had to trade it in on a more practical car when the family came along. “I saw one just like it in town the other day,” I said. “Maybe I’ll get one again someday.”
“Don’t wait too long,” said my neighbour. “Life is short.”
I kind of wished he’d quit saying that. By the way, he has two Corvettes. And he isn’t rich.
He reminds of a musician friend of mine who at one point had 12 high-quality guitars, one of them worth $5,000. He said he had no use for RRSPs and CICs and any other savings plans. He’d rather have his savings sitting right there in his studio where he can see them and polish them and play them. And when the rainy day comes, he can sell a guitar or any number of them.
My musical friend has never commented to me on how short life is but I have a feeling he’s just itching to.
Here is something you might not want to say shortly after you sit down to a wonderful roast pork Sunday supper.
After the cook receives several compliments on her festive presentation, whereupon she credits the new meat thermometer for her success, don’t say this:
“Where is this new meat thermometer?” please don’t ask. “It’s the one on the fridge,” is the reply.
“Oh,” you must never say. “I thought that was a rectal thermometer.” A stunned silence will follow this comment, if you are a big enough idiot to say it.
“But don’t worry,” you might stupidly follow up. “I used it on the dog.”
This comment is followed up by the agonizing sound of cutlery being dropped from mid-air onto plates.
“The good news is, the dog is fine,” you try to recover. “And it’s okay. I wiped it off on my pants.”
Years ago, my family hired a carpenter to come in and build a penalty box in the rec room downstairs for wayward members of the clan. So far, I have been the only one to have ever used it.
But here is where my loved ones made a critical mistake.
I like sitting in the box and contemplating the wonders of the Universe. Some of my best ideas have been formulated while sitting within its confines.
And I always emerge from my time out invigorated, ready for my next challenge.
My dietitian is a dreamer which is good because the world needs more dreamers. She wants me to give up frozen orange juice and eat real oranges instead. Something about fibre.
She hasn’t used the words but others in her profession have referred to orange juice as “yellow pop” which, to me, is offensive. But my dietitian seems so earnest about these things and believes everything she says. Who am I to argue?
This morning, I took out the orange juice, then put the container back into the fridge and picked up a real, live orange instead. It took quite an effort to peel the giant sucker, with its skin as tough as a rhino’s, but with the help of a spoon I finally got the job done. But even with the outside layer gone, there was another white subskin that clung to the fruit like a leach to a pond swimmer. I tried to remove it but gave up.
I broke the thing up into sections and started eating them. Man were they tough to gobble up and choke down. And sour. By the time I finished, I was a mess. Covered in orange juice from chin to shin. I rushed to the kitchen sink and got myself cleaned up.
I have bad news for my dietitian. This was the worst-tasting orange I have ever eaten. I doubt the experience will be repeated soon.
About then, a family member began asking around to find out what happened to the grapefruit that had been sitting on the counter near the toaster.
I feel sorry for my dietitian. She earns every penny she makes. I recommend she be given a raise, in fact. She has to deal with some very confused individuals, I thought, as I reached back into the fridge for the orange juice to wash down the taste of my orange.
I live in a Canadian city that has a population of 35,0000 plus. It’s a pretty good place but I have always felt a little nervous living in the community where I was born.
That is why I am pulling up stakes next week and moving to Kennesaw, Georgia, a city the same size as mine but with one major attractive difference. Every home in Kennesaw is required by law to have a gun on the premises. Every home. REQUIRED. BY. LAW. It is not just legal to own a handgun, shotgun, rocket launcher, tank, etc., it is mandatory.
I would feel much safer living there knowing that whenever I knocked on someone’s door, the owner of that home would be armed. And everyone who knocked on mine would know that I am packing heat as well. That would be so great.
I had a big fat groundhog in my backyard last summer. Took me weeks to encourage him to move on. In Kennesaw: BAM!!! Critter gone. Noisy freakin’ crows in my maple trees. BAM!!! BAM!!! BAM!!! What is that I hear? No crows. Yay. Annoying door-to-door salesmen? I’m pretty sure there is no such creature roaming the streets of Kennesaw.
Yes, this morning six people were shot in Kennesaw and the shooter was shot and killed but, hey, we have traffic accidents in my town but we don’t ban the cars, do we? Exactly.
l will miss you all but if you’re ever down in Kennesaw, drop in any time. We can put on some bulletproof vests and helmets and take a stroll downtown. Kennesaw is lovely this time of year. It hardly ever rains during graveyard services.
I think I began to see the point at which western society was beginning to reach peak decadence when the patio fan was invented and began selling.
In the first place, a patio itself – basically an outdoor living room – is a bit of a luxury our ancestors wouldn’t have dreamed of, but attempting to do the wind’s job for those seated on the patio by harnessing a breeze-producing machine is maybe a bit excessive. Some of these fans can be hooked to garden hoses and blow a “cooling mist” over the happy family.
But nothing spells “over the top” like patio heaters which can run a buyer a cool $3,000. So, you want to sit outside but it’s a little chilly out there so you buy a machine which can do the sun’s job for it. Previous generations, if it was cold outside, would have stayed inside but modern humans see no need for that.
So, a patio heater it is then.
But not a heater with just an on/off switch. Not on your life. Here is the product descriptions for a $3,000 jobbie.
This patio heater comes with: a variable input temperature control panel, a modulating gas burner, a low-noise combustion air blower, a visual burner inspection sightglass, a combustion and air-proving safety switch, a three-try spark ignition control, a 100 per cent safety shut-off, a low-voltage control connection, a four-inch heat-treated aluminized combustion tube, an aluminum standard reflector, tube couplers, a heat economizer baffle, stainless steel hangers, a decorative grille, an indicator light, and stainless steel burner head construction.
Or you could just go in the house and put on a sweater before coming back outside. Special features: Wool, sleeves, five big buttons. Also available at extra cost: a hoodie.
My best friend and I were well familiar with the ditches along the almost two miles or so from our farms to the little crossroads of Bornholm northwest of Stratford, Ontario, Canada, when we were growing up. On a warm summer’s day, he would walk on one side of the road, I on the other, and we’d scour the ditches for bottles that we could cash in at the store or the nearby gas station for pop and potato chips. A regular-sized eight-ounce or 10-ounce pop bottle would net us two cents while a large 28-ounce bottle would put five cents in our pockets.
Yahoo!
Because motorists in those days would throw everything but the kitchen sink in the ditches as they drove along, we hardly ever ran out of a supply of refillable glass bottles to turn in. It didn’t take many to pay for our glorious booty from the store. I remember small bags of potato chips that cost a nickel, and pop that you could buy for seven or eight cents for a small bottle to 10 cents for a bigger one.
Our treasure trove took a little bit of a hit one summer, however, when a man in the village started walking the ditches too. We weren’t too happy with this trespasser but we couldn’t do much about him. Our hauls began to dwindle and eventually, so did our interest in fishing the ditches for funds to pay for our habits.
I believe it was a short time after our ditch-digging days ended that we discovered the miracle of girls. We soon found that they were the only worthwhile subject of discussion and would be that for many years to follow.
We hardly ever talked about pop and chips anymore.
But we did learn fairly quickly, as I recall, that it was much easier to find bottles in the roadside ditches than it was to acquire the friendship of girls, as intriguing as they were to us, in reality if not only in our dreams.
There was a little thing going around on Facebook asking users what we would say if we had a chance to talk to our younger selves. What advice would we offer that young whippersnapper who grew into the old guy we are today?
I can think of many things I might say but the most important piece of wisdom I would offer young Jim would be career-related. I would tell my younger self to legally change his name to Gordon. Why my parents never had the good sense to do that in the first place, I don’t know, but for someone destined for a working life putting himself before the public through artistic and entertainment endeavours, Gordon is the only and best name for any Canadian boy.
All the greats in this big country are named Gordon. Gordon Howe, greatest hockey player ever, Gordon Lightfoot, greatest folk musician the country has ever produced, and Gordon Pinsent, one of the finest actors anywhere. Also Gordon Downie, lead singer of The Tragically Hip rock band.
And I grew up watching a crabby old TV journalist/broadcaster named Gordon Sinclair, a character if there ever was one, and a guy I almost ran over one day as I nervously chartered the insane Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. As I managed to screech to a halt just in time, he turned, inches from the hood of my car, and gave me a look I imagine only an upset Gordon could give. After all, I once saw Gordon Lightfoot quit playing one of his hits on stage because the audience wouldn’t stop clapping along to it.
“This is not a clap-along song,” he yelled at us, before refusing to return to it.
Seems to me, the given name Gordon is almost a ticket to success in Canada.
Instead, Jim. What am I supposed to do with that? Even the proper form for it, James, hasn’t got the same Gordian touch.
There has never been a Gordon in my family going back hundreds of years. I think this explains the mediocrity of our contributions to the world of sports and entertainment. There is no Stanley Cup, Grammy or Oscar on my mantle or the mantles of any of my relatives.
People get all bent out of shape over the smallest things. A woman going through a fast-food drivethrough in Michigan ordered bacon on her burger. It came with no bacon. So, she complained.
The servers at the window apologized and gave her a free meal. The second burger had no bacon.
Now some would say that for a place to screw up like this twice in a row is no big deal but to those people I say, “Bacon! They forgot the BACON!” It isn’t as though they failed to toss in some extra relish, mustard or ketchup. They forgot the bacon. TWICE.
Now, what would you do? So would I. And so would our heroine who was so grievously denied her bacon. She pulled out her gun and fired a bullet into the restaurant.
Please, if you are a bleeding heart, please stop reading. Because this is the proper use of a firearm. When a restaurant fails to come across with the bacon, it’s time to go all Yosemite Sam on it. I am woman, hear me roar! Guns are made to straighten out situations just such as these.
Unfortunately, for our modern-day Annie Oakley, a pinko, commie, woke, liberal judge in Michigan thought differently. Hopefully, all the burgers in the prison for the next few years will be served up with lots of bacon.
I am just about finished building a wooden wagon on wheels that can be used to haul speakers and monitors around for jam sessions my musician friends and I hold on Friday nights. I have never built anything like this and didn’t know that I could. But a fellow musician showed up at my house with four wheels that he had bought and he asked me to build it because I told him I had some space and a few tools.
I took on the job, pretty sure I’d make a total mess of it because I enjoy rough carpentry but I am far from a fine craftsman. But my buddy had such confidence in me, that somehow, I found the know-how to smack the thing together.
He also kept a bit of pressure on, calling to find out how it was coming along. So, the friendly timeline combined with his total confidence in me, has produced this little vehicle which I will paint today.
Being a perfectionist, I put more lumber into it than an old sailing ship the pirates travelled in and it’s so heavy, we will need another wagon to carry it to the place we want it to be.
I am pretty proud of my creation, however, and know that it only came about because of my friend’s belief that I could do it.
Sometimes, it seems, trying to live up to someone else’s expectations is not such a bad thing.
I have no plans to hang around with Dylan McWilliams. Three years ago, the Colorado resident was out hiking in Utah when he was bit by a rattlesnake. A year later, he was attacked by a 300-pound black bear when he was camping in his home state. The bear grabbed his head and started pulling him away from his friends but they raised a fuss and Dylan was freed.
And last week, the poor man was bit in the leg by a shark while he was boogie-boarding (whatever that is) near Hawaii. He kicked the seven-foot-long tiger shark as hard as he could then swam to shore.
If all this happened to me, I would be downright negative. I would lock myself in my bedroom and never come out again. I would nail boards over the windows. And wear an impenetrable metal suit.
But that’s not how old Dylan rolls.
“I don’t blame the shark, I don’t blame the bear, and I don’t blame the rattlesnake,” he said. “I’m just mad that I can’t get back in the water for a couple days.”
Dylan is welcome to think what he wants. As for me, I blame the shark, the bear and the rattlesnake. They are a bunch of nasty critters and I have lost all respect for them.
The technology apparently exists which will allow dead recording artists to go back into their studios. The long-gone Elvis Presleys, Janis Joplins, Roy Orbisons and Frank Sinatras of the entertainment world could, theoretically, release new recordings of songs they never sang while they were alive nor even ever heard. The Beatles, it seems, could be getting back together after all one of these days.
“Imagine” an album by John Lennon of new songs written by his sons. Or by Paul McCartney.
This follows on the prospects of dead actors appearing in new movies. James Dean, dead for 70 years, was to appear in a fresh movie a couple of years ago, though that seemed to be a sort of flash-in-the-pan news story that went away fairly quickly. But there have been at least a couple of movies made featuring older actors appearing alongside their younger selves, hardly confusing at all.
And then there are live performances by dead music stars via holographic imagery who appear on stage backed up by very alive, live orchestras. A few years ago, one of the biggest rock stars in Japan was a hologram of a totally made-up female singer who has never existed in real life.
This is not even to get into robots who will likely make all of the above seem like mere child’s play. As far as I am aware, which isn’t very far, China is already experimenting with robot TV news presenters.
If any of this seems strange to us in 2021, it is probably no more mysterious than our ancestors when they first saw “horseless” carriages driving down the street on their own power. Or when they turned the buttons on a little box and heard voices and music coming out of a speaker. Not to mention advances such as movies, airplanes, and TVs, let alone space exploration.
It’s a fast-moving world now and the timeline for the development of new technologies is shrinking every day. Now, instead of it taking years to move from one mode to another – wax records to compact discs, for example – it is taking mere months in some cases for one “new” device to replaced by a more advanced one. Or for something entirely new to be created.
But the concept of keeping dead artists’ careers going is not a totally new one. How many Agatha Christies have there been since the original mystery novelist died?
Having done a little recording myself a few decades ago, I wonder how good my news songs, written by talented robots, will sound when I lay them down a hundred years from now. And then sing them as a hologram down at the local pub.
Think tanks are all the rage these days. Politicians, business leaders and professionals are always hiking off to these multi-day events, where everyone of like mind gets together to help them learn from each other and from experts what it is they should know about their endeavours.
I think these projects are great and I love think tanks. In fact, I spend every single day at a think tank, sometimes the one upstairs and sometimes the one downstairs. In fact, I just spent some quality time at a think tank where I did a lot of cogitating (look it up, it isn’t anything inappropriate.)
I think about a lot of things while attending my think tanks. And, as usual I came away from my most recent session having thought a lot and feeling much lighter.
In fact, I find my daily attendance at my think tanks are really great pauses that refresh without filling. I maybe don’t learn a lot, but I don’t believe I leave my think tanks any dumber than when I arrived.
My favourite think tank is almond coloured and about three feet high. It has a wooden seat which is nice because it doesn’t get cold, an important attribute on frosty mornings, which, in Canada, there are a lot of.
If you have a chance to attend a think tank or two sometime, I highly recommend the experience. It is where I have come up with some of my best ideas over the years and those who have encountered the results of some of my best ideas fully agree that they could only have come from my own personal think tank.
I gave a ride to some young people to another town to visit their friends, except for one young guy in that town who was working and couldn’t meet them.
I don’t go to this town very often and rarely eat there. I have probably darkened the doors of a few of the 20 or 30 restaurants there less than half a dozen times in my life.
This day, supper time rolled around and I still had a few hours to kill so I looked around for somewhere to eat. I drove by a pizza place, a chain restaurant that I don’t normally like to go to, but I didn’t see any other pizza places in my travels so I decided to stop in. The young man who came to the counter to serve me looked familiar. He was the friend that couldn’t be with the young people I had brought to town because he was working.
That’s funny, I thought. I could have picked any restaurant yet chose this one. And even if I had picked the young man’s restaurant, he could have been working in the back and not on the front counter and we would have missed each other completely.
Strange.
What impressed me about it was how unimpressed he seemed to be at the chance meeting and how unimpressed the young folk were later when I gave them a ride home and told them about it.
The impression I got from it all is that I am easily impressed.
I have been thinking lately that I would like to live a long life. At 73, I can’t really complain about the length of my life so far but I would like to live longer because I still have things I want to do. I am still hoping for a multi-million-dollar recording contract, also a long sought after date with either Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts, or both, given that I have to wait for the restraining orders to expire, and my ultimate goal, is to win a hot-dog eating contest.
So, funny the timing of things. Just as I was doing all this wishing, along comes an article on the Internet today entitled The Best Foods To Eat For A Long Life, According To Longevity Experts. If anybody would know about this, it would be longevity experts and, in fact, I would like to live long enough to someday become a longevity expert. Or, failing that, an expert in anything. Anything at all.
So, of course, I dove right into the article on my laptop. But my excitement and my smile both vanished in record time when I read the details of what I will have to eat to live longer. I can only say, it’s not looking good for me, as, with the exception of one or two of the listed items, I don’t want to eat anything the longevity experts recommend.
Get a load of this. The experts want me to eat foods in their natural state, like whole grains, vegetables, fruits, fish, eggs and nuts.
“All vegetables are packed with nutrition, but cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts and cabbage are powerhouses at helping you live longer.” I don’t know what cruciferous even means but the word starts off with the same three letters as “cruel” and that puts me off, I have to say.
“There’s really no upper limit on how many cruciferous vegetables you can eat, but a good rule is to cover about three-quarters of your plate with them,” one of the experts suggested. Especially good in this category are dark, leafy greens. Strike two for me as the only green stuff I like are green jelly beans. At least I think they are beans, so that should count for something.
I am also expected to snarf down a lot of fatty fish like wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring and mackerel. I prefer skinny fish, myself, and will only choke down a salmon sandwich if the salmon is spread on the bread so thin it is almost invisible.
Another expert is all hot and bothered about eating whole grains and I realize now that this War on White Bread and Buns will never end.
Instead of dousing the food I do eat with sugar, the many extra years I desire would have to be spent putting “extra virgin olive oil” on everything. Reading further, I see only a half a teaspoon of the stuff a day will do the trick but I am gagging at the thought of even that much.
The experts start to lighten up as the article progresses, and recommend berries. I will admit, I can handle a few berries now and then, especially doused in cream and sugar. But then they drop the ball entirely advising me to start eating “fermented foods,” leading me to wonder if these rascals are “demented fools.” They recommend I eat kimchi, kombucha, tempeh, miso, and sauerkraut that are laced with “beneficial bugs that help you maintain a healthy gut.” I ate a few bugs while singing on the tractor as a kid when the odd one would fly right into my wide open mouth in the middle of a Beatles song. No thanks.
Tree nuts and seeds. Maybe. Almonds, brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews and walnuts.
Plain yogurt. I will get right on that.
It is recommended I eat lots of legumes such as lentils, peas, chickpeas and peanuts. Peanuts I can handle especially if they are whipped into a butter and sold in a plastic jar.
Tomatoes, yes, though no mention of potatoes, and even a larger oversight, in my opinion, potato chips.
But finally, and almost too late, the experts recommend I eat dark chocolate. As it happens, I eat chocolate, both dark and whatever the opposite is, several times a day, and have eaten large quantities of it since before I could talk. When I read that, I started to cheer up a bit. Especially at the news that dark chocolate is good for brain health. I could probably make use of a healthier brain.
Come to think of it, I think all this advice is paying off, as I have already lived longer than the time it took me to read this article.
But I am cautious and I worry. I just hope I live long enough to finish writing this story. If it ends in mid-sentence, do me a favour, please, and call an ambulance.
I got a text message at 4:50 p.m. When are you getting home with the pizzas? I knew the family had to leave by 5:30. I will be there by 5:10, I promised, although I had just pulled up to the pizza shop.
I ran in and placed my order and sat down at a table to await our supper. I could see right into the kitchen and kept looking to see how things were going. Things were going well.
All of a sudden, there was a scream as two of the pizza makers in the crowded kitchen collided and then looked sorrowfully at the floor, eventually bending over to clean up what was obviously a spill. Also obvious was the fact that these were my pizzas that had taken a dive.
The pizza makers quickly started putting together more pizzas and I knew I was in for a wait. They kept shooting me furtive glances, which confirmed the fact that my original pizzas were gone.
I arrived home, new pizzas in tow, too late. My family was just pulling out of the driveway, intent on getting to a show on time.
“They dropped my pizzas,” I yelled. And the dog ate your homework, their skeptical looks suggested.
Our family lives in a modest bungalow. We like it. It could be spruced up and made even nicer but we have a few “imPETiments” standing in our way. Our dog and two cats pretty much rule the roost and we humbly comply with their demands. It shouldn’t be this way. It is.
We have had these creatures a dozen years now and they have left their mark. Often, literally, their mark. The screen door on the rear entrance to the house needs replacing, but while the cats are above ground, it never will be. They discovered, a few years ago, that the rickety old door can be opened with one great push of a paw and will stay open long enough for a fat kitty to run through to the glorious outside. And because it doesn’t fit right in the frame anymore, they can reach their paws underneath it to let themselves back in. Last year was a banner one for them and the door. A portion of the bottom screen came away from its wooden frame so they just walk in and out of the door now, no pushing required. We fully expect to wake up some morning to the sight of a skunk that has discovered the screen door flaw and taken advantage of it to come inside. So far, no skunk. The point of all this is, if we get a new door, all this cat access will disappear. And we can’t do that.
And so many other features of our house are the same. Our insulated, heated garage still has the two 60-year-old windows it has always had. A couple of new, insulated windows would look just great there, but instead, we prop open the screenless windows for easy access by the cats. They jump onto the air conditioner, then run through a window, scratch on the kitchen door and in they come. If we called Fantastic Windows and Doors to come and do a replacement, the cats would be scuppered. Cat scuppering seems like a worthwhile goal some days but we have found if you make their lives harder with one action, they will make your lives harder by another. Often much harder.
There is a big suitcase lying flat on the floor in our rec room downstairs. No one dares move it. Because one day, one of the cats crawled up on it and went to sleep. Now both cats take turns napping on it, so we don’t have the heart to remove it.
In front of one of our sheds outside, the paving bricks have sunk to form a hollow, a result of years of our going in and out of the building. In a rainstorm, this hollow fills up to form a small pond. The bricks need to be taken up and the sand and gravel base below them built up again. But they won’t be. The hollow holds our dog’s body perfectly and he lies in it and sunbathes all summer.
A few years ago, we had our rec room re-carpeted. It looked spectacular. We put up two big fancy scratching posts for the cats. They looked at them and laughed and proceeded to use the entire room as one big post. We tried for a while to discourage them. Our efforts were as successful as commanding the wind to stop blowing. As of today, our actual scratching posts look pretty good. Our carpet, yuck. Especially the stairs. And when they need variety, they toil away on our furniture. When company comes, we cover it all up with sheets, giving it the look of a crime scene, which it is. Declaw the critters, you say. Right. Not going to happen.
Our doggie is getting old and has trouble now jumping onto our bed. So a while back, in the dark, I reached down and picked him up and placed him on the mattress. Now it’s become pretty much routine. In the dark, I lean down with my hands open near the floor though I can’t see where he is and wait for him to walk between them, which he does with precision.
There is a gate between the hallway and our laundry. It is there for one purpose. Without it, the doggie will run into the covered cat litter pan and emerge with some tasty goodies. Nothing better than predigested food. Unlike me, he is not picky with his menu choices.
We have a couch pushed up against our picture window in the living room. We think of rearranging the furniture in that room, now and then, but moving that couch is off the roster of choices open to us. All three pets sit up on the back of it to look at the world going by. Doggie lies there and peeks through the curtains for hours, awaiting the return of whatever family member isn’t home. The cats watch the birds and squirrels.
Some day, maybe, our house will be fixed up and glowing. Country Homes magazine (though we don’t live in the country) will phone up and ask to do a feature on our place.
I dread that day. A great part of our joy in living is measured by the imperfections in our house. And even when the day comes when there no longer is a reason to not fix things up, I know us all well enough to know, we’ll probably leave things as they are. Memories can often be good stand-ins for realities.
That doesn’t mean I enjoy fighting Luigi the cat for my computer chair every day, or chasing him off the printer where he lies to watch the birds in their feeder attached to the kitchen window. I also don’t enjoy getting down on my knees to mop up the water spilled from the communal waterbowl by Mario’s Water Redistribution Service. Luigi’s weird brother prefers to drink water off the floor so he hauls that dish around till he has several puddles to choose from. Tape it to the floor? Nope. Also with water, we keep one shower door open. That’s where Luigi laps up his supply.
But who am I kidding? Protest as I might and do, I enjoy every last bit of it.
It is hard to take in the enormity of the good fortune that has befallen me this week. I just received an email from barrister David Kalala informing me that the late Mr. William Winga, of South Africa, has made me a beneficiary in his will.
I am choking back the tears on the recent passing of my good friend William Winga, but am comforted by the memories of all the good times we shared together, and I am heartened to know he has left me $16,702,000. I will be informing Mr. Kalala, however, that having recently received $7.5 billion from Western Union and Mr. Peter Campbell, I am not in the need of $16,702,000 at present and that I would prefer he spread those funds around to all the little Wingas, especially Joey and Suzanna (my favourite twins).
If they somehow are not in need of it, I will ask Mr. Kalala to direct that money to the Society for the Preservation and Promotion of Cherry Pie.
Please do not contact me for the next few weeks as I am in mourning for Mr. William Winga although I hurt my hip diving for the last jar of peanut butter on the store shelf and will not be able to make the flight to Pretoria for the funeral.
RIP my dearest Willie. May you float to Heaven on the wingas of a dove.
Those of you who have read my stories might have picked up the fact that I’ve always wanted to be a hero. My record at saving damsels in distress has been pretty dismal, but my goal is to save a life. That, I think, would earn me an award of some kind.
Unfortunately, life-saving opportunities for me have been rare to non-existent. But I stumbled across one yesterday when I saw a big earthworm slithering through the grass in our backyard. I sprung into action, as any worthy hero would do, and struck up a conversation with the worm, the first worm I can remember ever talking to. It was a one-sided conversation as the worm, if it heard me at all, didn’t reply.
I told the fat, stretchy creature that it was dangerous for it to be wandering along above ground. I explained there was a hungry robin about and it would make short work of a guy like that. I advised the worm to seek shelter below the turf.
But worms, I now think, are either hard of hearing or in no hurry to be saved. It kept creeping along through the green blades as though it was on some sort of mission.
I went back up towards the house and was beside myself to see the robin come bobbin’ along, headed straight for my new little friend. The bird stopped here and there to peck away at the ground for insects, and then finally spotted the worm. It trotted directly towards it and to my horror, slurped up my little buddy like a long noodle of spaghetti.
My capacity to feel badly about things like this seems to know no bounds. But such is life and nature, I tried to comfort myself. Then, however, it occurred to me that I might have led that robin right to that worm as the robin follows me around the yard, especially if I have a shovel in hand and am digging up some ground. It will get pretty close to me to see what consumable treasures I might uncover.
I don’t think a normal person would fall asleep in bed worrying about a poor worm that had gotten a good look at the inside of a bird. But also disturbing my attempts to sleep was the regret that yet another stab at becoming a hero had fallen short.
Today I went back to looking for damsels in distress. I don’t think robins are known for giving them a hard time so I might have better luck in that direction.
I like reading the news on the Internet. I like it probably more than is healthy. But what I find most interesting are the comments people make after the stories. Some of these people know more than the writers of the stories themselves and they don’t hold back on voicing their takes on things.
One of the news sites I follow everyday attracts a lot of commenters and it insists that people use their real names. No hiding behind made-up false ones. They want readers to have the courage to stand behind their convictions. I like their insistence on authenticity.
My favourite commenter is Hugh Jassole and I have to say his insights are a credit to the entire Jassole family, including Hugh’s younger brother Lar.
Then there is Eboneezer Goose, doing the Goose family proud every day. No indication he’s from Canada but he does apologize a lot to anyone who might be offended by his views.
Other writers who catch my eye are Trevor Heehaw, Plaid Pants, Billyjoe Jimbob, and the Real Snidely Whiplash.
Of course, who could ever forget the offerings of Delicious Frizzledrip, The Mammal and Pissed Old Lady. There is also Blackeyed Beaver, Sonofroyrogers, Luckiest Duck, Franka Footer, Shaydee, Cereal Killer and Stinky Pete.
But write as they might, none of these commenters can hold a candle to Hugh Jassole. He says what he means and means what he says. I hope he never quits writing. That would really disappoint Bumm Herr.
I have spent a bit of time again this past year with my two favourite psychiatrists – Dr. Hans Sawe and Dr. Klaw Hammer – and I savoured every moment I shared with them.
Dr. Sawe, especially, never fails to calm me down when my nerves are frazzled. As I was apparently born with a worried look on my face (I shamelessly stole that line from a friend) he has a lot of pacifying to do. But he manages, time after time, to cut everything down to size to a point where it all fits together. We end every session with a little inside joke, claiming that all my worries are from that moment forward “just Sawe dust in the wind.” We laugh.
When I am with my Hans Sawe, I am, within a very short period, at peace. He makes me exercise in a rhythmic pattern and I guess that activity must release all those precious endorphins in me because even my breathing slows down. He is sharp and loves to sink his teeth into things.
As I get older, I long more and more for the things of my early days on this planet as so many of them have pleasant associations for me now. One of those was the time spent, not only with Dr. Sawe (yes, he’s getting up there), but with his cousin, Dr. Krawscutt Sawe. My father and I would go visit Krawscutt under the evergreen trees by the “driving” shed (to differentiate it from the woodshed, I suppose), and spend the occasional afternoon chatting as we cut our problems down to size.
To anyone with rattled nerves, I would recommend using a Sawe to calm you down.
As well, Dr. Hammer has been a lifesaver for me on so many occasions. There’s just something about the way he can put things all together that is truly awe inspiring. Like Sawe, he insists on rhythmic motions and a fair degree of physical exertion. As well as concentration. Many a patient has had his feelings bruised because he failed to pay attention to Hammer. He’s fair, but if you drift off, sometimes he’ll nail you.
I look around me and see what other professional people are using to help them relax and I say, more power to them. But some of them just don’t do it for me. Dr. Ard Likker, for example, just seemed to make things worse, though he always held out such promise at the start of a night. Ditto for doctors Bier and Ail. Dr. Toe Bacco also wasn’t much help either, though I relied on him for many years. Our relationship went up in smoke eventually.
One talk therapist I have not yet visited is Dr. Mary Wanna, though I might book an appointment some day. I know a few of her clients and they seem pretty laid back.
And there are even new generations of Sawes and Hammers that are glamorous, even powerful, but they’re too charged up for me.
No, just good old Hans Sawe, Klaw Hammer and Jim around a wooden table under a maple tree on a nice summer day (even not so nice a one) and I’m a happy guy. Or as close to happy as I ever get.
Because try as I might, my life often seems like one big construction site.
I am a singer. During the first 20 years of my life, I performed hundreds of free concerts. They were well attended.
My stage was the leather seat of a 1950 John Deere AR tractor. The concert halls were the 335 acres of fields on my family’s farms in Canada. My inattentive audiences were the birds, mice, snakes, foxes, squirrels, ground hogs, raccoons, dogs, cats and cattle that occupied the fields where I practised my craft.
No humans ever heard my dulcet tones. And that is just the way I wanted it. I learned how to project my voice so I could hear myself over the noise from the tractor. I always knew I could not be heard by anyone in the vicinity of those fields. The tractor sounds were too loud. That was fine with me.
One afternoon, towards the end of my John Deere days before the city called me away, I was standing in our farmyard when I heard something going by on the concession road at the end of our lane. It was a farmer singing at the top of his lungs as he rode past our place on a tractor. I couldn’t hear the tractor. I realized the tractor noise must have been travelling through the air on a lower and slower sound wave than was the farmer’s voice. His voice reached my ears loud and clear; the tractor putt putts, not so much.
It was an awakening. I realized that at least some of my back forty concerts were probably heard by humans somewhere who happened to be in the vicinity, even if just the occupants of the surrounding farms.
If I had known I actually did have non-critter audiences, I might have charged admission to my shows and would still be a big star today.
All those farm critters were such a bunch of tightwads and would never have ponied up enough to even keep me in toothpicks and straw hats.
Last time I go to church in Altoona, in the state of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. (Unrestricted Shooters of America). I was sitting in a church service there on Saturday, enjoying me some good old-fashioned hellfire and brimstone and just this close to choosing the straight and narrow pathway to Heaven instead of the Road to Hell that I’ve been speeding down, when a fellow worshipper (of guns, not so much God, but He’s okay too) suffered the misfortune of having his gun go off in his pocket.
Thinking quickly and brilliantly as any man who brings a gun to church in Altoona would do, the pistol packing pocket pray-er handed the weapon off to someone else who hid it in the pages of a program, that guy also being a quick thinker, if a somewhat shifty sinner. The firearm’s safety was off and the trigger caught on the man’s pocket, firing off a shot and grazing the man’s hand. Other nearby extremities in the pocket region were not grazed, too tiny, apparently, for a bullet to hit, hence the man’s need for the gun.
He was taken to hospital but very reluctantly as he had to enter that place without the security of knowing he had his gun in his pocket. However, they fixed him up, decided not to shoot him, and sent him on his way.
Now, as it happens, a fellow parishoner did some shooting of his own during all this, pulling out his phone and photographing the event. And this is what has me so angry I will not go to church in Altoona ever again, Salvation be darned. I cannot believe, in 2015, in the state of Pennsylvania, that they would allow a cellphone in a church. I wish that guy the best of luck now trying to crash the Pearly Gates. His only hope might be to take his gun-totin’ Yosemite Sam of a buddy with him. St. Peter, I have heard, does not have a concealed carry permit.
If you are squeamish, or a self-appointed skin doctor (or a real doctor), don’t read this.
For a couple of years I have had two big wart-like growths on the side of my head, just to the right of my forehead. They didn’t worry me much and my dermatologist always referred to them as “friendlies” and left them alone.
It wasn’t fun walking around with two miniature muffins attached to my face but the rest of my Brad Pitt looks seemed to keep me out of Shrek the Ogre territory on most days. This winter, however, there were developments. The dermatologist decided to biopsy my gruesome twosome and she did.
So I went home and worked on my will for a week. Don’t worry. You are all in it. She finally phoned one day and said that everything was okay. As it happened, I was scheduled not long after that for an event which required me to appear before a couple hundred people. And there would be a spotlight on me and my face for almost an hour.
A few days before the event, I was looking in my bathroom mirror and scrutinizing the mini hockey pucks on my head. And becoming concerned. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied a pair of toenail clippers.
I will spare you the details. But I am happy to announce that the practice of Dr. Jim Hagarty MD, Plastic Surgeon, opens Wednesday. Check my website for hours of operation. Rates reasonable.
My daughter has an app on her phone that lets you take a picture of someone and then ages that image somehow to make the person look old.
She showed me the photo she took of herself and it’s amazing. Her 14-year-old face was all wrinkly and drawn, her long dark hair was gray. It’s kind of creepy because it’s a still image and yet the eyes blink and it looks like it’s moving.
So we laughed and got all excited and I asked her if she wanted to try it on me. Of course she did, so she snapped a picture and excitedly, we looked at the result.
Absolute truth here. I looked exactly the same in the “aged” photo as I do in real life. We could not find even one difference. If anything, it made me look a little younger.
So, we laughed about that. At least shed did, her eyes blinking away many tears of mirth. But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. A restaurant once offered me the senior’s discount when I was only 48. I was with a friend who received no offer. He was 60.
After all that, my daughter then she showed me another app that makes you look fat. She took a picture of herself and sure enough, her cheeks and neck were all puffed out. And, again creepily, her eyes blinked.
“Wanna try it Dad?”
My first reaction was that, ya, that would be cool. Then I remembered the first picture and I declined. Once bitten, twice shy.
Bring me an app that makes me look young and thin, and I’m in. But, in my case, I’m afraid, that might exceed the limits of modern technology.
I am about to be murdered. It is true. I don’t usually joke about my own violent demise, but the crime is about to be committed.
I can’t tell you the exact time or place or the method that will be used to end my existence, but I do know who will perpetrate this misdeed. The murderer even now preparing to do me in is my neighbour, ten houses to the west of me. He used to be a good guy, as far as I can tell, but life has made him hard. And determined. I have no doubt about his determination.
Why, you rightfully ask, would anyone want to take the life of such a terrific soul as me, you? What have I done to so enrage my neighbour that he is willing to spend the rest of his life behind bars to right what he sees as a major wrong?
Not to make excuses for myself, and you don’t have to believe me, but I have done nothing. However, in this weird little passion play, the fact that I have done nothing is a big part of the reason for the passage of the death sentence upon me.
The fault lies with Bell Canada, and as my neighbour hasn’t got the resources and know-how to kill Bell Canada, his murderous intent has been directed towards a simpler target – me.
Five years ago, Bell Canada, for some reason, gave me the wrong address in its phone book. Instead of my own address – 550 My Street, they put me down as living at 500 My Street, where, coincidentally, my neighbour actually lives and will continue to live until his arrest someday soon by a SWAT team.
Because they steal Bell’s phone book listings, all local phone books produced by other companies over the past five years have also listed the incorrect address. As have Internet directories. The result has been that my neighbour’s mailbox, for five years, has been jammed with mail that is meant for me.
At first, this merely annoyed my neighbour. He would knock on my door, hand me my mail, and politely ask me to please correct the phone book listings. I said that I would. And I meant what I said. And I have tried. For five years.
But with every new phone book, I would see the mistake has never been corrected. Over those years, my neighbour’s attitude towards me has deteriorated. He used to scribble, in small letters, across every piece of mail, “Change your address!” The scribbles turned to scrawls. And now, each envelope is covered in lettering worthy of a kidnapper demanding ransom: “CHANGE YOUR ADDRESS!!!!”
And this is where, I have to declare, that I could get a sex change, and then have it changed back again, easier than I can get an address change. I could have had cornea transplants, hair weaves, stomach-staples, and joint replacements with more ease and speed than getting Bell Canada to change my address.
I floated a few alternatives with my neighbour. Maybe we could just switch houses. Maybe he could nail his mailbox shut. Maybe I could move to another town. But I am pretty sure he has settled on neighbourcide as the best solution.
And I think I know how he might be planning on ending the torment that I have become for him. He has a grumpy dog named, ironically, Jimmy. I think Jimmy is being prepped for his first kill. At least I assume it will be his first.
So, this week I decided that my past failed attempts to right this wrong had to be set aside and I needed to try again. Therefore, in the only life-saving move I could think of, I phoned Bell Canada. I talked to numerous people at Bell Canada, in fact. And I began each conversation with this life-saving plea, spoken in a trembling voice: “My neighbour is going to murder me. Please help me!”
Well, points to Bell Canada employees. They expressed full support for the idea that my being murdered was not a desirable outcome. I spoke finally to a wonderful woman who I really think wants to know that I die peacefully in my bed someday and not by wounds delivered by the sharpened teeth of Jimmy the dog. She put me on hold to talk to a supervisor and came back with the good news that I would be receiving a call within 48 hours by people from another department, fully trained in saving lives. They would sort it out.
I was relieved. But rightfully terrified that I would miss the call. I carried my cordless phone with me everywhere. Everywhere. I was careful not to get beyond the 75-foot range that my phone is capable of reaching. I was bound to my property at 550, not 500, My Street
Forty-eight hours passed. My fully in-range phone never rang. Yesterday, I phoned Bell Canada again. Gonna be murdered. Please help. Talked to several wonderful people. None of them up for contributing to the slaying of a customer.
Finally, I reached a sympathetic woman who I think should consider counselling as an alternative occupation. She put me on hold. Went to talk to a supervisor. Came back with the information that my file is still being worked on and that Bell is very busy. If I do not hear from Bell by the middle of next week, I should call back and re-start the process.
Please do not send flowers to the funeral home. Instead, make a contribution to our local, understaffed Humane Society. When it is all over and done with, I think it only fitting that two Jimmys be laid to rest. But not side by side.
The only cemetery in our town is so big it has streets and numbers. Bury Jimmy the dog at 500. AND ME AT 550!!!!
My final wish: Do not let Bell Canada be involved in the arrangements.
I mentioned in a recent post that the best popular song ever written is Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight?
I am confident in my assessment of that piece of musical brilliance for a very good reason. When I judge a song for its quality or lack thereof, I rate it on its uniqueness along with other factors. Has that song employed any words that cannot be found in any other song? I think this is important as it indicates a maximum level of creativity.
So, for the song mentioned above, I have always been delighted to know that the word “tonsils” is repeated several times, in reference to the chewing gum: “Do you put it on your tonsils, do you heave it left and right?”
I challenge song lovers everywhere to come up with another pop song that uses that word. If you know of one, please forward it and I might be forced to reassess my adjudication.
A possible worthy runner-up might be All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth. What other song in musical history, I ask you, refers to the singer’s “two front teeth.”
I wrote a new song this week. I soon realized it is the best song I have ever written. A few minutes later, it dawned on me that this is, in fact, probably the best song that has ever been written – by anyone.
Wow! You can imagine my happiness at that discovery.
So, what you do with the best song ever written, of course, is sing it 24 hours a day till you hate it worse than oatmeal porridge (which is not recommended for human consumption). It is at that point that you are willing to entertain the idea that it might not actually be the best four minutes of song styling ever put together since the beginning of music. That distinction goes to My Boomerang Won’t Come Back.
However, having thudded back to Earth isn’t the least bit disconcerting because you still think the thing is pretty darned good for an amateur. You have to or you’d never write another one. Besides, there is always next week when you probably will come up with the best song ever and My Boomerang … will just be a distant, but wonderful, memory.
Ian Tyson was interviewed by a Canadian radio host a while back who asked the folk/country artist what the best song he ever wrote was and the only answer could be Four Strong Winds. Tyson wouldn’t cooperate and gave him the name of a song he’d just come up with.
“That’s the best one I’ve ever written,” he said excitedly to the dejected interviewer. “You always think your latest one is your best one.”
I guess I am in good company. But no matter how good I get at this, I will never surpass the writer of Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight?
One of my favourite pastimes in recent years has been to walk past construction sites and examine the proceedings. Yes, it’s true, I have become a Certified Sidewalk Superintendent. I have my full papers from the Canadian Construction Industry and am completely licensed to stand at a distance and detect whatever flaws I might witness being perpretrated on a new building.
I earned this stature because of the many astute observations I have made over the years, criticisms that range from the subtle, “Who the hell designed this mess?” to “That thing’s gonna fall down in a year.” I am able to make these assessments based on my own past, working three summers on bridge construction when I was attending university almost 50 years ago and from growing up on a farm where we built a lot of sheds and things.
And so it was that a big hole was dug in the ground last year on a lot just a stone’s throw from my (well-constructed) house. Although I was not notified that construction was under way, I soon detected the activity and began my daily inspection tours.
For the first while, I had no idea what was being planned for the hole, but the builders, thankfully, erected a very nice sign showing an artist’s conception of a new medical centre. It was very appealing and I hoped the builders would adhere to the architect’s vision very closely.
I walked by almost every day, even during the winter months, and was mostly impressed with the gradually evolving three-storey brick structure. It would be a very welcome addition to the neighbourhood and to be honest, I could find little fault with the construction though it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The thing that appealed to me about it was the fact that it was all function and no frill. If it was a car, it would be a stripped down Chevy Malibu.
Some modern buildings look like works of modern art with metal protrusions and glass hanging out all over the place. I always wonder how they will replace those special panes of glass and fiberglass panels 30 years down the road. I worry about stuff like that which makes me an excellent Sidewalk Super.
Finally, the completed Stratford Medical Centre opened its doors on a Monday in early January. I just happened to have an appointment that morning.
Guess who was the Medical Centre’s first patient?
A very fitting development, I must say.
I asked my doctor if I would be honoured in some way, maybe with a special gift, a plaque on the wall, a large framed portrait in the lobby. In response, the good physician fought me off bravely and handed me a prescription for more drugs.
One thing I have noticed about our changing times is the lack of respect these days for the critical role Sidewalk Superintendents play in the scheme of things.
Warren Buffett and I have a lot in common. Males, fathers, eyeglass wearers. Balding. Speak English.
But our biggest shared characteristic is our incredible financial acumen. Our brains don’t operate in the same way others do. Ours are functioning on a whole, remarkable, elevated level. Don’t feel badly that yours doesn’t. Warren and I are special.
My evidence of the above truths, is this.
Today, I entered the McDonald’s drivethrough, wanting a cup of coffee. I told the woman who greeted me through the speaker that I had a card for a free one. I had collected seven little stickers from previous cups I had drank and attached them to this card. This entitled me to a free medium coffee. At the last minute, and in my enthusiasm, I asked her to include a carrot muffin. She said that would be $1.65.
Now here’s where the acumen kicked in.
“Really?” I said, unbelieving. “Just for the muffin?” The reason for my skepticism was that I have, in the past, paid just over $2 in total for a medium coffee and muffin at McDonald’s. Now I was being asked for $1.65 for the muffin alone, given my coffee would be free.
I had to think fast. Buffett and I are good at that. We make decisions quickly and change our minds slowly. The mark of most great men.
I slipped the free card out of sight and when I drove up to the window, I told the speaker woman there that I didn’t have the card after all. That I wanted to pay cash for my purchase.
“That will be $2.10,” she said, looking a little confused. (Maybe even a bit scared.)
Therefore – try to follow the logic – I acquired a carrot muffin for next to nothing.
When I got to the window, and was handed my food, I asked the woman there how much a medium coffee on its own would have cost.
“It would be $1.82, plus tax,” she replied.
I pulled off to the side, activated the calculator on my phone, and quickly came to this conclusion: By paying $2.06 cash for my purchase, I had received a muffin for four cents. Whereas, if I hadn’t thought quickly, I would have been charged $1.65 or, put in Hagarty-Buffet terms, 165 cents as opposed to four cents. This is the kind of inflation both of us insist on avoiding.
McDonalds wanted $1.65 for a carrot muffin. I paid four cents for mine. It’s all about beating the system.
The only flaw in my operation, and this is one I need to correct in future, is that if I had paid with my debit card instead of with cash, the cost would have been $2.09 instead of $2.10, but that is a downside of living in a country which doesn’t have pennies anymore.
I will admit, that it is that penny that signifies the central difference between Warren Buffett and me. He would have never made an error such as that. This explains why he has $60 billion and I have less than $60 billion. But, we both have some dollars, another similarity.
Also this difference: He steers his own car through McDonald’s drivethrough. Frequently. He doesn’t have a driver. He’s his own driver.
And that is the only other difference between us.
To close that gap, I am going to fire my driver tomorrow.
I have been studying the political landscape for some time now with an eye to running for office somewhere. However, judging from what I see and read about the process, it seems as though it is a lot of hard, hard work and a big commitment of money with wholesale rejection by the voters a good possibility as a candidate`s reward. I have never done well with wholesale rejection. Too many high school dating memories still haunt.
But now, as I digest today’s news, I realize I have been approaching this from a misplaced starting point. I always assumed, not without some reason, I suppose, that a candidate for public office would need to be alive and breathing in order to run and win. But apparently that isn`t so.
On Tuesday, Dennis Hof won a seat in the Nevada state legislature less than a month after dying. Hof defeated Democratic opponent Lesia Romanov. The Nevada Republican died on Oct. 16 at the age of 72 following a weekend of parties to celebrate his birthday.
Although I am happy for Dennis, my heart goes out to Romanov. Imagine knocking on all those doors only to lose to a guy who just recently knocked on only one door – Heaven’s. I think that would give me the sads.
I don’t know whether a dead candidate’s occupation has any influence on his electoral chances but Hof was a fine, upstanding businessman, best known for owning seven legally run brothels in the state of Nevada. He also previously starred in the HBO show “Cathouse.”
This last item might trip me up, I am thinking, as I own no brothels, legal or otherwise, and to be honest, I don’t have the energy to start any. I honestly would not know where to begin. But Dennis did.
So, when my doc says I have one month to live, I am going to enter my name into whatever public office I think could use my talents after I die. If I win, I guess it will be up to the authorities to get me to the meetings and while I might not say much, I promise to be a good, quiet listener.
I wonder who the first person was who said the words, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Maybe some guy who went completely bald at 30. A hungry breakfast eater who found an empty box of his favourite Chewy Chunks cereal in the recycling bin. An owner of 50,000 shares in a company that just declared bankruptcy.
Years ago, we had a nice new car stolen from our driveway in the middle of the night and wrecked by the thieves. I also wonder who first used the words “write off” as we heard them used to describe a vehicle we really liked.
And while the loss of the car was a blow, what bothered me almost more was the idea that strangers had been walking around on our property in the middle of the night. It took a long time to shake that feeling.
But here’s a funny thing. I can get myself worked up to the point of around the bend over little things while major events such as the loss of a job I can handle with comparative calmness.
And so it was my mind was blown when I went outside this morning to see that the lid to one of the two big plastic garbage cans I had put out last night for pickup by the city was gone. I knew on some level how important those lids were to me, but not till that moment, did I realize just how much value I had attached to them. I didn’t know if it would be possible to buy a new lid. I suspected it would not be.
It was a very windy day in our city today. It was almost gale-like in intensity. So I spent too much time walking up and down our street looking for our lid. During my search, I discovered lids of every size, shape and colour dislodged and lying around but none that belonged at our place. Always in search of our town’s Citizen of the Year Award which, amazingly I have never won, I picked up several neighbours’ lids and reattached them to their cans.
But our lid was gone and there was only one conclusion that made any sense at that point.
There is a garbage can lid thief roaming the area and our lid was just too gorgeous not to steal, with its black handle, gentle contours and slightly rough black surface. Even someone who had never stolen a thing in his life could almost be forgiven for wanting to give himself the five-finger discount on our lid.
This bothered me one whole hell of a lot.
So an hour later, I wandered our section of town once again, this time crossing to the other side of the street for a new perspective. I even took to peering into people’s backyards to see if a thief had tucked it away behind his house.
The wind was fierce, blowing me west and almost preventing me entirely from walking east.
But to reward me, I guess, for replacing my neighbours’ lids, the Universe blessed me by showing me where our garbage can lid had wound up. There it was, lying in the middle of a four-lane main street. Almost as though it had been blown almost an entire city block to where it came to rest.
With only one truck on the road, I dashed out onto the street to rescue my treasure. You would have done the same.
What has me puzzled, however, was why the person who stole our lid dropped it onto the pavement as he ran across the street. Sadly, for him, he probably didn’t really know what he had till it was gone.
Ever since I bought a used smartphone a few years ago, I have noticed a strange thing happening when I send text messages. Every once in a while, my oversized gorilla fingers touch the wrong button and the bottom half of the screen is suddenly filled with this strange thing with a wavy line running through it. I’ve tried to ignore it and soldier on but it’s been a real pain.
On Sunday, as I was texting a message, the random screen popped up again. This time, I was shocked to see words appearing at the end of my message that I hadn’t typed.
“What the hell?” I asked, then was flabbergasted (my all-time favourite word) when the words “What the hell?” appeared on my message. To test this out, I said a few more words: “This is just crazy.” Sure enough, “This is just crazy” appeared in my message too.
So, brave new world, here I come. Finally, I can give my stubby digits a rest and talk and text instead by tapping a microphone icon at the bottom of the screen.
I just hope my editing skills are up to par and I don’t click send on a muttered remark such as, “Why does this silly person keep texting me?” or “I wish I could just ignore this idiot.”
What we don’t have enough of in this world are people who hit you when they’re talking to you. Man I just love that.
To keep your attention, I guess, the uninvited guest in your personal space keeps tapping you on the leg, the knee, the forearm, the elbow – any dangly part that can be reached – as they relate their fascinating tales, which are whispered conspiratorially as though the code to the U.S. nuclear warheads supply was being revealed. And gosh darn it (sorry for the foul language), their stories do compel.
In their presence, I am almost tempted to tell them that with narratives as captivating as they regularly roll out, there is no need for them to assault the people around them to get them to listen. But then, if I provided talker-hitters with that opinion, they might stop with the tapping and my gosh (there I go again), I love it. Maybe I even need it.
I sat beside such a touch-feely raconteur at an event the other day and I found myself fighting the urge to place body parts within his reach that he hadn’t yet tapped. It was a thrill listening to his tales and a cheap thrill feeling his hand all over my body. Well, not ALL over. That’s my secret goal for the next time we sit side by side. Which can’t come soon enough.
And yes, I promise to come out with my hands up, officer.
You might have to juggle three balls in the air at once to follow this, but I’ll try my best to make it easy for you.
Last week, I went to my dental office to pay a bill. While at the front counter, a dental hygienist in scrubs appeared and I called out to her. “Rebecca,” I yelled. She corrected me. Her name was Amanda. “You cleaned my teeth in January and told me to buy an electric toothbrush but I forgot what kind.” She very nicely gave me her recommendation, though she seemed a bit hesitant.
Back to the dentist for another cleaning I went today, and when the hygienist in scrubs came to the waiting room to get me, I said, “Hi Amanda,” very proud to have gotten the name right this time. “My name is Michelle,” she replied. I explained my previous visit and conversation with the phantom hygienist. “There is an Amanda here,” explained Michelle, helpfully.
I dutifully reclined in the dentist’s chair and Michelle got to work. At times, the inside of my 66-year-old mouth looks like an abandoned warehouse, with windows broken and graffiti everywhere. I felt sorry for her but she soldiered on. She is a brave soul, I will give her that much.
I enjoyed Rebecca/Amanda/Michelle during our first encounter in January. We talked about our kids and she seemed to enjoy my sense of humour. Anyone who makes the mistake of laughing at something I say is just asking for it, so I like her but I have no sympathy for her. She would get what she deserved.
Suddenly, my smartphone went off, as someone had sent me a text message.
“Quack, quack, quack, quack,” went the phone, loudly repeating the alert sound I had chosen for texts.
“Sorry,” I said to RAM. “I’ve got a duck in my pocket.”
She seemed to like that so I was compelled to follow it up. When she took a break, I continued, “Its name is Clarence.” A few seconds later, four more quacks.
“It’s noon,” said my multi-named hygienist. “Is Clarence getting hungry?” I like people who humour me when I am humouring them.
However, the fun would come to an end when she found a broken tooth among the flotsam and jetsam inside my gob. She decided it needed to be fixed and I agreed. When the cleaning was done, I was ushered into another room and lay myself down on another reclining chair.
A dentist came in, asked how I was doing, and proceeded to inject some cement into the hole left by the broken tooth. Then he left. He was replaced by what I am assuming was another dental assistant who tightened a big clamp around the cement to form it up, sort of like two-by-fours holding a freshly poured sidewalk together. Meanwhile, another woman stuck a small vacuum in my mouth to suck up the fluids so the cement could set.
While all this was going on, Clarence started quacking again so I repeated the joke that I had told Rebecca/Amanda/Michelle. Not as much hilarity ensued as had broken out the first time I told it, but it was a six out of ten.
Finally done, I staggered up to the main counter to settle my bill and I asked the woman there, “Have you got anybody else who would like to take a whack at me?” When she said she didn’t, I said, “Surely there are two or three more people who would like to have a go.” But there weren’t.
I’ve never claimed to be the smartest guy in my town but I have met a lot of my fellow citizens over my lifetime and I am pretty sure I am not the dumbest one either. Just a little slow on the uptake, now and then.
The other night, I looked out my kitchen window to see two of the three rabbits that inhabit our backyard, gathered around their feeding station. One of them, a touch on the smaller side, is the one that has befriended me over the winter. I don’t know if it’s possible to be sexist while discussing rabbits, but because my buddy is the smallest of the three, I think of it as female.
I am a creative writer of longstanding so, after much creative thought, I gave my furry little pal a unique name – Bunny. I think it suits her.
Bunny comes when I call her now, and one night, I bent down and held out the dish of food I was carrying. She came within two inches of my hand. Had I put some seed in my hand, I think she might have eaten out of it. Instead I reached out to pet her and she was off like a rocket.
It is so gratifying to see this wild little creature hopping around impatiently a couple of feet from me while I put down her feed and then dash in to eat almost before I can get out of the way.
So, I have become sort of protective of her. That is why I was shocked and upset while looking out the window to see Bunny and another rabbit engaging in what seemed to be a pretty nasty fight. First, they stood straight up on their hind legs and I was shocked at how tall they were. Then, back on all fours, they took turns hopping straight into the air and landing back in the same spot, all the time facing each other. Also something I had never seen.
And then, to my horror, the bigger rabbit jumped on poor Bunny’s back and I couldn’t stand any more. I ran outside to break things up but they were gone.
I was watching a nature show tonight.
I’m pretty sure Bunny’s gonna be a mommy this spring. I know she’ll be busy, but I hope she can still spare a little time for me.
And if her kids are as friendly as she is, I will be busy thinking up unique names for them like Jumpy, Hoppy, Leapy, Frank and Bunny Jr.
What is it about gun nuts that makes them so darned easy to make fun of?
An Oregon man openly carrying his brand new handgun was robbed of the firearm recently by another armed man. The 21-year-old victim, who had bought a semi-automatic .22-calibre handgun earlier in the day, was openly carrying the weapon down a street when another man approached him and asked for a cigarette.
The man who asked for a cigarette then pulled his own firearm from his waistband, pointed it at his fellow gun owner, and said, “I like your gun, give it to me,” according to police. The man then fled after the victim handed over his new purchase.
Bad guy with two guns, good guy with no gun. I am confused.
I wish I could, but I can’t even think of anything funny to add to this. Perfect irony writes its own endings, sometimes.
I suppose this might be the equivalent of being run over by the Welcome Wagon on your first day in a new town.
There is a big pothole at the end of our street. I have been struggling to deliver the best description I can of this pavement monster.
I am not sure how long it’s been there but there are stories in my neighbourhood about how buggy drivers always took care to steer their carriages around the hole lest their horses stumble in and break a leg.
In fact, while it has been impossible for me to get an exact count of all my neighbours, it seems I haven’t seen some of them since Spring came around. I am not saying any of them fell into the hole, but I am at a loss as to how to explain what seems to be a depopulation of some of the 44 houses on my block.
I guess, though I was putting this off, that you will want to know exactly how big this pothole is. I toyed with the idea of telling you it could swallow an elephant, were one to happen by, but I knew you’d think I was exaggerating and that won’t do. Real humour is based on truth, and so, I have to be realistic.
The pothole at the end of my street could swallow a baby elephant and to be more precise, a newborn baby elephant. There very well could be one in there right now but I am afraid to go look. If I saw one down there I would probably try to save it and would end up in the hole too.
The reason I refer to our pothole as a monster, aside from its size, is this. It is more than a hole. It’s a trap. It fills up with water and fools drivers and pedestrians into thinking it is just a rather large puddle.
We don’t get many visitors these days but we always caution the people who do drop by to take another route to get off our street.
Go to the other end, we say, and don’t be charmed by the cute baby elephants milling about at the other.
I needed to go to the grocery store this afternoon. I had been outside a couple of times earlier, and knew it was sunny, but a bit chilly. So I dressed appropriately.
On went my winter coat though I didn’t bother with a sweater underneath it. Just a heavy tee shirt. Lined winter cap, of course. When you’re bald, it can be a necessity on even the nicest day in July.
I thought about my winter boots, but as the snow was almost gone, decided to take a chance and put on my running shoes instead. My heavy woolen socks would protect me, I thought. Living dangerously, I left my winter gloves behind.
At the store, when I got out of the car, there was a strong breeze so I zipped up my coat and was glad for it. Threw up the hood over my cap and made my way to the entrance.
Once inside the big building, I realized the air conditioning was running and was happy to snuggle into my seasonally appropriate clothing. And the first person I (almost) ran into, was a young, twenty-something guy. And I immediately felt sorry for him. You would have too.
This poor fella had no coat on at all. With his full head of hair, he wore no cap. And shockingly, he had on only a thin tee shirt and, I almost fainted, a pair of shorts. Running shoes and NO SOCKS. I thought of lending him my coat, but didn’t want to interfere. Some day, I hope, he’ll realize how to dress himself on a normal Day 25 of March in Canada.
It was cold in the freezer section of the store as I searched for the eggs we needed. And when I got home, I lay myself down for a long, afternoon nap. I was cozy. Three nice blankets on the bed and the space heater going.
I finally drifted off. Still fretting about the Lord Godiva I had almost bumped into at the store.
I was thankful and felt sorry for him.
When I woke up, I cooked myself up a very warm bowl of soup. Grabbed my laptop and reading glasses and caught up on the news.
And I thought, another few months I’ll be walking around in shorts and tee-shirts like that young guy at the store. Maybe a light jacket. And straw hat. Running shoes. Thin pair of socks.
With age, it seems, comes wisdom. And no end of clothing. My mother would be proud of me. If I ever make it to a beach on a south seas island, I promise myself I will dress like Lord Godiva.
Checkout lines in retail stores are my little hell on earth but at least in that frustration, I am not alone. I have an uncanny knack for choosing the wrong line, again, nothing unique. But today’s little adventure in a big store in my small city stands out somewhat.
This store, which I otherwise love, is distinctive in that four of its six checkouts are just decoys, placed there to give the appearance of readiness in the event of a flood of shoppers. In fact, the flood occurs regularly but only two floodgates are open at any one time. So, at least the options for which line to choose are reduced.
Today, there was a long line at one checkout, a short one at the other. Which one would you choose? Exactly. But, like me, you would be horribly, tragically wrong. There was a reason the one line was long and the other short.
The smarter shoppers had figured it out. Those whose brains turn to putty in store lineups never do. And so, I entered the short line.
There was a young couple just finishing their checkout and only one other guy to go through. He had one item. One item. A bike rack for his truck. In a very large box but did I mention one item? A breeze, I chuckled triumphantly to myself as I looked with pity on the long row of shoppers in the next line.
However, as Bike Rack Bob approached the till, he lifted his right hand in which was clutched a four-inch wad of coupons. The average Bible is thinner than this, I thought.
I know those of us of Irish descent are inclined to exaggeration and I have acknowledged that a hundred thousand times, but this wad was actually four solid inches in thickness. Maybe even a touch thicker. The woman at the checkout freaked out.
“Oh no,” she said to the guy, who seemed to be a friend or neighbour. “You’re not going to do this to me. I am done my shift.” But he was not backing down and so the counting began.
To complicate matters, Bob turned out to be an incessant chatter and the poor woman had to start over several times as she lost track of where she was as she tried to digest story after story.
Other shoppers pulled in behind me, sized up the situation and left for the longer line which was flowing along like lava down a mountainside. But I was committed and I have found from past experience that if I leave the line I am in, something terrible will happen in the other line to make it even worse.
A woman pulled her cart in behind me and we joked a bit before she left for the long line. In a few minutes she gave me a royal wave and smile as she exited the building, her business complete. All the shoppers who had been in front of her, were likewise gone.
In total, the bike rack guy had produced $108 in play money, most of it in denominations of five and ten cents. All that money counted he still owed the clerk $5.11. Had he pulled out a little purse and ventured to settle his account with nickels and dimes, I’m afraid I would have been forced to assault him. As it was, he used a debit card and in a few more minutes was gone.
His only salvation was that he was abjectly apologetic. But every resident of the State of Texas apologizing for anything wouldn’t have speeded up my progress.
I hope Bob enjoys his bike rack for many years to come, years I would have also liked to have had but which are now most likely gone as a result of the stress placed upon my nerves and heart from having to stand in line behind him today.
And all for the sake of a box of cat litter and some toilet paper in my shopping cart. Ironically, I guess, a double case of bummer.
On the beef farm in Canada where I grew up, many hours were spent spreading manure, literally. I would jump on the tractor with the loader on front, and scoop out the cattle barns, load up the spreader, then climb on the tractor attached to it and take it to the fields.
The manure wagon had a chain conveyer on its floor which would slowly move the manure to the back of the spreader and into the speeding beaters which would shoot the stuff out onto the soil below. It was not a terrible job, but the manure that had been stored in the barnyard, had been rained on for weeks and could be very sloppy. It was not a laugh a minute spreading that stuff.
But eventually, I would get a drippy wagonful and head out to spread it. The smelly slop shot out everywhere from the beaters like fireworks. If it happened to be a windy day and I was heading in a poorly chosen direction, I could feel the manure splat on the back of my head. However, now and then I couldn’t resist taking a look behind me to see how things were coming along. When I did that, I would sometimes get a blast of slop hitting me in the face, and, if I made the mistake of looking back while I was singing a Roy Orbison song, I might actually get a rancid trajectory of cow poop in my mouth. I know I should keep looking straight ahead when it comes to many politicians these days, but now and then, I look back while I am singing a Gordon Lightfoot song and whammo – mouth filled once again with stuff that came out of a politician’s mouth.
One of the great advantages for me in owning a dog is the humour he brings into my life and the fun I bring into his. About the size of a Thanksgiving supper fart, my little poodle Toby has a least a hundred names which I (and other family members) have bestowed upon him over the years and he answers to all of them.
For example, just looking at him today while he sat on the couch hoping I’d give him some of my breakfast, I yelled out, “Hey, Typhoon Bill, here’s a cornflake for ya.” He responded to the new name as though he’d thought of it himself.
And every time he gets a new name, it make me feel good to know that there is no chance that there is another dog in the world with that name. If anyone ever comes across another poodle (or any dog) called Typhoon Bill, please let me know.
Toby’s official name is Chubbly S. Winterborne III (the S. stands for Socrates). Now, that might sound a bit creative but you can’t really consider yourself a serious nicknamer unless you have nicknames for their nicknames. Chubbly S. Winterborne III, is a little too wordy, obviously, so he is called Chubbles and sometimes Chubby, for short. But not for long as there are 99 other names to use on him, such as Tito Burrito, or (nickname for a nickname) My Little Burreet.
But he was also Darlin’ McFarlin, Busterooni, Barfolomew, Junior Spampaloni (Little Spampy), Goofer Hoppy, Dinkus Farinkus …
Don’t even get me started on our cats, Archie and Stretchy McFlinnihan (The terrible McFlinnihan Brothers). They are also known as Shredrick F. Wigglebottom III and Squirmford F. Wigglebottom III. The F. stands for Fartingham, and why wouldn’t it?
In fact, these twin brothers were named Mario and Luigi and that is what they were mostly called after we picked them up as kittens at a local shelter. But it wasn’t long before Mario was Mazee and Mariobee and Luigi went by Eegee.
I have a terrible habit of ripping off my eyeglasses to get a closer look at the fine print on documents and other things. I recently was going over my Last Will and Testament and was shocked to see that my intention to leave all my riches to “the family of Gordie Howe” had somehow been changed to read “my family”, no mention of Mr. Hockey.
The way my habit causes me trouble is the fact that I often then sit on my glasses, especially when I am lounging on the couch. When I then retrieve my eyewear and replace them on my face, inevitably, they are as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, no matter I have never examined the hind legs of dogs to see if the comparison works. This is very frustrating, especially if I am due to be seen in public.
This requires me to visit my eye doctor to set things right. I worry he thinks I am intentionally doing this to provide him with his weekly quota of annoyance.
But I think I have discovered a way out of this dilemma.
A couple of nights ago, I looked in a mirror to discover that either my glasses were crooked or my face was. Given that my face hasn’t been rearranged since my early school days when the bully designated by the teacher to keep me in line used to go all Muhammad Ali on me several times a day.
So, another crooked set of glasses, just another day.
But last night, I sat on them again. After shouting out loud a few of the words I used to confess to my priest in my teenage years, I rushed to a mirror to try them on, fearing the worst. Lo and behold, the second instance of sitting on my specs had straightened them right out. Better than my eye doctor has ever done.
My only conclusion is that, in spite of the age-old warnings handed down, probably by the ancient Chinese …
Jeff Bezos called in his chief accountant one day recently on what he said was an important issue.
“It looks like we’re going to have a problem again with that guy from Canada,” said the Amazon boss to his underling. “That guy, Hagarty, I believe his name is.”
“Nooooooo!!!!!”, yelled back the accountant in dismay. “Not that guy. Please.”
“That’s the one,” said Bezos. “What a pain in the behind that guy is. We can’t go through anything with him again, after our last encounter.”
“What is it this time?” asked Mr. Figuresadder, the accountant.
“Same as last time,” sighed the multi trillionaire behind the desk. “He says he has been overcharged again.”
“Omigosh,” exclaimed Figuresadder. “Why does this keep happening? Especially with this jerk.”
“Don’t know,” said Bezos. “But let’s not make a big thing of it this time. Hagarty seems to thrive on conflict.”
“What should we do?” asked the accountant.
“Just pay him out,” ordered Bezos. “Cut him off at the knees. We can afford the hit.”
So, with a heavy heart, Mr. Figuresadder went back to his office and spent the next hour making the arrangements.
And there it was. On Hagarty’s next credit card statement. On Dec. 7, 2023, Amazon Marketplace Canada settled the issue with Hagarty before the cantankerous Canuck could get a head of steam on.
On that day, Hagarty’s credit card statement showed a credit from Amazon of 0.01.
Hagarty smiled contentedly to himself as he read the statement, packed the family in the car and took them out for supper. That’s how it’s done when the little guy stands up to the big guy. When the news got out, Hagarty was placed in the running for his country’s coveted Citizen of the Year award.
But even if he doesn’t win that honour, his satisfied smile these days says it all.
Please take note. The next time you sing for the residents of a nursing home, do not, I repeat, do not sing a fun (though gritty) song called Seven Old Ladies. Because everyone’s definition of fun is different, I guess.
Up to that point, doing my usual impersonation of a human jukebox, I was doing fantastically well and the audience loved me more than their own sons and daughters. However, as I sang Seven Old Ladies – a little ditty about seven aged senior citizens of the female persuasion who get stuck for a whole week in a public washroom – people in the audience started looking at me as though I was spray painting a box of kittens green.
And there was no getting them back after that. I am setting fire to the lyric sheet as I write.
As well, I am giving up the seniors’ home circuit, as every time I go to leave the building these days, now that I am 73 and look 93 (I was offered my first senior’s discount when I was 48), a staff member inevitably rushes over to stop me, thinking I am a resident trying to break out. Although not part of the home’s population, on that day, it was true I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that more than seven old ladies were chasing me!
A member of our household went to a store the other day and came home with a small item she had bought. The minute she took it out of the package, it broke. She was a little discouraged but decided to let it go.
The next day, I thought I would surprise her by going back to the store to replace it. That’s what I did. I even took the package with me to make sure I got the right one.
It occurred to me for a few seconds to throw a little fit about the poor quality of the item, but decided, what the heck, for $2.50, it was not worth the grief.
That night, I presented the new item and was thanked profusely for my thoughtfulness. Then I told her how I went to the store and told the guy the first one broke and I would like another one.
“What store did you go to?” I was asked. I supplied the information.
“I didn’t get it there,” she replied and told me the name of the store from where the item had come.
I am not much confused these days. Not long ago, I climbed into a van, same model and colour, to discover the key did not fit in the ignition. Taking a quick look around, I began to realize why. I got out of Dodge (it actually was a Dodge) a lot faster than I got into it.
I stepped out into my backyard through our garage door very late one night last week, when winter still had us in its grip. There I saw three big male wild rabbits, feasting on the seed I had scattered earlier below our platform bird feeder (an old sheet of plywood on an even older steel post).
These three guys aren’t friendly and I was surprised they didn’t bolt when they saw me. But hunger must have temporarily dulled their caution and they hung in there. I was careful not to make any sudden moves.
Missing from the gang was My Bunny, the sweet little female who is about half the size of the Three Amigos and who behaves as though I am her best pal. In fact, one of the Hardboiled Hares might have been the only one she was able to keep alive during her first season as a mother last summer.
As I was watching the Ravenous Gang of Three make short work of the feed I had put out, I suddenly spied My Bunny out of the corner of my eye. She had ripped around the corner of the shed and hopped right up to me. I thought I understood what was going on. She was too timid to approach the Backyard Bullies but was probably as hungry as they were on this cold night. This was not the first time she had come to me for help.
I knew what I had to do. I talked to her calmly in a sing-songey voice and slipped back into the garage to fetch her some grain. I reappeared and sprinkled a moderate amount on the ground a few feet from me. I knew the Nervous Nellies under the birdfeeder would never make a dash for what I had left my fuzzy little pal, at least not while I was standing there. And even My Bunny, though she had asked for something to eat, stood back a piece after I had dumped her food on the ground. I had to sweet talk the girl into hopping up near me and chowing down. Finally, she gave in and raced up to within a few feet of me and started filling her belly.
Now I knew I was stuck. As cold as it was out and me with no coat, cap or gloves on, I had no choice but to provide security while Bunny got busy gobbling. Fortunately, she filled up fairly quickly and took off again behind the shed.
It is one thing to be seen by a wee rabbit as a reliable source of food, but another to be hired on as a bodyguard.
Or as her bunnyguard, which maybe suits a bit better.
Having been, for many years now, a committed, self-admitted, practising loner and the secretary-treasurer of the Canadian National Association of Hermits, I was disappointed that our convention in April 2020, in Toronto has been cancelled due to the pandemic.
On the other hand, the combined attendance at our last ten conventions has been exactly zero, so the effect on me will be temporary.
Still, on some level, I will miss the non-company of my fellow hermits. I would call some of them on my telephone but then, you know, there’s the whole hermit thing.
A young man going to university in Ireland wrote home to his mother in Toronto and gave a weather report: It rained only twice last week, Mom. First for three days and then for four days.
As if it isn’t bad enough that the birds of the world love to crap on my car, a man in the United States has taken to imitating the feathery dung dive bombers, and now that he is receiving publicity for it, I bet it will catch on.
Police in Akron, Ohio are searching for a man who’s come to be known as the “Bowel Movement Bandit.” The man is accused of defecating on as many as 19 cars in residential neighbourhoods. He wears a black beanie cap, a black hoodie and only poops on cars in the early-morning hours, police say.
Things are under control for now, but if this guy ever gets a pilot’s licence and takes to the air I will sell my old buggy and start walking.
There are so many wonderful small moments in life. A child laughing, for example. A bunny hopping across your backyard.
Then there is going home with a chocolate bar you just bought in a corner store, peeling back the package, and finding the chocolate has been inside so long it has turned white and hard. This is not, however, enough to put you off eating it, although you do it begrudgingly. And the next time you are in the store, you will forget this little fiasco and buy another bar, completely repeating the process.
I was never a big fan of the Drive Clean program in Ontario, the Canadian province where I live. I know its intentions were good when it started – to catch automobiles that were belching too many pollutants – but most old clunkers are off the road now and it’s time to retire it.
Since it started, our family has spent almost $1,500 to have our two vehicles checked and never once has a flaw been found, even though they weren’t always the newest of cars. So, every two years, one or other of the vehicles has to be taken in for testing and I dutifully hand over the $45 because I can’t get a new licence plate sticker if I don’t.
But one year in particular I had steam coming out of my ears and maybe I should have been checked for faulty heart valves or something. I went to the licence office with my forms all filled out and the woman said, “Oh Sir, you have to have a Drive Clean test done.”
Now for some crazy reason, I always renew my licence right on my birthday so I couldn’t put this off. So out to auto shop I went with the Oldsmobile and sat in the waiting room for what seemed like an hour before everything was done. Surprise, surprise. Nothing wrong. I handed over my $45 and headed back to the licence store with my certificate showing that the car had passed its test.
“Oh dear,” said the same woman behind the counter when I brandished the document, almost defying her to find fault with it. “You’ve done the Drive Clean on the wrong car, Sir. It’s the Chevy that needs to be done. The Olds will be done next year.” Close to heart attack territory, I inquired if the Drive Clean I had just had performed on the Olds would still be good next year. I was told no, that it would expire the day before my next birthday.
I’m kind of surprised by the fact that I didn’t expire before my next birthday.
I raced home, grabbed the Chevy and back out to the auto shop for my second DC test within an hour. When it was finished, I handed over $45 and told the fellow behind the counter that I would not be back, that I was fresh out of cars.
Someday I will be fresh out of cars for real and Drive Clean Hell will just be but a bad memory.
I used to like dancing in my younger days. Almost loved it, in fact, and became half decent at it, or so it seemed to me. Others looking on might have thought they were witnessing a crazy man running around a dance floor, but I think those people were wrong, oh so wrong.
However, I have had to give it all up for the sake of my health. I came to that realization after I read about the Dancing Plague of 1518.
In July of that year, almost 500 years ago, Frau Troffea, a resident of Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire), suddenly took to dancing on the street. Soon she was joined by others, all dancing uncontrollably. Within a month, 400 people were dancing in the city and many of them died from exhaustion and heart attacks.
The Dancing Plague of 1518, as it came to be known, had completely died down by the mid-17th century. If my math skills aren’t failing me, that means the dancing went on for about 150 years. If there has ever been such a thing as a dance-a-thon, I think that one must hold the record.
Historians can’t figure out whether the dancing was a real illness or a social phenomenon of some kind, but I am taking no chances. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers liked dancing too and how far did that get them? Where are they today?
I don’t like to be pessimistic but I have a little issue I’m having trouble resolving. Maybe you, with the wisdom and understanding I know you possess, can help me out.
After a lovely Chinese dinner from our favourite restaurant last evening, we cracked open our fortune cookies to see what messages were contained within each one. My wife got, “The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” My daughter’s message read, “If the cake is bad, what good is the frosting?” And the little slip of paper that fell from my son’s shattered cookie said, “I learn by going where I have to go.”
“Wow,” I thought. “What great little sayings.” I could hardly wait to read my fortune.
I cracked open the brittle brown cookie to find …
Nothing.
I felt a chill run up my spine. What does it mean to not get a fortune in your fortune cookie? It was like opening a Christmas present from Santa Claus to find nothing in the nicely wrapped box. Not even a lump of coal. Or phoning the doctor’s office to get the results of all those tests only to be told there are no results and never would be.
Now you, being an optimist and a happy soul, would content yourself with thinking logically that whatever process is used to insert fortunes in fortune cookies simply failed to deposit one in mine. But my mind is ninety-six percent imagination and four percent logic. It is geared to zoom from zero to one hundred in a millisecond, the higher number representing disaster.
It was as if the Chinese gods decided not to waste a fortune on me. I wasn’t even worth getting a message about a mouse and cheese or a cake and frosting.
It’s 12:30 a.m. My family are all in their beds. Sleeping.
I am generally not a jealous guy, but I will admit to a bit of envy when I read about the leaders of North Korea. Why can’t Canada’s prime ministers be this good? In comparison, our leaders are pretty much duds. It is no wonder Donald Trump is in love with the current head honcho of North Korea.
For example, Kim Jong Il, the now deceased father of the current dictator Kim Jong Un, was really good at sports. He bowled a perfect 300 in the first and only game he ever played. He also broke a world-record score during his first and last round on a North Korean golf course. He got 11 holes-in-one and didn’t score more than a birdie on any other holes, ending up with 25 for 18 holes, 38 under par.
He was also a literary wonder, having written more than 1,500 books. More impressively, perhaps, he wrote all these books during the three years he attended Kim Sung II University. After graduation, he composed six operas which are better than any other music ever written in the history of the world. He also invented the hamburger.
But what else could be expected of a man who was born under a double rainbow? Following his birth, a new star appeared in the sky. Not only that, a swallow predicted his birth. And when he grew up, he could control the weather with his mood.
Kim Jong Il was a genius baby. He was walking at three weeks old and talking at eight weeks old. And he and his father, Kim Il Sung, never used a bathroom because they didn’t urinate or defecate. Their bodies were so well calibrated that they used all of the foods and liquids ingested and produced no waste. The current leader, Kim Jong Un, does have bowel movements, however, and travels with his own personal toilet. Anyone caught using his mobile restroom is put to death. So his aides are well-advised to go before they accompany him anywhere.
And even though he has to poop, Kim Jong Un is still no slouch himself compared to his ancestors. He could drive a car at three years old. He began winning yacht races when he was nine. And he excelled in the arts as a child. He was particularly good at painting masterpieces and composing musical scores. He climbed to the peak of the highest mountain in his country. These wonderful attributes of Kim Jong Un are part of the curriculum in North Korean schools.
But I guess it is natural these amazing men would emerge in a country that has invented a pill that cures AIDS and cancer, where there are no people with disabilities, and where they have invented alcoholic drinks that don’t result in hangovers and a soda pop that actually grows the brains of its drinkers and makes them smarter. Plus, North Koreans found the remains of unicorns which used to live in their country and on which their leaders once rode.
But, maybe the North Korean leaders have met their match. News today that Donald Trump was named 2018 Men’s Champion in a Florida golf tournament in which he didn’t play, a tournament he won five times between 1999 and 2013.
I don’t know how we’ll ever do it, but we Canadians simply need to start producing better politicians. Every one of them is a sheer embarrassment to our once proud nation. They suck at sports, never invent anything, and regularly use toilets.
To look at me, I don’t think you would take me for the kind of person who likes to torture other people. And to be honest, I myself never thought I could enjoy that morbid activity.
But here I am, these past few weeks, driving people absolutely crazy and I have to admit, it’s putting a smile on my face.
This all came about because of an epiphany I experienced one day, after trying my best to turn right on a red light into oncoming traffic. After doing this for the last 57 years since I got my licence to drive a car, I have finally given up the practice. Now, when I approach a red light in the right lane, I just stop and wait till it turns green. This has made my life so much easier after decades of near-crashes and dozens of pedestrians I didn’t see and almost ran over and bicyclists who came out of nowhere and I almost knocked down.
But in the process of making my life easier, I have made it very, very hard for the poor, impatient schlubs who pull up behind me at the red lights. Since I saw the (red) light, I have heard more horns honking than a wedding party driving through town on a Saturday afternoon in summer.
I don’t actually intend or want to torment the drivers behind me who insist I turn right, but I can live with the results of my intransigence. A driver in the right lane at a red light CAN turn right but there is no law saying he has to.
So I don’t.
Not everyone who has sat behind my car has experienced a nervous breakdown, but the mental health of many others has been seriously degraded. Amidst all the honking coming from behind me, I sit unmoved and unmoving. I await the day when some driver inevitably exits his car and comes up to mine to bang on my window. My plan, at that point, is to turn to the irate soul and smile before blowing him a kiss.
I know I shouldn’t derive pleasure from the misery I am causing others by my traffic habits but my only regret is that I didn’t start this don’t give a damn approach to things a long time ago.
It got me wondering what else I can do to spread even more dissatisfaction among the people with whom I share this fine city of ours.
I have shot a gun before, but always a long gun, never a pistol. The dozens of times or so I pulled the trigger growing up on the farm were a complete success in the sense that I did not shoot myself in the genitals even one time. If I had, I might remember such an occurrence, but I am pretty sure I didn’t.
And yet, there are men walking (limping?) around in this world who have done exactly that. Take this middle-aged brainiac in South Dakota, for example. He stuffed a loaded pistol in his pants one recent night. I am not an expert, but to me, this would be similar to having to have a bowel movement in the woods and deciding to squat right over a bear trap.
In any case, our hero’s gun went off somehow and the bullet lodged in his penis. That is some bad luck. But what is a fine upstanding man of the community to do to explain his unfortunate accident? He could hardly go around town known as the man who shot his own penis. Now, could he?
So, he did the next logical thing. Naturally, he told police that he was shot by a “black guy” who tried to rob him. This made sense as black guys always make it a point to shoot men in the penis when they are robbing them. You and I have read so many stories about that.
When the injured man showed up at an emergency room to be treated, police asked him how a bullet happened to strike him in the crotch, and our gunslinger – who is white – showed that he has some talent as a storyteller and might want to pursue that when everything heals and he can sit in a chair again.
The man told police he had been putting out the trash at a dumpster outside his apartment when the robber shot him during an attempted mugging. Police went to the dumpster and found no evidence of a shooting. They started to doubt his account of an African American gunman staking out dumpsters after midnight to rob people and shoot them in the penis.
However, they did find a witness who said he heard a lot of screaming coming from the man’s apartment that night. Obviously, then, the mugger must have broken into his apartment, where he robbed the victim and shot him, earning him the nickname “Dead Eye Dick.”
As for me, I am just glad it is almost impossible to stick a .22 calibre rifle down your pants. Or I might be walking with a limp too.
When a man starts his day and heads out to complete a few errands, he does not expect disaster to strike. But strike me it did this afternoon when I discovered my favourite grocery store had hiked its price of peanut butter by 50 cents a jar. At the rate I go through peanut butter, it didn’t take me long to realize what a hit this was going to inflict on our food budget.
And while I don’t begrudge the store the extra 50 cents, it was the lack of notice that sent me into a mini shock. They didn’t phone me to let me know that the price, which had been the same since back in the day when John Wayne still went by his real name, Marion Morrison, was about to shoot up. No letter in the mail. Not a text message, no email. No Facetime chat on my phone. Nothing. That’s what is so disappointing.
So now that the one-kilogram jars are out of my reach, I noticed they hadn’t gotten around to increasing the price of the two-kilogram buckets so I lugged a couple of them home, though I pulled a muscle in my left arm dragging them to my trunk.
With enough orange juice and peanut butter and with the passage of time, I will get over this. But I have been let down.
And I have to admit, I don’t like being let down.
Also, like a slap in the face, they tacked an extra dollar onto the price of raspberry lemonade.
A man’s life progresses through only a few predictable stages: sex, suds, and success. But try as he might to avoid it, he will eventually end up in the final and most important phase: slippers.
Whatever priorities he might have chased down the decades, there will eventually be only one main question to be answered in his life: Has anybody seen my slippers?
Slippers have been important to me since my 20s but now they form one of my key essentials for life along with water, air and potato chips. A few years ago, a glorious pair of bedroom footwear sat under the Christmas tree for me. The two main events in a man’s life are the birth of his children and new slippers for Christmas.
Some free relationship advice: To win a man’s love, get him slippers for Christmas. And don’t cheap out.
My new slippers and I enjoyed our days and nights together, even on out-of-town trips as they went everywhere with me. Then suddenly one day, things changed. The slippers stretched into almost a size too big for me and they began to feel like flip flops. They became, inexplicably, way too big. I began tripping when I wore them.
I tripped up the stairs and down the stairs and sometimes even on simple strolls from the living room to the potato chip cupboard. If it was possible for them to trip me when I was standing still, I am sure they did that too. I stopped wearing them in the bathtub. Too dangerous.
“These slippers are going to be the end of me,” I yelled to anyone, several times a day. The pets started fleeing when they saw me slip on my indoor footwear as they knew an emotional eruption would soon follow. I began to call them my Killer Slippers and recently they sent me flying headfirst into a wooden chair which carved me up like a jack o’ lantern.
Only one solution and it would be drastic: Ditch the slippers. I asked for a new pair for Christmas and arrangements were made. New slippers wrapped and ready for service, Sir! Yes Sir, Sir!
Yesterday I was cleaning up the garage and found some other slippers. They fit perfectly. Like long lost friends. I looked more closely at the Killer Slippers. They belong to my son who has bigger feet than I have. He abandoned them years ago: They were too big for him.
Here are the five stages of a man’s life: sex, suds, success, slippers. And senility. I had put the big ones on by accident one day years ago.
Sometimes life is hard for the human male. I won’t go through the list of ways it sucks but, you know, breadwinning, hiding emotions, early death, and all that, not to even start on baldness, bellies and bad breath. I think about these things every day and feel badly about my plight as a man.
But after learning today about the life – more specifically the sex life – of a certain kind of spider, the name of which I can’t remember, I am feeling a little better about myself. These guys are a little over-the-top sex-crazed, in other words, normal males, but lovemaking for them is a bit riskier than to remember to buy some protection. The problem is, their girlfriends, after it’s all over, literally eat their lovers (I said, literally).
So if you want to have sex with one of these hotties, and these guys really do want to, you have to have a strategy if you don’t to “die in her arms tonight” as one pop singer once ridiculously sang. The strategy that sometimes works is to get the hell out of there as soon as it’s all over. This is not easy, but can be accomplished.
However, these spiders have two penises which might sound like a good thing but when you’re trying to make a run for it, could slow you down. Especially since these penises are located on the spider’s head. “Hey, is that a tophat Fred or are you just happy to see me?” they might be heard to be asked. “Eff off,” replies Fred.
However, and we may as well stick with Fred from now on, Fred does the nasty and then, to get away from his lover and would be consumer, chews off his penises and runs away as fast as he can. How you can chew off your penises when they are located on your head is a mystery but I guess spiders know how to do that.
Now, if after all that, Fred could just go home and have a shower, apply a bandage or two and sit down to read his favourite book, Itsy Bitsy Spider, that would be fine. But instead, after he turns around, head all bloody and suddenly penis-less, he has to viciously fight off a long line of other males who just can’t wait to get in on this action. Because Fred’s penises are still inside his lover and doing their job of impregnating her even though Fred has left the building, and if his two former members are interrupted, no baby Freddies next spring. Out of four males spiders who go a courtin’, only one makes it out alive, if penis-less.
But I have to be honest, I think Fred’s life probably just got a whole lot better now that romance is off the table.
Now, as bad as all this is, it could be worse. There is a caterpillar somewhere out there that has to contend with a wasp which stings it and eats it and this guy’s only hope is to fling his poop as far away from him as possible so that the bee won’t find him. In human terms, that would be like throwing your bowel movements 75 feet away from you while lying on your belly on the ground.
Oh, what the heck, my life as a male seems rather quiet and uneventful, you know, so no more complaints from me. It’s Fred that has the real headaches even if his head is lighter than before. But at least he won’t get called a dickhead anymore. (Ya, I went there.)
I have invented a few words in my time. You’re welcome.
Among my finest is the word “geneosity”. This is to be used to describe an act – and the person who does it – of a very generous man (me) who is willing to share his genius with the world.
My latest breakthrough? My wife melted a whole bunch of nearly expired candles and put them into a jar with the idea she would use that candle wax up. But, how to insert a wick. Hmmm.
Geneosity strikes again.
“Why not stick a birthday candle down the middle of the goo,” I said. Works like a charm and it feels like my birthday every day.
Now I need to get to work on a new word. Something to describe an amazing genius who drives around in an old beat up Chevy with a bullet hole in the back bumper. Idiot has already been taken but I might work some form of it into my new creation.
To the man or woman or alien who parked beside me at the mall today: I have decided not to invite you to my next party. I am impressed, however, that you were able to get your little crapbox wedged up so close to my driver’s door I couldn’t even squeeze my body between the two vehicles (having downed too many chocolate bars and sodas) let alone open my door to get into my car and drive away.
I haven’t been able to squeeze into a space that small since I was ten years old.
I waited and waited for you to return because I wanted to address the situation with you but you were off being selfish somewhere else and I finally had to do something. I opened my passenger door and reclined both front seats as far back as they would go. Then I slithered my expansive frame across the seats, my muddy boots leaving slime across my dashboard and windshield in the process. The boots got stuck somewhere along about then and I began to wonder, if this experiment didn’t work, whether or not I would be able to extricate myself from the car at all or if this might be a job for the fire department and the jaws of life.
Finally, somehow, I got my feet on the driver’s side floor and my ass in the seat, started the car, and delicately pulled away, noticing, as I did, that the passenger side of your car was all banged in as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. If I had had a sledgehammer with me, you might have had a few more notches on your tin belt.
Now I am not a forensic anything and can barely spell forensic, but my forensic inspection of the beat-up side of your little tin box leads me to believe that this is not the first time you have jammed someone in and some of those other drivers, once in their cars, have slammed their doors against yours as a kind of thank you gesture.
I have one question for you. Have you thought of trading in your jalopy for a bicycle? You can park those suckers anywhere.
Our little dog Toby has become the World’s Greatest Peeanist.
When he discovered that his nightly pee at 10 p.m. earned him a bedtime snack, he developed an overactive bladder. For a long time, he needed two bedtime pees in the backyard. A few months ago, only three pee trips would bring him relief.
And last night, he adjusted his routine to include a fourth bedtimer, this one at 7 p.m.
Tonight, he is again on track for four backyard bushwhackers. He is startled to discover that only his final, final pee wins him some kibble but the gambit pays off as it is not always the same person who escorts him on all four pee offs so he scores additional treats just often enough to keep him scheming.
There is a dog park in Nova Scotia, Canada, which is enforcing a new, quite sensible rule: No Barking Allowed.
The campaign has been very successful. When the dogs enter the park, they immediately suppress their urge to bark. Apparently, it is quite something to see. Unfortunately for the dog owners, their pets bark their heads off all the way home to make up for the enforced silence.
Emboldened by the success of their barking ban, the organizers of that endeavour are now taking their zeal to other locations with the hopes of halting vomiting in hospitals, laughing in children’s playgrounds and singing in churches. Thank heavens we have concerned citizens, also known as retired busybodies with nothing better to do, to deal with these nuisances.
As for me, there is a flock of Canada geese that fly directly over our house twice a day and their honking is driving me mad. Therefore, drawing inspiration from the Nova Scotian barking patrol, I am working on erecting a great big sign: No Honking Allowed.
What kind of a day did you have yesterday? Better or worse than this guy’s?
Walter “Snowball” Williams, 78, woke up in a body bag at a funeral home in Mississippi. He had been pronounced dead the night before but when they went to embalm him, he started kicking like crazy in the bag.
So much for not having a snowball’s chance in hell.
The coroner had an explanation. His pacemaker likely stopped working and after he was bagged, it started working again at some point.
I am not a doctor, coroner or embalmer, but if this actually happens, might it not be a good idea to check a guy’s pacemaker before you plant him?
Good old Snowball. I hope he outlives the coroner and all the employees at the funeral home.
Give ‘er hell, Snowball. You’ve gotten a second chance!
I was in the offices of a bank today and noticed something funny. Behind the smiling tellers at the long counter were a number of big windows, must have been eight or nine feet tall. About four of them.
The vertical blinds were drawn on them all so no one could see out – or in. But in front of the windows were three huge flatscreen TVs, all connected so that they sort of operated as one big screen, with images able to appear on all three at the same time. I don’t know how that works but then again, I don’t know how marshmallows are made so I’m easily impressed.
In any case, the photo that appeared across all three screens was a lovely shot of a blue sky with white clouds floating in it. And I thought: “Why not just open the blinds and let everyone see actual sky and clouds.”
But what do I know about banking? (See marshmallow mystery above). It’s the strangest thing to me, now, how businesses are using expensive flat screen TVs as wallpaper. I guess you don’t have to use as much glue that way.
I wonder who invented the marshmallow and who came up with the name.
I often get asked how I made my fortune. It is an honest question non-wealthy people pose, and it doesn’t bother me at all to explain the path I took from rags to riches.
I left home at eighteen with seven cents in my pocket and the clothes on my back. And over the next five decades, through hard work and guile, I managed to amass more money than I can count. Someday I will write a book detailing how I did it but for now, I will share one little secret.
You might think a man of my elevated status would never need to go to a grocery store but Warren Buffett still drives his car through the drivethrough at McDonald’s so it’s important not to lose the common touch. Another thing about the elites I run with is, far from being tightwads, we like to spend, sometimes with wild abandon.
In the store today, I saw a sign advertising three bags of potato chips for four dollars. That seemed like a bargain but here’s your first wealth tip: It is no bargain at all if all you want is one bag of chips, which is all I wanted (and one more than my doctor wants me to have). So, I ignored the bargain and bought only one bag. It cost me $1.34. If I had taken advantage of the special sale, each of the three bags would have cost me only $1.333333333 (to infinity).
So, yeah, call me reckless, but having made my fortune, my plan is to spend every red cent – literally, in this case, one cent at a time – before I die. As you can see, with my wild abandon ways, I am well on my way to achieving my goal.
I threw out the rule book and spent .777777777 of a cent (to infinity) more than I needed to, he said with a satisfied look on his face.
Nothing’s simple any more. You hear it said. So do I. You might, in fact, have heard it from me. I’m usually saying it. People of the jury, I present as my evidence, well, just about every aspect of modern life.
It doesn’t matter what you go to buy, or to eat, or to watch in a theatre. Saturday, at one of these big movieplexes, a friend and I stood gawking for 15 minutes before the popcorn stand, weighing all the various options and packages priced for value. Bargain hunters from way back, we took our time and came up with what we think, but still aren’t sure, was the best buy.
Has anyone’s life improved as a result of having all this variety pumped into it? I don’t know. I do know that simplicity is as quaint a notion as table manners, modesty and diplomacy.
Witness my main piece of evidence. When I was a kid on the farm in the 1830s, our black and white TV got three channels. We picked up the broadcast signals from these local stations by way of a space-station-looking aerial on the roof of the house which we controlled by an electric “rotor” in our living room. Amazing science.
Today, in the city, of course, my TV-watching options are much more varied although my family and I have not signed up for all the channels money can buy. For 22 years, I have had a pretty good arrangement with my cable company. They’ve run a wire into my house, I’ve plugged it into my TV, they send me a bill for this luxury every month, and I pay it. Every year they send me a letter saying, sorry, but we have to charge you more for your service. I pay it. I don’t see any other cable companies banging on my door, so I have no choice.
Now, in my feeble mind, the simplicity of the relationship between me and my cable company goes like this: If I don’t pay, they take the wire away. Not hard to understand.
But this week, I received in the mail an “Important Notice of Changes” to my cable service. “As part of our ongoing effort to improve customer service, we have simplified the terms applicable to our various services.” I opened the document and it fell out before me like a scroll Julius Caesar might have read from. On that parchment are typed 5,493 words (I did a computer word count) defining the new relationship between my cable company and me.
Somewhere, a lawyer is basking in the south sea sun at a beautiful resort paid for with the money he or she charged my cable company to write to me with all these simplified terms.
There are 52 sections in the document and most of them seem to more or less define what awful things will happen to me if I don’t live up to the agreement.
Okay, here’s a little nugget: “We may assign or transfer the Service Agreement or any of our rights or obligations hereunder without your consent. The provisions of Sections 8, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 and any other provisions of these terms which by their meaning are intended to survive termination. These Terms have been drawn up in the English language at the express request of the parties.”
I am baffled as I believe I am a party and I don’t remember expressly requesting this, or anything else, with the possible exception of being left alone.
Here is the most I can put together from all I’ve read so far. If I don’t pay them, they’ll take the wire away.
If I was writing the Simplified Terms, I’d reduce the 5,493 words to about 12: If you don’t pay your bill, you will lose your cable signal.
Words a TV-addicted couch potato like me can understand.
Our cat Mario is 18 years old and getting kind of creaky. He has trouble going up and down stairs. So another family member regularly picks him up and carries him up the steps from the basement to the main floor to ease his journey.
Sometimes, I see him sitting at the bottom of the steps, meowing, telling me to pick him up and carry him upstairs. I don’t do that as I am not 18 and I’ve become a little wobbly on the steps myself. I imagine the disaster if I was carrying him squirming under my arm and trying to get upstairs, the two of us inevitably ending up in a horrible mess on the basement floor.
This morning, as I started to climb the steps, I could see he wanted a lift. Reluctantly, I had to reject his plea again and I started my journey upwards. I am not going to admit that I’m moving a bit slowly these days but as I reached the landing before three more steps to the kitchen, I saw Mario zooming past me like an Olympics speed demon.
I don’t know what to conclude. Either the cat is pretending he can’t climb the steps anymore or I am pretending I can.
Our little dog Toby is 13 pounds of fun and fury. He’s a poodle and smart as, well, a poodle, which, next to the border collie, is the second smartest dog of all the breeds. So I have heard. And after 10 years of living with this little dynamo, I believe it.
Every time I take him to the groomer, she finishes off his bath and haircut by tying a fresh new neckerchief on him. He looks cute as a button when I bring him home, all freshly trimmed, and with his new scarf around his neck. His latest one is bright green with white polka dots.
The other night, the poor little fella suffered a wardrobe malfunction. I was sitting on the couch watching TV when he jumped up beside me with his kerchief in his mouth. He laid it down carefully beside my leg, and looked with great concern directly at me. It was his “do something” look I am accustomed to seeing several times a day, but this time was different. He has a whole mess of toys and plays with all of them on a regular basis but he never plays with a scarf that has fallen off, which they tend to do now and then.
This seemed to be the scenario. His neckerchief fell off which apparently upset him. He then put it together that if he brought it to me, I would probably put it back on him again. He got his wish.
The other thing that intrigues me is how well, after the past decade, he and I communicate with each other now. He has a variety of barks that all mean different things. And a whole repertoire of looks that he gives me depending on whatever need he has at the moment.
One look Toby has never given me is one of anger.
What I have learned over the years is that he has certain needs and he has become very good at letting me know what they are. And those needs do not just involve food, water, exercise, play, fresh air and sleep. There are other things that also require attention. Such as love. Several times a day he sticks his nose and then his whole head under my left hand (never my right, I am left-handed) because he wants to be petted. He also brings me his toys, hoping I will play with him.
And when I dress him in his sweater to take him for his walk in winter, he sticks his nose through the hole just like a toddler would and his legs through the legholes. During a thunderstorm, he follows me around vibrating and frightened, wanting me to pick him up and comfort him. He crawls into bed with me and dives under the covers.
We talk about godsends, without remembering what that word means. Toby was meant to come live with us, that I know. One Monday morning, I found myself with an unexpected $400 in my wallet. That night, we went to a breeder to size up her latest litter of puppies. Our son and daughter fell in love with the smallest one. I asked the woman how much it would cost us to take him home. She said $400, of course.
When we returned to pick him up two days later, she asked us what we had named our puppy. My daughter had chosen the name, Toby.
“That’s funny,” said the breeder. “That was his grandfather’s name.”
Ten years ago, not long after Toby arrived in our home, I retired. With my wife at work and the kids in school, I was alone at home all day. I needed, and found, a buddy in our funny wee dog. The Universe had come to the rescue yet once again.
A couple of weeks ago, on the Internet, I noticed a good deal on a very large capacity thumb drive. So, I checked it out.
Since then, and it started immediately, on every page I surf, there are large gaudy ads for little tiny thumb drives.
Before that, I went searching for an inexpensive but good-quality set of headphones. Ads by the dozens for those followed my search. It didn’t matter what content I chose to view – music, news, commentary. There the ads were.
Before Christmas, I looked for a really good and not cheap audio recorder I could chirp my songs into. I can’t remember as far back as I’d like to but this has been happening to me over and over for years. Sometimes I don’t mind it as the ads keep me tuned in with the latest technological toys, but mostly, they are a nuisance.
So here is my plan to liven up my surfing.
As my polka dot bikini bathing suit is frayed and looking terrible, I am going to do a search for new bikini swimwear. As it seems to be mostly young women who wear these things, I foresee many enjoyable hours of surfing (ironic, eh) ahead of me this winter.
I don’t think much could go wrong with my plan but if the authorities do show up at my door, I promise to go quietly.
Note to all serious junk collectors: here is a sign you have the sickness bad. You are parked at the far end of the second-hand store parking lot enjoying a coffee. Your eye catches, in the distance, their big green garbage bin. The lid is open. The bin is full.
And sticking out atop that pile of refuse are four perfectly good plastic lawnchairs. “What the hell?” you exclaim to no one.
Briefly, you consider driving over to the bin and loading those tan lovelies in your car. These are chairs someone didn’t want so they gave them to the second-hand store. And that store didn’t want them!
But you want them.
Somewhere there is a hotline, or ought to be one. Sadly, you leave, remorsing over what might have been. Your quality of life will have to remain in the moderate position for another day.
But take heart. There is always the local dump. You are still fond of the perfectly good bookshelf you retrieved from there one day, right from under the massive sign, Absolutely No Scavenging Allowed. You assumed, maybe incorrectly, that what was meant was it was illegal to steal that sign.
You even thought at the time, “I could use a sign like that.”
It isn’t right to get a chuckle out of another person’s accident but sometimes, it can’t be helped. Like the mishaps shown on America’s Funniest Home Videos. A person falling off a boat into a lake or flying off a trampoline into a kiddie pool is funny, but for me, the humour often resides in the effort the person went to to create their own misfortune.
So, using scraps he found in the garage, a kid builds himself a ramp to ride his bike over. He tries it out and the ramp breaks or something else happens to land the poor schmoe on his head and wearing his bike like a pair of metal and rubber overalls.
This is what I laugh at: When a person goes to great lengths to create their own disaster. The funny thing about it is that, of course, he didn’t know all along that that was what he was preparing or he would have stopped shortly after he started. It is his innocence and ignorance of what is about to befall him that makes me chuckle.
This winter I have spent many cold overnights, on one occasion till 7 a.m., building three skating rinks in our backyard. The first two melted away, the third still lives. On the far side of the rink is a shed, in which sits a variety of shed stuff, including our portable firepit assembly – stand, pan, webbed top, etc.
On Sunday afternoon, I thought it would be an excellent time for a mid-winter fire to lift the spirits. So I hustled across the slippery ice, opened the shed door, and lifted the whole firepit contraption which, while not very heavy, is pretty awkward. Now, I could have left the shed, turned right and tromped through the snow, around the rink and to the backyard patio where we usually hold our fires. I could have. But that was the long way around. The short way, a much more sensible route, was to leave the shed and walk straight across the rink to the patio. This is what I did.
And this is what my feet did, halfway across the ice. They flew up to meet the sky. My head flew down to meet the ice. And the firepit, now curiously heavier than I had previously thought, flew down to meet my chest, shoulder, arm and stomach. Before it did, of course, it separated into four different parts, the better to pummel and puncture my suddenly prone body.
Now this is what I imagine. An old squirrel, sitting in our treehouse all winter, watching me make these big patches of ice and having no idea why I was doing this. Then looking on as I spread-eagled on my creation with a big black firepit crushing down on me as I lie there. I would not have blamed the little critter if it had let out a chuckle or two.
After all, I had worked so, so hard to doom myself to this fate. I was limping a lot due to a sore hip from tromping down all the snow for these rinks. Now I have a lame arm and shoulder to go with the hip. Fortunately, they are on the same side of my body so when I walk, I only moderately resemble the hunchback of Notre Dame.
This rink thing is working out just great! I don’t have any video but do you think AFV will give me the $10,000 if I just describe the whole affair to them?
If I said I wasn’t hurt, I would be lying. First, my abysmal failure to win a free cup of coffee at my favourite coffee shop after repeated attempts.
And now this.
Three years ago, I was among the 75 Canadians who, along with 200,000 other people from around the world, volunteered to go on a one-way trip to Mars to help colonize the place. One-way trip as in never coming back. Ever.
It sounded like a heck of a good deal to me. Six months free travel in a little capsule with a few other people, then setting foot on the Red Planet which would be my new home till the end of time. It would not be crowded there, I wouldn’t have to walk the dog and there would never be another free coffee contest. At least I don’t think there would be.
But alas, today it was announced that six Canadians have qualified for the final round of selection for the 2025 trip. I am not one of them.
I am really getting tired of having my dreams dashed like this. I am as eager to leave this planet for good as some people I know are excited to see me go. And yet, Earth it is for me. For now.
I will write more about it when I get back from the coffee shop and have taken the dog for a walk.
I have never been a pastor, so forgive me if I do not know all the ways a pastor should behave. The only thing that comes to my mind about being a pastor is that he should probably be kind, loving and helpful. Perhaps even wise. And maybe his family should be too.
But this is where my ignorance and reality collide sometimes, I will readily admit. If you are a pastor in Toledo, Ohio, you might have a different view of the whole pastoring best practices protocol.
Because in that city, a pastor and two of his family members apparently rushed into their church and ambushed a Sunday school teacher who was in the process of teaching a class. After physically attacking her, the pastor, his wife and daughter, dumped out the contents of the teacher’s purse. When the teacher tried to recover her belongings, the pastor pointed a loaded gun at her and threatened to kill her.
The pastor, his wife and their 19-year-old daughter, then scooped up their haul, fled the church and are currently on the run from police.
Reflecting on this, the old expression, “Things you find in a woman’s purse” comes to mind. I have not gone through very many women’s purses over my lifetime, but it makes me wonder just what it is they are carrying around in those things that would be so apparently valuable.
I know I am probably missing something here. But am I wrong to wonder what is being taught in pastor schools these days? When I was growing up, things like this hardly ever happened.
I can’t wait to hear what the good reverend has to say to his flock in his next sermon from the pulpit. Maybe, “Rob thy neighbour as thyself”?
As I crawl under the electric blanket on my bed every night, I am grateful that such a thing exists. I am a cold-blooded animal, constantly at risk of freezing stiff as a two-by-four, so a warm blanket doesn’t seem to be a frivolous possession.
Still, the word “decadence” runs through my warm mind now and then and while I have not consulted the University of Google to find out the exact meaning of the term, my own definition would probably lay out that a decadent thing is a thing a person doesn’t need.
For many thousands of years, people have been covering themselves up at night when they sleep to stay warm. Cavemen and women probably used some form of wildebeest hide to keep the frost away. But it took some genius in the last century to think, “If I ran electric wires inside a blanket and plugged it into the wall, I bet I could sell millions” and here we are.
In effect, I go to sleep every night inside a low-grade toaster oven.
I would have to do an exhaustive survey of all my possessions to decide which of them I don’t need, but right off the bat, the plastic ice cubes I got for Christmas spring to mind. I know why the family member gave them to me. She has suffered through many years of the tantrums I have thrown as I have tried to get frozen water cubes out of their trays.
I could list may other devices like the plastic ice cubes to convict myself of the charge of decadence, but something I bought last fall I think would have any impartial jury yelling, “Guilty!”
I am referring to the butt warmer I bought for our car. I think of the many generations of my family which got from one place to another without even a car, let alone a butt warmer to put on the seat. Did they think, as they were sailing across the Atlantic after leaving Ireland in the 1840s, “I wish I had something warm to sit on”? I am going to go ahead and guess they didn’t say that.
In fact, I myself managed to live 70 years without a butt warmer and hardly ever mentioned to anyone, “Gosh my butt is freezing” but when you run out of things to buy, I guess you buy a butt warmer.
And, of course, as is the case with every decadent thing, once you have experienced the value of the new device, you can never go back.
If I ever emigrate back to Ireland, and it isn’t impossible that I won’t, I am taking my butt warmer with me.
Not many of you probably know that I am a prolific inventor. My Dad was too. Most farmers are. Economics ensure they devise ingenious ways to do things as many of them can’t afford expensive new machinery.
I have several clever inventions on the go at present. For example, off the drawing board and into production is my WeinerRoaster, an aluminum cylinder slightly larger but in the same shape as a single weiner. It plugs in and cooks up a perfect tube steak in record time for diners in a hurry. The world has been waiting for this.
Then there is my PillowScape, which is doing very well. This is designed for those times in the middle of the night when, for no apparent reason, your pillow completely covers your face and seems to be weighted down somehow. There is a big panic button on the side of my amazing pillow which, when pressed, completely deflates it when mysterious accidents like this happen, usually to longtime married men.
But my crowning glory so far is the GPISS, or Global Positioning Indicator for Seniors System, which successfully guides old guys from their beds to the bathroom for their thrice-nightly visits in the dark. It is designed solely for men as studies have shown women somehow are able to wake from their beds and make a bee-line (also known in the industry as a pee-line) to the can and back again without as much as stubbing a toe, a remarkable feet.
The GPISS has several unique features. It wakes the old fella up at just the right times and even speaks electronically “not again”, saving the man the trouble of getting the words out. It can even be taught to add a couple of swear words to the comment.
The device also has several warning sounds it issues, indicating that the would-be bathroom visitor has, in his confusion, stumbled into the laundry (with a big tub waiting there), the rec room or even into a closet.
Mission accomplished, the stylish grey and white GPISS guides the grumpy old fart (an industry term) back from bathroom to bed and even plays soft lullabies to help him saw off again.
Get yours now for the incredible one-time price of $59.95 US, and if you order in the next fifteen minutes, the manufacturers will include, free of charge, my automatic nose-hair puller, HonkerKleen, which fits over the nose and is guaranteed to do the job painlessly.
Watch this space for more exciting products as I develop them.
You’re welcome.
(P.S. Inventor Thomas Edison lived in my city of Stratford, Ontario, Canada, for a while in the 1800s when he was a young man. He had an apartment above what is now a coffee shop called Edison’s on the main street downtown. The apartment is still there.)
Every once in a while, you read a piece in the news and think, “Wow. That guy’s telling my story.” This happened to me just now when I read about the fella who took on a cougar in the woods and won.
Travis Kauffman encountered the animal when it attacked him on a Colorado jogging trail last week. Bad decision on the big cat’s part as Travis killed it by stepping on its throat. I was amazed as I read because that is exactly what I would have done if I had encountered a cougar in Colorado. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
I don’t get freaked out around large animals and, in fact, sort of welcome the challenge they present.
Poor Travis did end up with lacerations on his neck and face out of the three-minute encounter. I’m thinking I would probably have avoided any injuries. With a face like mine, it would be a shame to see any lacerations on it.
Our boy Travis said he was running along the trail near Denver, when he heard pine needles rustling and turned his head only to come face-to-face with a young cougar.
“I was bummed out to see a mountain lion,” he said. He raised his arms and shouted at the cougar, but it pounced and locked its jaw on his right wrist and clawed at his face. His attempts to halt the attack by stabbing the predator with sticks and hitting it on the head with a rock were to no avail. I might have stabbed it with my car keys and bonked it on the noggin with my cellphone.
Ultimately, our young hero was able to pin the cougar down and put his foot on its neck and choke it until it stopped thrashing. He worried during the struggle that another cougar would come along and join the tussle. I wouldn’t have worried about something like that because another cougar would have run away after it witnessed my ferocity.
At only 155 pounds, Travis Kauffman has no special martial arts training. He just acted on instinct. Again, that is where we differ. I am fully locked and loaded and I don’t even carry a gun.
Mountain lion attacks on humans are actually kind of common in Colorado and it is by sheer coincidence that I do not live in Colorado.
If you are sensitive, you might not want to read this next part.
The other night, at midnight, I was out in my dark backyard when I saw something emerge from behind the shed at the back of the lot. It started moving through the snow towards the house so I stepped back into the garage and closed the door, watching from the window.
“What the heck is that?” I wondered, as I prepared to yell and wake up the household to help if things got too intense.
Cautiously, the animal crept closer to our bird feeder, preparing to eat some of the seed the birds had kicked out onto the snow. I turned the light off in the garage so the thing couldn’t see me and kept watching through the window. Turned out it was one of the biggest rabbits I’ve ever seen. But I wasn’t afraid.
Sometimes I feel like I am living in a woolen mill. Or a knitting mill, if there is such a thing. Manufacturing of clothing seems to go on in my home from early morning till late night. The family motto is, “If I’m sitting, I’m knitting.”
I have never knit anything but my eyebrows, on occasion, when I witness all the feverish apparel making going on around me. It started, of course, with my wife and before she could even hold a knife and fork, my daughter.
I do contribute to the enterprise in one important way, however. When I leave the house, many of the garments that protect me from frostbite and public nudity charges rolled off the line at the factory I live in. Some days, I look like a very colourful sheep as I stroll down the street in my finery.
I make no comment on how stylishly dressed I am on any given day but I will attest to the fact that I am usually very warm. Every year I get invitations to speak at the Sheep Marketing Board conventions as well as meetings of the Wool Producers of America. I always decline the offers.
But to be honest. I feel baaaaaad about it. A bit sheepish, in fact. But if your drawers were as full of as many toques and mittens as mine are, you might also grow weary from being a model of fine citizensheep.
Not to mention the sheer envy being outfitted in yarn from head to foot can bring out in my jealous friends and acquaintances.
We pamper our dog and two cats. They eat better than I do some days.
It wasn’t quite that way on the farm where I grew up and where the cat population topped out at 17 at one point. They were working cats, never in the house. Their job was to control the pesky rodent tribes and they did it well.
Our best mouser was Bobbie who raced up and down like a demon on the three out of four legs she had been left with after a run in with the haymower. Come to think of it, a cat who sported all its parts including eyes and even ears and especially tails was a prize to behold.
In later years, my father seemed to go a bit soft on them and started hauling home huge bags of calf starter from the farm supply store for them. They never gave any milk and I never heard them moo but they seemed to thrive on the cross-species feed.
Vet services were also a little rough and ready in those days. One day Dad somehow gathered up all the cats (I don’t know how many but not likely 17 that day) inserted them into a burlap sack which he put in the trunk. He drove to the vet to get them their distemper shots. The vet came out to the trunk and needled each cat one by one right through the burlap sack. Seemed to work.
It did worry me though when it came time for my brothers and sisters and I to get our shots but we never had to experience the cats’ indignity. And I don’t know about my siblings, but I grew to kind of like the calf starter. Good with milk and brown sugar.
We need George Carlin in these troubled times. However, seeing that my favourite funny man, who loved to play with words, has gone missing, I will have to take on this curious expression for him:
Knock Yourself Out
Who was the first person who, wanting to show someone just how little he or she cared for the outcome of what that person was about to do, said, “Ya, go ahead. Knock yourself out!”
I cannot wrap my head around this. Why would a person want to knock himself out, if it is even possible to do that, on purpose? So, there is one piece of cherry pie on the plate and you ask permission to eat it. Someone steps up, speaks for everyone in the room, and says, “It’s all yours. Knock yourself out.”
(You know, for a really good piece of cherry pie, I might actually be willing to knock myself out.)
I just can’t figure out how advising someone to violently assault himself to the point of losing consciousness can be considered anything but a hostile commentary on a situation.
Wouldn’t it be better for someone to say, “Yes, Jim, those last four pieces of cherry pie are all yours. I sure hope you enjoy them as much as you did the first two.”
If we could learn to adopt more pleasant expressions such as that one, that would really knock me out.
I’m a cautious person. Some might say I am overly cautious. That’s fair.
But I believe in looking before I leap and so far, that has prevented me from leaping off any cliffs. Many bad things don’t happen to me and I hope they never will.
I am not like the couple in Texas the other day who wanted to smoke some weed and so ducked into a vacant house to do so. So far, so good, I guess. In my younger days I used to wander through old, abandoned houses just for fun.
But if I was to go into a vacant house in Houston to smoke some weed, the first thing I would do is call out, “Here kitty, kitty!” Just in case there was a cat inside.
The couple referred to above didn’t do that and consequently ran into a tiger that was inside the house. All is well for tiger and humans, who at first thought they were hallucinating, but this is precisely the kind of thing that would never happen to me.
In fact, I can proudly proclaim that I am practically an expert in staying away from tigers. A little thing I picked up on the farm growing up when the elders told me to stay away from tigers.
Out here in the real world, folks avoid attaching a certain word to explain what is wrong with people, such as myself, who allow ourselves to be plagued by the scourge of clutter.
All sorts of explanations are offered by those interested in the matter but no one that I know of yet has ever had the insight or courage to come right out and say what it is that truly is the genesis of the disease of hoarding. Until we are ready and willing to admit the obvious about what really is a serious issue, we will never come close to solving the worst modern-day puzzle ever.
Only one word is needed to wrap this all up.
That word is insanity.
A month ago, in the midst of a decluttering frenzy, I donated a perfectly good, in fact, a very good, inkjet printer to a local second-hand store. It hurt a little bit to do that even though this fine machine we inherited hadn’t been used by us in years, as we have another printer we prefer.
I have given up selling stuff on the internet but I have found that is a great way to offer stuff to the general public for free. I could post an ad for a box of used bandages or a pair of running shoes that had lost their soles, and if I wrote FREE on the ad, they’d be gone in an hour.
So, I have taken to donating and with the printer gone, a wave of relief washed over me.
That was 30 days ago and this afternoon, I found a big plastic envelope filled with materials relating to the printer. Page after page of operating instructions and two big booklets. Along with a DVD loaded with software needed for the printer.
Panic set in.
Oh no!
Within minutes, a wave of thoughts and possibilities and scenarios flooded my brain. I should go to the second-hand store and see if they had sold the printer. If they had, would they know who bought it? I could track them down. If that wasn’t possible, I could take a picture of all this stuff and post it on the Internet, offering it free to the owner of the printer. (Except that guy who took my used bandages would probably claim it all.)
As this was sending me near to breakdown territory, I noticed that one of the two big manuals I had found was the French version. I thought that I could throw that one out, at least, but what if it turned out a person who speaks only French bought the printer from the second-hand store?
And where the insanity really gets cranked up to ten is when I realized that anyone under 30 would throw all the manual material out or even leave it in the store and just find out everything they needed to know about the printer on the Internet.
I explained my latest dilemma to my family at supper tonight. And I have to say I never saw material go from our table to the recycling box more quickly. It was shocking, in fact.
Apparently, none of the members of my family worry about the same things I worry about. And tonight I will lie awake worrying about why that is so.
I had an uncle who lived well into his 90s. He was healthy as a horse up to the end. He went out golfing three weeks before he died. He was the happiest, most optimistic man I’ve ever met.
But his life wasn’t trouble-free. At one point in his senior years, doctors opened up his skull and did some sort of brain operation, I can’t remember the details of. He survived it and carried on. But on both sides of his forehead, there were two big indentations associated with the operation. The skin grew over them but it was noticeable that there appeared to be two holes in his forehead, one on the left and one on the right.
I first saw him, following the operation, at a funeral. Of course he noticed that everyone who greeted him was stealing a furtive glance at the new prominent features on his head. So, rather than launch into a lengthy explanation, he put people at ease with this little quip: “That’s where they took the horns off,” he laughed. And so did everyone else.
If there was someone, somewhere who didn’t love him, I never met that person.
His wife, my aunt, was in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease, so he taught himself to cook. And in his early 90s, invested in a whole new set of pots and pans.
A better example of living life to the fullest I have never known of.
Now and then I go to a play and I watch all the pantomime actors on the stage. They run around in fancy costumes, pretending to say words and sometimes, act as though they are singing. I’ve gotten used to this and have learned to kind of enjoy these soundless theatrical presentations. That is, I did until someone pointed out to me that these are, in fact, not silent Charlie Chaplin-type productions.
This news caused me to question whether or not I am missing the sound from the stage because I cannot hear anymore. That is an unlikely explanation as I have two perfectly good ears on the sides of my head. But someone who is convinced that I am, in fact, deaf as a frying pan, took matters into her own hands and bought me a $40 hearing device designed for people to use at live theatre presentations and in movie theatres. Yesterday, I tried it out for the first time at a play.
Thirty seconds after I managed to get the thing set up and the earplugs shoved into place, I began to hear a very disturbing growling coming from somewhere below my chest. It sounded as though there was some kind of hideous creature hiding under my seat. I was quite alarmed by this until I remembered I hadn’t eaten all day and my stomach was rumbling. In stereo. Any self-respecting doctor would sell his stethoscope if he had to listen to even a few seconds of that.
I calmed down and it was lucky I did as a few seconds later I sneezed the loudest sneeze I ever have blasted in my life. Through my listening device, which I had turned up to full volume and the earbuds burrowed deep into my ear canals, this sounded just like one of the final fireworks crackers set off at our local Canada Day display, only twice as loud.
I no sooner recovered from that when I started to hear a constant clicking sound and realized that the device must be picking up my pacemaker. That made sense till I realized I don’t have a pacemaker, my heart insisting on continuing to beat on its own without help. I did notice an old guy sitting a row or two behind me so it might have been his. I considered asking him to turn it off but decided that is probably not polite. This reminded me of our baby monitor days when we would suddenly hear a child crying and screaming and alarmed, we’d rush into our kids’ bedrooms to find them sound asleep. Some neighbour baby was the source of the howling, it appeared, its screeches somehow broadcasting through our monitor.
Pacemaker problem ignored, there started up a very high-pitched sniffling which was coming from my nostrils as I tried to hold back the stream of nostril substance they were trying to exude.
It took me a while to adjust, but I finally learned to rip out the earbuds before violent sneezes erupted and to ignore the other errant sounds. That accomplished, I began concentrating on the sounds from the actors on stage. The play was a comedy, set in England in 1897, and surprise to me, all these young Canadian actors (including my daughter who bought me my hearing aids) were speaking with English accents.
Who knew? I heard almost every word they spoke. The play was hilarious.
But if I had to review my new $40 hearing device, I would have to say it was $20 well spent.
My back is bothering me a bit today. A little stab of pain here and there depending on how I twist and turn. It will be gone in a day or two.
I used to chalk up my back pains to the famous “Hagarty back” that plagued even the generation that preceded me, my Dad resorting to wearing a brace in his mid life. I also blamed my problems on all the hard work I did on farms and in factories over the years. And on bridge construction. Two days on a jackhammer will rearrange your skeleton in ways never thought to be possible.
But the real source of my problems, I see now, were the years I spent in a local rodeo. I didn’t rope calves or try to stay on bucking broncos as long as I could. Instead, I was the animal on which two lively rodeo riders spent a lot of time, trying not to be bucked off.
My name was “Horsey” and I would be mounted when I would make the mistake of getting down on all fours to fish out a remote control from under a couch. The only warning I would get in advance of another gruelling ride would be the yell, “Horseeeee!!!!” after which I would feel the weight of a rider leaping from a couch onto my back.
My job then was to race across the livingroom, neighing loudly as I galloped and now and then, rearing up on my hind hooves in an attempt to dislodge the rider.
Eventually, I would return to the couch onto which I would buck the laughing rider, using the soft landing of the cushions to prevent any broken bones. Successfully riderless, I would then hear “Horseeeee!!!!!” from the other rider waiting there just before that one hurled herself onto my saddleless and nearly broken back.
Across the room Horsey would go again, rearing up now and then, and returning to the couch to buck off the new rider.
If I recall correctly, there would often be accusations from one of the riders that the other rider had been given a more thrilling romp, so the exercise would be repeated until the rodeoers were satisfied or their favourite cartoon came on TV.
I wonder on what specific day our final rodeo was held. I am sure Horsey and his riders didn’t know that would be our last big appearance before our one cheering fan known as Mom, who, curiously, was never called on to participate as a horse in the rodeo.
To this day, she never complains about an aching back.
On the bright side, even now, I still have knees of steel. Horsey’s hooves have gone a little soft, however.
I was asked a while back whether or not I had ever taken driver training. I am not sure what prompted the question. Was I being told it was obvious I had been trained or clear as a bell that I hadn’t. In any case, I was happy to answer.
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am taking driver training.”
“You mean you have taken it. Right?”
“Oh, I see, you are asking whether or not I ever took instruction from someone on the proper way to drive an automobile. And yes, I did take a course offered by my high school when I was 16. And I am still taking lessons, almost every day.”
“What the hell are you yammering on about? You just turned 72. Do you mean to tell me you’ve been taking driver training for the past 56 years? What do you take me for. A fool?”
“Yes, I do, to the second question and same for the first. Every day I drive, I am in training.”
“What kind of drugs are you on?” asked my inquisitor.
“If you would like a list of my drugs I can supply that to you. But as far as I know, none of them impair my thinking.
“Every time I drive my car, I have a number of driving instructors showing me what to do. They don’t sit in my car like my first teacher did, but drive along in their own vehicles, and they point out what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong.
“Sometimes, they will wave at me with a middle finger extended. Apparently, this is a signal that my driving skills are excellent and it is their way of congratulating and encouraging me.
“But other times, my instructors honk their horns when it is obvious to them that I have done something wrong. I feel badly about that and try to correct my ways.
“Some of my instructors get very angry with me, their faces turn red and they shake their fists as our cars meet on the road. This is helpful as I take note of my mistakes and pledge to correct them in the future. The last thing I want to do is make my driving instructors upset with me.”
A common driving error I make these days is going too slow. In the world of driving, this appears to be a cardinal sin. I try to drive a few clicks over the speed limit but it has been shown to me many times over the years that I am holding up all the other drivers.
For example, I was driving through a sudden and brief terrible snowstorm in the dark one night last week and trying hard to not kill or be killed when I was impressed to suddenly see a qualified driving instructor passing me in his car and thereby telling me I was a menace on the road. I absorbed that lesson and will work on it.
Have I done any driver training myself in the 56 years I have had a licence? The answer is I have done a bit of it over the years but gave it up for good about two decades ago following an unfortunate incident. I gave the common middle finger salute to a male driver to congratulate him on his skillful maneuvers and the man chased me all over town for the next fifteen minutes, his car right on my tail, wanting me to stop, I guess, to provide him with more explicit instructions. I guessed the driver had just been released from prison that day and his skills were a little rusty. I finally led him to the police station where I stopped, intending to get out and give him some helpful tips. He must have been in a hurry, however, as he sped up and disappeared down the street.
It can be a complicated thing, this driver training.
When I was seven years old, I was in Grade 1, was good at tying my shoes, knew 200 words and already had my first pair of ugly eyeglasses, which, as I was to sadly discover, were extremely efficient bully bait.
It was only later I found out our one-room country school had hired a designated bully and I am not sure how he was paid but he kept himself busy and if he earned a fee for every kid he left lying on the school grounds sobbing, my guess is he did okay.
But I am pretty sure Bully For Hire didn’t do as well as a kid named Ryan, and strangely, neither did I. The highest-earning YouTube star in the world, Ryan is a seven-year-old elementary-school kid in the United States who does alright reviewing toys. The host of Ryan ToysReview earned about $22 million last year. The year before that, he made $11 million.
Ryan’s channel started in 2015 when he was four years old after he asked his parents why he couldn’t review toys on YouTube. Today, Ryan ToysReview has 17 million followers and has gotten a combined 26 billion views. And recently he struck a big licensing deal with Wal-Mart.
Now, I hate to be one to make excuses, but darn it all, that could have been me when I was seven, except for a few minor things. Our home didn’t even have its first TV at that time and it would be another 47 years before YouTube started up. And even if there had been an Internet for me to review toys on, as one of a family of nine, I don’t remember having all that many toys. A plastic rifle, a truck or two, maybe some cowboy action figures, a rubber ball. Reviews of those would have gotten old pretty fast.
At seven, I didn’t have much of an income, aside from the occasional deposit money I would collect for finding pop bottles in the ditches between school and our farm. So, yeah, I’m a little jealous. It would take me many years before I was able to begin earning an annual income of $22 million as a small town journalist. Many years.
Also, Ryan didn’t go to my school. If he had, he would have been too busy hiding behind trees to stay out of the path of our school’s official bully to think up toy reviews. I am guessing that Ryan has been privileged in his life. Not having your head beat on daily by a small army tank outfitted with arms and fists leaves your mind available for many profitable thoughts, I would imagine.
As for my brain, it was sort of obsessed with the bully and not with economics. Or toys.
However, if conditions had been right, I suppose, I could have done a video series about the Hundred Best Ways to Get Away from a Bully, except that I hardly ever got away. And didn’t know any ways.
Hiding behind trees was pretty much a useless strategy.
I wish I wasn’t so far behind the times. I love the new ways, but my time has passed.
I wish stuff like the following had been going on when I was younger. A Venezuelan comic book fan has had his nose removed so he can look like his favourite Marvel character, Red Skull, Captain America’s Arch Rival.
Obviously, there can only be one Red Skull so I propose that this guy be named Numm Skull, his first cousin.
In addition to his tattooed eyeballs and lack of nose, the comic fan intends to have his skin dyed red and more facial implants added. Forget Red Skull. Numm Skull is my hero.
Oh, if I could only have something removed to look like my favourite comic book hero, Wonder Woman. Yes, that’s right. I know what you’re thinking and you are correct.
I was singing in the shower the other night and my rendition of Blue Spanish Eyes was sounding downright great. I always sound amazing in the shower but this night, my voice seemed especially awesome. I chuckled to myself that it was as though someone had installed a waterproof sound system in the ceiling and I went a step further and thought, that’s not a bad idea. No more holding the shower wand as a microphone; I could have the real thing.
Then, I was suddenly struck by an awful realization. The reason for the fantastic sounds I was warbling was dreadfully simple: I had forgotten to remove my hearing aids before I entered the stall.
These are not just any hearing aids. These are a trial pair and I remember signing some document at the hearing place which said if I wrecked them during the trial period, I agreed to pay the full price for them, even if they were toast.
So, I did as I always do in a crisis such as this. I yelled out a string of words I used to have to tell a priest in the confessional that I had said, then I hurled myself out of the shower. I frantically dried off the little devices, then spent the evening on the Internet desperately researching facts about water and hearing aids. As instructed, I let the little suckers dry out on their own, popped them in their charger and went to bed.
I put them on the next morning and they have been working fine ever since. In fact, maybe better than before. Maybe water is good for them. I really hope it is because I don’t think that is the last time I will belt out a watery Engelbert Humperdinck song with that much power.
A few years ago, my son and daughter gave me a TV for my birthday. A brand new 13-inch Electrohome TV for my bedroom. They got it at a place where you can also buy tires.
This little thing has amazing colour but not much else. It doesn’t have stereo sound and only minimal outlets to plug things into. But I love it. Its stay in our bedroom was brief as we never watched it but it migrated to the kitchen and has seen a lot of use there.
One day recently I was strolling through a local second-hand store looking for a bargain when I saw it. Exactly the same TV. For $5.
Now a man would need to be horsewhipped if he didn’t buy something like that so I carted it home, convinced that there would be something wrong with it. Maybe the picture would be terrible. Or the sound. I took it into the garage and with hands shaking with excitement, plugged it in, hooked up the cable and turned it on.
My joy could not be measured. It was as good as the one the kids gave me years ago. For $5. So now, guess where I wanted to do all my TV watching?
A problem soon became apparent, however. Because of the small size of the screen, I couldn’t sit across the room and watch it so I found myself standing right in front of it while I watched. This got a little annoying and I thought to myself, “It is too bad I couldn’t get the same TV, only bigger.”
There were problems with that wish. I didn’t know if a larger replica of this machine had ever even been made. And even if it had been, the TV was a few years old now. What chance would there ever be that such an imaginary TV would show up anywhere where I might see it?
A few weeks ago, I was back in the hand-me-down store and there it sat: My dream come true! Nineteen inches of pure, unadulterated Electrohome. For $10.
A man would need to be held down and hog tied if he didn’t buy something like that so I hauled it up to the counter, bought it, drove home and sneaked it in the back door of the garage. (This was necessary because our home looks like a TV warehouse these days.)
I thought, “Well, this one will definitely suck.” I got it hooked up and turned it on. As good if not better than the other two miniature versions I now own. My life was complete. It was like finding the blonde you had your eye on but who is too young for you, has a blonde mother who could pass for her sister. Or something like that. (If my wife is reading, I wouldn’t know anything about that. Just looking for a simile.)
And the great thing was, I didn’t have to admit to the latest purchase because the TV looked exactly like the one it replaced on the shelf. No one noticed that it was six inches bigger.
Anyway, Life and Fate throw you a bone every now and then. An Electrohome Bone. And all that needs to be done is to pick it up and chew on it. However, can you imagine what the same TV in 26 inches would look like?
Important news today. Researchers have concluded that when a fly is hungry, its memory improves. Full tummy, bad memory. They’re looking into whether or not this might also be the case with humans and if they find out that it is, then you can forget about (?) drinking to forget; a better plan would be to eat to forget.
The problem there is, of course, that if you eat too much, and your memory goes on you, you might forget to eat in which case you will get hungry again and the problem of not being able to forget will be coming right back atcha. So it is quite possible that the best remedy for a broken heart, for example, might be to head to your nearest pizza shop and gorge yourself till the button on your pants pops and your fly (there’s that darned fly again) flies down on its own.
I am not a doctor or scientist so don’t take my word for it but on the other hand, I’m pretty sure I’m right. And for all of us who have been complaining about our bad memories lately, the answer to that may be to STEP AWAY FROM THE FRIDGE.
As for the flies, this story makes me wonder: What does a fly have to remember, anyway? The average one lives from two weeks to four weeks. Maybe it remembers the first time it made love which can happen as early as 36 hours after it hatches from the pupa (thanks Google). Imagine that, 36 hours after it’s born, the randy little thing is already going at it, maybe even with a fly twice its age, or 72 hours old. That might be something the fly would think is worth remembering.
But what else? All the great manure piles it ever landed on? That dead mouse the Hagartys’ cat killed and left behind the blue spruce? That was a good day.
I think the lesson is this. If you want your houseflies to leave you alone, forget the swatter or the sprays. Leave lots of rotting food and other crap around so it has lots to dine on and when it has bloated itself up to bursting, it will hopefully forget it’s a fly at all and just lie there. At that point, with luck, the cat will go over and eat it.
At the risk of offending those with strong opinions about whale vomit. I would like to note the following.
I have been on the search for sometime now for a quantity of whale vomit to replenish my dwindling supply. And I have been willing to part with some of my also dwindlng financial resources to acquire a bucketful or two of big fish puke.
What I do with this barf is none of your business; you need only to know that I am on the lookout for some and if you have any, we might be able to do a deal.
That said, I will not pay one million dollars to fetch the retch that was recently found by a young fellow on a beach in Thailand. He was just being a Good Samaritan cleaning up the beach when he happened across the big pile of whale belly jelly, a reminder, again, that Good Samaritans have all the luck.
So if you happen to have a pile of whale vomit that turns your stomach every time you walk past it (the best kind), please contact me.
Gordie Howe’s parents were humble farmers from Floral, Saskatchewan, Canada, who couldn’t afford to attend an NHL game and therefore, had never had a chance to see their son play professional hockey.
Gordie’s team, the Detroit Red Wings, decided one year to celebrate their star’s time with the team and so before one game, they surprised No. 9 with a huge gift at centre ice, covered in wrapping paper and tied up with a bow. A startled Howe, a man known for his shyness, skated out to where the big gift sat and after a few speeches, was instructed to find out what was under all that gift wrap.
So Gordie tore away at the paper and it didn’t take long for him and all the people in the stands to realize that Mr. Hockey was the owner of a brand new car. That was nice surprise number one.
The bigger shock and the one that brought Gordie to tears came when the back doors to the vehicle opened and out stepped his Mom and Dad.
The Red Wings didn’t always treat Gordie Howe that well and underpaid him for years. But on this occasion, they really came through.
As a big fan, this is my favourite Gordie Howe story. It shows how a little bit of class from a big organization can serve as inspiration in a sometimes hardened world.
Apparently young people buying homes today often don’t want what their parents had. They don’t want big houses nor do they care for large lawns – they just want enough backyard for a patio and barbecue where they can entertain friends.
No useless rooms inside like a parlour or fancy dining room. Instead they would like a room for a big TV and space to play video games. They don’t want a tub but do look for a large walk-in shower. And they want to be within walking distance of shops and restaurants and schools so they are not dependent on cars.
A friend and I talked a bit about this sort of thing last week. He and his wife recently sold their beautiful country property and moved into a house in town. They’re loving the change. Their rural property was so big and filled with so many flower beds, he spent his days manicuring everything, as though he was the keeper of a large park.
In summer I drive in the country a lot and I often feel sorry for farm families who I see out caring for the large lawns surrounding their homes and outbuildings on beautiful Sunday afternoons. The one day of the week they normally could have off they spend bouncing around on riding lawnmowers keeping everything trim, even the roadside ditches at the front of their farms.
In the old days, farm lawns in southern Canada were not so grand. A very old picture of the farmhouse where my mother grew up shows just a small patch of grass surrounding the home, maybe only 20 feet or so. It seems as though farm lawns have grown bit by bit over the decades and now are rural parks as much as anything.
But who are they for?
Do those who care for them ever get to enjoy that space? Along some country roads in my area, only a few cars a day might pass by. So not a lot of viewers to take in all that grandeur.
Maybe young homeowners are onto something. Like the expression goes, do I work to live or live to work. Do I own my home or does my home own me?
But no tub? Seriously? No shower I’ve ever been in, no matter how roomy, could ever ease the aches and pains and tension like a bathtub full of very hot water and bath oil to save the skin. And with the light off and a candle on the sink, the room can seem almost like your own special home away from home.
Showering in the dark just doesn’t have the same appeal, not that I have ever tried it.
It’s been kind of lonely around the house during the day since we exchanged our old fridge for a new one. The old one had been around for almost 30 years and was dear to my heart but its motor was in terrible shape and when running, sounded like a big machine in a factory might sound or a plane taking off at the local airport.
I had gotten used to all this racket, but one day, as I sat here at my computer alone in the kitchen, I noticed the darned thing had started talking to me. I can’t remember all the things it said, but it would toss out a phrase and keep that going till it turned off. When it started again, another phrase would emerge. It was usually three words. Something like, “Buy some cornflakes” or “Grass getting greener” or “Gordie Howe called.”
Not joking.
Once I had heard the motor say one of these things each time it grunted, the phrase got louder and louder and clear as a bell.
I happened to mention this to my family and each night at supper, inevitably, someone would ask me what the fridge had said that day. So I would tell them. It was kind of comforting having this talking appliance over in the corner and eventually, I found it to be better company than the radio. At least it didn’t shout out any annoying ads every few minutes.
But Old Yeller left a few months ago and I’m afraid the new fridge is not very talkative. In fact, I have yet to hear it say anything. So, back to wall-to-wall silence during the day except for the gerbils running in their ferris wheels and the dog barking at passersby through the picture window now and then.
However, just yesterday, I noticed a wonderful thing. Someone was showering and the bathroom fan downstairs, which is louder than the fridge ever was, struck up a one-sided conversation. And it was a good one. “Buy a boat!” it said, over and over.
And when someone else showered later in the day, the fan came alive again, this time advising me to wash my sweater. So, I am happily entertained once more and no longer lonely. I can flip the bathroom fan on whenever I like, even if there is no shower involved, and then sit back and listen.
In an Irishman’s home, sometimes, even the appliances can’t stop talking.
It is a common perception that Americans are tough on crime. I never gave that notion very much thought. I just accepted that the people of the U.S. do not have a high tolerance for bad guys.
But now I have some proof that our southern neighbours aren’t foolin’ around when it comes to scofflaws and mischief makers. A news story this week convinces me just how seriously some of the 50 states of the Union (not all) take their administration of justice. It is the fact that apparently, in at least one place in the U.S., a man can be charged for farting.
Yes, it’s true. A guy in West Virginia was charged with battery on a police officer after passing gas last week and fanning it towards the cop who was booking him for driving offences.
As Patrolman T.E. Parsons prepared the breathalyzer machine back at the police station, suspect José A. Cruz, 34, scooted his chair toward Parsons, lifted his leg and “passed gas loudly”, the complaint taken out against him said. According to the complaint, Cruz then fanned the gas toward the officer.
“The gas was very odorous and created contact of an insulting or provoking nature with Patrolman Parsons,” the complaint alleged.
For his part, Cruz says he didn’t aim his nasty missile at the patrolman at all. He said he had an upset stomach at the time, but police denied his request to go to the bathroom when he first arrived at the station.
“I couldn’t hold it no more,” he is quoted as saying in a newspaper story this week.
Cruz said the officers at the station thought the gas incident was funny when it happened and laughed about it with him but things turned serious later.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “I could be facing time.”
This situation raises several curious observations. Is crime in West Virginia so well eradicated that they are now going after people who pass gas inappropriately? And sent to jail on such a charge, how would the culprit answer the other prisoners when they asked you why he was being locked up?
Now, I don’t think what José did would look very good on his résumé and surely this was not his finest moment. But should the gaseous ones among the population really be incarcerated?
And if so, what are the various penalties that should accompany such an offence? And are other bodily functions potential lawbreakers too? Does belching border on the criminal? What about sneezing too loudly, spraying in seven directions in the process?
I’m afraid my grandmother, rest her soul, would not have done well in a West Virginian society that charges aggressive flatulence producers. Because on that subject, she had two favourite expressions.
“Wherever ye be, let your wind blow free,” she would say.
And hearing one of her six children express themselves in such a way, she would remark, “Well, that’s better out than an eye!”
She also would tell members of her brood: “Go outside and let the wind blow the stink off you.”
When Cruz is done serving his time, I think he should consider trying to sneak into Canada. In this country, we don’t believe in capital – or rectal – punishment.
He needs a vacation. He could come up here and bum around for a while.
This was a popular nursery song when I was a kid and though I thought it was funny, it horrified me on some level. This poor, misguided woman swallowed a spider to catch the fly, a bird to catch the spider, a cat to catch the bird, a dog to catch the cat, a cow to catch the dog and a horse to catch the cow.
Somehow, she survived swallowing all these creatures, except the last one. She died after swallowing the horse.
What was wrong with this woman?
To begin with, who gave her the idea that swallowing a fly might be so life-threatening that she would need to swallow a spider right way to catch the darned thing? She was acting on some pretty lousy information and I maintain that whoever fed her this lie should have been held responsible for it.
But after swallowing the spider, the next five things she swallowed are entirely on her. I can’t imagine anyone advising her to swallow a bird to catch the spider, or a cat to catch the bird, and a dog to catch the cat. But at least those actions have some relation to reality. A bird will catch a spider, a cat will go after a bird and a dog will chase a cat. After that, the woman comes unhinged. Since when would a cow be sent out to catch a dog? Even more bizarre, when has a horse ever caught a cow?
However, I will give this woman a few points on her ability to swallow things and if she had had the good sense to stop after digesting the cow, she might still be with us. But the horse was just a step too far.
I never saw a photo of this woman but I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that she must have had one hell of a big mouth.
Which is probably how that fly got into her in the first place.
She yawned what would turn out to be a fatal yawn at just the wrong time. The fly went to investigate and soon it was sharing her obviously oversized stomach with a spider, a bird, a cat, a dog, a cow and a horse.
What a tragic series of events. For not only the old lady but all these innocent creatures.
The good news is that, too my knowledge, no human since then has ever repeated such a string of colossal errors.
So, from that point of view, the old lady did us all a great favour by showing us the dangers of having a big mouth and of opening it at the wrong time.
It is sad she had to die but she left the world a better place.
Sometimes, inspiration descends on a person from the oddest places.
Yes, it might come from the words you happen to read in a book or that are spoken to you by a friend, sung to you in a song, or even a few lines scribbled on the inside of a greeting card. A scene from a movie. Or sayings that you heard years ago from an elder and which have stayed in your memory.
Or, they might just come from observing the wildlife in your backyard.
A few weeks ago, I noticed a path, a few inches wide, in the fresh snow behind our house. I had no idea what had created this flat mark, but I followed it across the yard, never finding its source. It looked like it might have been made by a beaver’s tail. But we’ve never had any beavers in our yard, so I was stumped. Wild rabbits never leave such a trail. Nor do squirrels, who always flit about with their tails high in the air.
But then a few days later, I noticed a black squirrel gobbling up the seed below one of our bird feeders. It then decided to go for a drink of water from a heated waterbowl we have nearby. I then saw that this poor little creature’s back end was paralyzed. He could only propel himself by his front legs and as he dragged himself along, his dead tail left a broad path in the snow.
So I took to feeding the squirrels on the ground so this little guy wouldn’t have to try to climb up to a platform below our treehouse, where I normally put their sunflower seeds. The next day, there was my little paralyzed friend, up on the platform, eating away. He must have crawled up the treehouse steps and made his way onto the feeding station.
Since then, I have watched for the poor guy several times a day until about ten days ago when I didn’t see him anymore. I took to walking around the yard, looking for his body. I never found it. He had obviously crawled into a bush or some other obscure place where he could breathe his last.
Like the rabbits in our yard, the squirrels have come to recognize me as the source of their food. And when I emerge from the back of the garage, they all head for their feeding places, turn in my direction, and watch me.
Yesterday, a bunch of them, scrambled from all parts of the yard and headed for their feeders when they saw me. One of those, was my little paralytic. But things had changed. While he was still dragging his dormant tail through the snow, he was now able to use his back legs. They were unsteady, and he sort of darted in a crooked line rather than a straight one, but he was recovering. And the strangest thing is, the other squirrels stand back while he’s eating, almost as though they are making allowances for his disability.
Why this inspires me is this.
Since I was a teenager, I have had a wonky back. My Dad had a troublesome back too and even wore a brace to help him meet the demands of farming.
Now and then, every few months, or so, my back “goes out”. The pain, which sometimes comes in spasms, is incredible. It causes me to yell out, like I’d just been shot, even in the middle of the night. I dig out my cane and hobble away. I sleep fitfully in a chair, rather than my bed. I immediately also apply copious amounts of self-pity and embark on a campaign to elicit lots of sympathy from the people I live with. It seems to help.
Today, is my first good day in a week-long episode. I’ve been to a physiotherapist in the past, but even his soothing touch and acupuncture needles, failed to produce any long-lasting relief. It always goes away on its own. I just chalk it up to another visit from the “Hagarty back” and move on. Nothing I ever do seems to bring it on, and only time – a few days usually – chases it away.
This morning, with my cane, I stepped outside to see my brave little squirrel dragging himself through the snow. I know it’s my imagination, but it seems to me he has come to tolerate my presence, almost like he knows I am trying to help him. The other squirrels dash off in a panic if I get too close, but not my “Squirrely”. He kept gobbling away while I was only a few feet away from him.
I am not sure what Squirrely is using in his quest to self-recover. It seems as though he has just decided to do the best he can with what he has left. If he feels sorry for himself, I’ve seen no evidence of it. So he can’t climb the plastic pole to our main birdfeeder anymore. I’ve watched him try and fail at that.
Otherwise, he’s just carrying on!
I’ve ditched my cane.
If Squirrely can do it.
I can too.
P.S. I was given the command this morning to not climb the ladder to fill the bird feeder. And as I stood atop the shaky ladder an hour later, I was reminded of what an idiot I am. When I am confronted later today when the full bird feeder is noticed, I will simply blame my lapse on Squirrely.
Sometimes, those newspaper columns which offer tips for homeowners with problems, wrap things up just a little too neatly, as far as I’m concerned.
First of all, the cost of implementing the columnists’ solutions is never taken into account by their authors. They feel no remorse at all about sending you out to the shops to spend hundreds of dollars to get the water stains off your ceiling or the dog smell out of your carpet.
Secondly, all handyperson writers assume you are intelligent enough to be able to follow the directions they give in their columns without gassing yourself into brain damage or riveting your arm to the basement floor. This is a self-negating assumption because if the homeowner was smart in any way, he’d be living in an apartment and wouldn’t be a homeowner at all.
But worst of all, newspaper handypersons can always think of solutions for every problem, no matter how severe it may be, and all their solutions sound simple to them, complicated to you. Real, everyday, homeowners, on the other hand, know some questions have no answers when it comes to owning a home and the happy homeowner is not the one who can solve his problems the best, but the one who can ignore them the best.
Take a handy tips column I read just this week. First off all, the writer stated it has been a particularly bad summer for fleas. What he must have meant to say, I’m sure, is that it’s been a bad summer for humans, cats and dogs because it’s been absolutely great for the fleas. There’s millions of them everywhere and they’re just having a ball.
The columnist referred to had lots of expensive suggestions for making your house flea-free including having a vet dip your pets (just before he dips into your wallet), placing special flea-control “bombs” throughout the inside of your house and spraying a liquid flea killer everywhere outside including on fences, the walls of your house, tree trunks, low hanging branches, shrubs, outdoor furniture and anywhere else where fleas might hide including, I presume, on neighbours who happen to be walking by. And this is all to be done once a week. Though costs weren’t stated (they never are), it’s pretty clear this whole operation will set you back many, many days’ pay.
A typical handyperson answer to a homeowner’s question usually goes something like this:
“To solve the problem of the discoloration of the cement on the deck of your front porch, rent a Blurdsen B-42 concrete grinder complete with Size 79-A or 79-C buffer cloth, white only, along with a Chesston AP-25 power-polisher with either medium or heavy duty bristles, nylon only. Alternately grind and buff the porch for 10 to 12 hours, vacuum thoroughly with a Suckelsior 960 power-intake blower and apply a thin coat (.05 millimetres only) of Pioneer’s Cement Clean 920. Repeat operation twice, then let sit for three days.”
Now here comes the simple part:
“After preparation work has thoroughly set, simply wash with an ordinary dish detergent, let dry and presto! Start enjoying your good-as-new front porch.”
As a real, everyday homeowner, I have three pieces of advice, all cost effective.
First: Ignore any householder’s tip that includes the word, presto.
Second: Blow up the front porch and start using the back door.
Third: Check out that apartment available down the street.
Here’s the situation. A family member walked in the door this afternoon with a big coffee shop donut box and set it down on the coffee table. He then proceeded to eat quite a number of the sweet treats and left. I wandered over, opened the box, and saw that two very tasty looking baked delights remained in the box. A boston cream and a lovely looking cruller of some description. Actually, I don’t know what the second donut was as I was bedazzled by the boston cream.
Now here was my dilemma. Because only two donuts remained, one would definitely be missed if I took it. Had there been six or seven in the box, I might have gotten away with it. I was very tempted but decided against it and carefully closed the box. As an intelligent and caring human being, I could not bring myself to plunder a family member’s sweet treasure. So, I left the living room, with much regret.
A while later, apparently, another individual approached the donut box and also had a look inside. But scruples played no part whatsoever in this family member’s decision making. As quickly as he could, he ate up both donuts. I know this because at supper, the person who bought the donuts asked everyone seated around the table if we knew what had happened to the last two donuts.
No one admitted to pilfering them and as we normally all tell the truth, our stories were believable.
The only possible culprit left was the dog. We all looked at him and he looked at us, and we knew he was as guilty as Jack the Ripper.
This was by far the best day of Toby’s young life and one of the worst of mine. But I learned a good lesson out of all this. It is a dog eat donut world out there and if a guy’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough. He who hesitates is lost.
I really hate being outsmarted by a gobbilly creature that weighs 13 pounds.
Twice a day, every day, my little dog Toby takes me for a walk around the block. Weighing in at an awesome 12 pounds, the little guy nonetheless can muster up quite a bit of pulling power when he wants to – and he always wants to.
He’s a busy young fella on these strolls, with a lot to accomplish in a short time. There are people’s front porches to inspect and trees to water and the best days are Tuesdays when there are garbage cans and recycling boxes out by the curb, ready for pick up. On those days, a dog’s nose can almost fall off his face with excitement because in those bags and cans are leftovers. Plenty of leftovers.
Of all of life’s little absurdities, sometimes this twice daily ritual strikes me as about as strange as they come. I walk along the sidewalk being dragged along on a leash by what amounts to a fluffy cushion with eyes, ears, nose and mouth. And legs. And more attitude than one of those all-in fighters, you know, the ones who jump into the ring and try to kill their opponent as fast as they can, spilling as much blood as they are able to along the way. Theirs, the others guys. Who cares?
Before we leave the house, I have to dress this little creature in a sweater. He knows the drill now and pokes his head and legs through at the appropriate times. He has two really nice hand-woven sweaters, better than anything I have.
Toby poops and pees on command now, so we’ve come a long way. He knows if he doesn’t produce a couple of little brown logs, there will be no reward when we get home.
My dog is a barker. If he was human, he’d be a yeller. I should have named him Old Yeller, in fact. If the roles were reversed, and it was me being guided along on all fours at the end of the leash, I might accost the neighbours and strangers in much the same manner he does. “Hey Dave,” I’d yell. “Got any treats at your place?” Or, “Frank, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about this urine in the snow over here, would you? Smells to me like it could be yours.”
Or, I’d run up against a stranger and ask, “OK, who the hell are you to be walking down my street? Get outta here! NOW!!!” If I saw that dastardly postal carrier coming my way I’d go berserk, of course, and yell, “You drop any more of that silly paper off at my house and I’ll bite your leg.” And then I would.
Of course, some people I wanted to get to know, I’d be a little friendlier to, as I asked them politely if they minded if I sniffed them up and down for a bit for no particular reason. And most of them would agree to the request. With some, I wouldn’t even ask. Just get right up close and personal. “Would it kill you to shower now and then?” I might ask a neighbour after one of my inspections.
Yes, Toby is quite the adventurer and everyone on our street knows him now after the six years he’s lived with us. Some like him, some tolerate him and some cross the street to avoid him – much like they do with his master I’m afraid.
But once in a while a newcomer will happen along, so strange he blows the little dog’s mind. Poodles are crackerjack smart but they do not have the sharpest eyesight of all the dogs in the world and so, the other night, the neighbours were treated to two minutes of wild, wild barking as a child’s snowman was given a good and proper scolding. I would have done the same if I was cruising that low to the ground. Can’t have snow creatures cluttering up the landscape.
Words have been a big part of my life, as they are with everybody’s. The majority of people, however, don’t count on them to make their living. I do, and I enjoy working with them as a carpenter might revel in the smell of newly sawn lumber.
Lately, for some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about words and their place in my life. I have no idea what my first ones were, maybe something along the lines of, “Can I have a cookie?” I also have no clue what my last words will be, but they could very well be the same as my first. In fact, an interesting endeavour is to look up (easy on the Internet) the final words of famous people throughout history. Some are sad and touching, some rather funny.
All through my growing up years, words became useful tools, put to work in a variety of ways to avoid responsibility, to exact revenge, to ask questions and learn about the world. The same mouth that could produce words of such beauty they were the linguistic equivalent of a string of pearls, could let loose a volley of cruelty meant to cut down and destroy.
In fact, though I had pretty much heard all the profane words available to me by the time I was 16, it wasn’t until I worked for a summer building a bridge in Kitchener that I learned from two recently immigrated Scottish carpenters how to put them together into very effective sentences. If there were any sort of awards handed out for cussing, the walls of these two feisty guys’ homes would be lined with plaques.
Even today, under great pressure, charged with anger or filled with fear, the teachings of the Scotsmen can still bring themselves forward to my lips.
Other, gentler words, made their appearance in high school, as the interest in girls grew. Of special importance became the phrase: “Can I kiss you?” sometimes followed by the question, “Why not?” Even more awkward: “Would you like to go out with me again?”
Other useful phrases at the time: “Can I bum a cigarette?” “Here’s the money I owe you.” “Can I have an extension on the assignment?”
Words you hear spoken to you in your life are also highly important. In your working years, “Can you start work on Monday?” is a pleasant thing to hear. Not so welcome is, “We expect you to be out of your office by noon tomorrow.”
As you ascend the ladder of success:
“You’ve bought yourself a car.”
“They’ve accepted your offer on the house.”
“Your loan has been approved.”
Of course, being no different from the rest of humanity, “I’m sorry” are two of the hardest words for me to say, though usually the most valuable if I can find the guts to get them out. And “I love you” is still a stickler. Not so hard for your kids. Not so easy for your parents. Sometimes very difficult for your wife.
Why are the most valuable words often the hardest to use?
And why, in a crisis, do the words “God help me!” just come flying out?
I remember years ago reading somewhere that we have about 400,000 different English words available for our use. I’m sure I don’t know a fraction of those, but I know quite a few, I think.
Of all those thousands, what is my favourite one?
Chocolate might rank right up there.
Beatles is a big one for me.
What is the favourite word I have ever had spoken to me?
“Yes” was right up there, after I said the words, “Will you marry me?”
But never have I heard, in my 55 years, a word that even came close to the beauty of this one, especially the first time I heard it directed my way:
“Daddy”.
I will never get tired of hearing it, no matter what future form of it is used to address me. To hear the word “Dadda” spoken to you by a child just before he or she drifts off to sleep in their bed at night, is to experience joy.
When the video camera showed up under our Christmas tree a few weeks ago, there was great excitement all around. Everything instantly became a fitting subject for recording – people walking, people sitting, people making supper, people eating supper, people playing board games, people welcoming in a new year. Basically, boring, everyday life, now captured on videotape and somehow supposedly made interesting between the recording of it and the replaying of it over a colour TV.
But a problem soon became apparent. Once a person gets used to the magic of all this modern technology, he is forced to admit that the humdrum of day-to-day living doesn’t suddenly become an episode of TV sitcom or drama simply because it is being transmitted through the same medium as his favourite shows. And a few hours spent sitting on the couch watching video footage of yourself sitting on the couch, is more than enough to convince you it somehow doesn’t make sense to spend your present life watching your past life unfold in front of your eyes.
In fact, it begs the question: Are you living at all when you’re sitting in front of a box looking at images of things you did while you were living a week ago?
What I’m taking the long way around to say is that, well, the novelty of the video camera wore off in record time. After an initial flurry of activity, the little, black machine finally came to rest on top of the TV where it’s been pretty well ever since.
Soon the wisdom of the investment began to be a nagging question. After all, a potted plant could have sat on the TV just as well at a cost of many hundreds of dollars less.
But all those doubts about the camera disappeared following an incident Tuesday night as once again I am reminded that scientists just invent the gadgets – it’s up to ordinary people to decide how they’ll be used.
Running up a stepladder in the basement of my Home of Perpetual Construction where I am into the eighth year of a multi-phase development project (sounds better than fixing up the cellar), I felt my head come into contact with the extremely sharp corner of a rectangular furnace pipe. (WARNING: Please press the mute button on your remote control for the next minute or so to avoid hearing the sounds which filled the basement following this collision.)
When the fog cleared, I found myself sitting on the basement steps holding a throbbing head which was oozing blood from a gash somewhere on top. Eventually, dabbing it with a pad soaked in alcohol, I sought to discover just how big a cut I had suffered. Should I get back to work, go the hospital for stitches or drive straight to the funeral home? What I needed was to somehow see the extent of my injury. But how?
I think you can pretty well put the rest of this together without my taking up much more of your time. I’ll go over it briefly. Soon I was sitting on the floor in front of my television set, examining a 26-inch-square, colour TV moving picture of the top of my head. Like a doctor looking over X-rays, I was able to point to my recently acquired wound, which looked much bigger as pictured through the camera with its zoom lens.
I also discovered other healed-over marks left by earlier fights I had lost with nails, two-by-fours and floor joists. In fact, I was shocked at the similarity between my cranium and pictures I’ve seen of the lunar landscape although missing at this moment was any sign of the Sea of Tranquility.
And what I learned that night through the wonder of modern technology is that what I really need at this moment in my life is not a high-tech video camera but a low-tech hard hat.
I got an email last night with the headline, Are You Dead or Alive? Because I was able to read it, I concluded I am alive, but the approach had me intrigued so I read the body of the message.
Apparently, a woman named Julie in Texas has contacted a courier company in California to tell them that a delivery destined to be delivered to me in Ontario, Canada, cannot be delivered because I died in a car accident. Julie is my next-of-kin, or something, and the delivery is now to go to her.
Consequently, the courier company, doing its due diligence, wanted to know if I am alive or dead. If I am alive, I am to write them immediately to tell them that and if they don’t hear from me in two days, they will assume that I am, in fact, dead.
In the event they don’t hear from me, I guess, Julie will be the lucky recipient of the prize that was to be mine. I do not intend to respond to the email but I am now worried that if the courier company does not hear from me, that can only mean I am actually dead. My problem now, is, if I do not reply, will I have a coroner knocking on my door tomorrow followed by a hearse?
This has me so upset, I almost wish I was dead. But, if only to piss off old Julie, I am tempted to declare my aliveness by responding to the email.
I wish the matter of life and death was simple like it used to be before email came along. Now, in the new scheme of things, it’s really hard to know if you are here today or gone tomorrow.
I have been looking for a new direction in life (and a source of more income) and I believe I have found it. I think, in fact, that all my experiences have led me to this new adventure: I am going to hire myself out as a professional cuddler.
You are saying no such occupation exists but you are wrong. A new business begun last month in Montreal matches cuddly people such as me with those who need some cuddling and believe me, I am excited. Maybe a bit too excited but who wouldn’t be?
I haven’t grasped all the details yet but apparently cuddler and cuddlee get together and do whatever the cuddlee wants, short of actual sex. They can sit on the couch and hold hands, engage in hardy wraparound hugs and even crawl into bed and snuggle up.
Those who know me will agree this is a perfect fit for me. Hugging comes as naturally to me as wing flapping does to a bird. I will hug any creature, human or otherwise, who needs one or many. If I can get my arms around you, you pretty much don’t stand a chance.
Ask Andy, an incredibly large exotic goat on a rare breed farm in Scotland that my wife and I were touring. He was standing in his pen alone and there was a sign in front of his gate which read “petting area”. So, I opened the gate, went up to Andy and threw my arm around his extremely thick neck.
The animal stood as tall as I do and somewhere there is a picture of this cross-species display of affection, me smiling broadly and Andy, with his horns that would make a normal man scream in terror, staring right into the camera but looking confused. I gave him one last squeeze and left the pen. It was then I read the petting sign again and realized that I had missed the arrow which indicated that the petting area was at the top of the hill. Andy was nowhere near that area.
But this is proof of my ability to calm the savage beast using nothing but my loving arms. (To be honest, I was in need of a cuddle myself for a brief time after that.)
I can’t get to Montreal very easily so I am going to start this service here in my hometown near Toronto. Give me a call and I’ll be right over. If you are lucky, I might even take a shower before I head out. Stand back and prepare to be snuggled like you’ve never been snuggled before.
If you think I am exaggerating my abilities to soothe, go ask Andy. I bet getting cuddled by this confused Canadian was one of his happiest ever moments.
And the best part for him was, it was free of charge. But no more. I am monetizing my affection from now on. No more freebies from me. Hugs by Jim and More is going to cost you. The good news is, however, that if you get upset when I present you with my bill, I’ll just squeeze you till you forget all about it.
It will take some very imaginative, innovative people to come up with ways of leading us all out of the environmental jungle in which we humans have gotten ourselves lost.
But fortunately for the planet and its occupants, many very creative people have set their inventive sights on the problem and are coming up with solutions. Brilliant solutions. Oh, how I wish I could have thought of some of them.
Here are only a few of the amazing answers our best minds have come up with recently to our pressing pollution problems.
The Milk Bottle
In a Vancouver, Canada, neighbourhood, a dairy company is selling thousands of litres of milk daily in (get this), glass bottles. The bottles, when empty, go back to the dairy where they’re washed and refilled and sold again. Drinking milk in that neighbourhood means never having to say you’re sorry for sending dozens of cardboard cartons and/or plastic bags to the landfill site every year.
The Clothes Line
Researchers recently wondered whether or not wet clothing could actually dry without being placed in an electricity-consuming or gas-burning clothes dryer. To test their theory, they stretched a rope tightly between two posts outside their laboratory and hung a shirt over it. Within hours, it was dry. They tried a pair of pants, then a towel and some socks and found the drying process works almost 100 per cent of the time with any kind of textile. An exception, they found, occurs when it is raining outside. They are working on ways around this problem including hanging up wet clothing inside a building. Test results should be revealed soon but early findings seem to hold some promise.
Alternative Transportation Modes
Although research into possible alternatives to the pollution-creating, gasoline-powered automobile is only just beginning, some revolutionary methods of getting from Point A to Point B are being tested. One method involves a person systematically and repetitively placing one foot ahead of the other foot and moving in the direction he or she desires to go. Repeated enough times, this motion, scientists theorize, will eventually propel a person to his or her destination. Other methods being tested include placing people on light, two-wheeled machines with pedals and teaching them to push the pedals, which drive a chain, which, in turn, turns the wheels. Another suggestion is to place a large box on wheels and hook it up to an animal such as a horse, although this idea is having some difficulty catching on. Scientists have some doubts the horses will cooperate.
The Windmill
In the push to find ways of creating energy without generating nuclear waste we can’t dispose of or burning non-renewable fossil fuels or damming up rivers and hurting the wildlife that lives in and around them, some scientists have made the radical suggestion that the wind, which always seems to be blowing around anyway, could be harnessed to generate electricity or to pump water out of wells. According to their theory, a fan of blades, erected high in the air and pointed into the wind would turn, and that motion could turn an electric generator or a water pump. It seems crazy but also on the drawing board are ships that would be pushed along through the sea by wind catching in huge sheets erected above their decks.
The Sweater
Although many Canadians keep their houses as warm as Florida so they can walk around half naked all winter long, some scientists wonder if a human being can survive in less balmy atmospheres. Experiments are being conducted with sweaters, sweatshirts, etc., to find out if keeping the heat we all generate as close to our bodies as possible instead of artificially heating all the space around us so we can watch TV in our underwear will work. Similar experiments are being carried out with extra blankets on beds to see if house temperatures could be lowered overnight.
Startling concepts, perhaps, but where science is concerned, it seems nothing is impossible.
It is a great comfort to me, as a man of advanced years, wisdom and spiritual development, that I do not let little things bother me. Lesser men do, and I feel sorry for them. I have always been guided by the sageness of my elders who taught me to overlook the grains of sand in my shoes and walk on undisturbed. It is the key to happiness.
That is one reason it pleased me so much to pull up to the pizza shop in my car today and read the sign in the window that promised me that for $4.99, I could get a nice big slice of pepperoni pizza and a pop. I was in need of both those things, so I entered the restaurant with excitement.
That is the other lesson I have learned. Far from being potential irritants, it is the little things in life that afford the greatest pleasures.
I approached the counter and asked the young man at the cash register for a pepperoni slice and a pop.
“Sorry,” he said, not looking very sorry. “All I have is Mediterranean or Canadian. Being Canadian and never having been to Mediterranea, I chose a slice of Canadian, knowing it would cost more than the advertised pepperoni. I have learned to go with the flow.
The man soon returned with my slice and rang me up. The total was $4.73.
“My pop?” I asked.
“You didn’t order a pop,” said my server.
I did order one, of course, but like I am sure Buddha would have done, I let it slide.
“I would like one,” I said.
“I’ve already rang in your order,” I was told. Once orders are rung in, I understand, they cannot be unrung in.
“That’s okay,” I smiled, much as any of my great mystic heroes might have done.
“That’s $1.57,” he said.
I paid for my pizza and pop, more expensive than they should have been according to the sign in the window, notwithstanding. My outlay was now $6.30, not that I was paying that much attention.
I took my meal to a table and did some calculating as I ate, not that it mattered to me. Had I gotten what I came in for, I would have spent $5.64. I was now eating and drinking a snack that had cost me 66 cents more than it should have.
But who was counting? Not me. I have learned to stay above the fray.
For those who might be following The Incredible Adventures of Jim and the Bunny (my stories on Facebook), here is a new chapter:
Over the past few weeks, a bold little bunny in my backyard has been losing almost all its natural fear of me, as it waits for me to bring it and its sibling some feed a couple times every evening. The other night, it stood a few feet away as I approached with a cup of grain. I talked to the rabbit the whole time, then dumped the feed. Before I turned to leave, Bunny dove right in and started munching.
The next night, I walked through the back door to our garage and closed the door behind me. I looked out the window to see the rabbit had run right up to the door. It knew I was in there and that that was where its meals were coming from.
Last night, the topper. I went out into the backyard for something and left the garage door open. When I returned a little grey blur, also known as Bunny, came shooting out of the garage. It seems it has decided to fetch its own feed from now on.
Last summer, our son often sat in a lawnchair on nice days under a maple tree at the back of our lot, reading a book. Several times, a little rabbit headed straight for him and sat by the lawnchair as he read. We think it was this guy or gal.
I am not sure how long it will be before Bunny will be sitting on our couch watching TV with me, but whenever it happens, I will bring out the Looney Tunes tape I have, with Bugs and the gang.
I taught journalism at a college in Canada in the 1990s. To those of you who complain about the sorry state of newspapers these days, I apologize. I did that. It’s my fault.
However, that is not why I have come to address you today. In my classes full of youngsters, mostly born in the late ’70s and early ’80s, there were a lot of smart people. It didn’t take me long to become aware that most of them were smarter than me.
So, from then on, my job was to hide that fact from them as best I could. I was often successful, sometimes not. When some of them figured out what a clueless idiot they were dealing with, things became a lot more difficult.
But that is also not the topic of today’s speech. My teleprompter is broken so you’ll have to forgive me for that as well as for wrecking journalism for the foreseeable future.
What I want to tell you about is the wide cultural gulf that separated some of my students from me. For example, one day, I mentioned the name Roy Orbison. A girl’s hand shot up. “Who is that, sir?” I asked the class how many people had never heard that name. Half the class acknowledged their ignorance.
For a guy who was tucked into my bed every night with a picture of Roy Orbison and a pair of dark sunglasses, this was earth-shattering. On another day, I threw out the name Paul McCartney. Another girl’s hand shot up. “Is that that guy from Wings.” The band Wings was the one Sir Paul started after the Beatles broke up.
I didn’t ask my student if she did not know about the Beatles. I was afraid that an answer in the negative might send me over the edge. For a guy who went to bed every night in his Beatles pyjamas wearing his Orbison glasses with the picture of Roy pinned to the other pillow, this was a heart-stopping moment.
Fortunately, we all recovered from these near meltdowns and for six years, I will admit my classes were a very educational experience – for me. I learned a lot. I went to a couple of student parties and dances and even accompanied them out to dinner now and then.
I felt like a caveman suddenly introduced into a weird modern world, but I progressed fairly quickly. I learned from them how to operate computers and printers and cameras and we had some very interesting discussions about marriage and sex and life and death.
All in all, I finished my six years in college with a great education and didn’t have to pay any tuition to get it. I kind of feel bad about all those poor journalism students I thrust out onto the unsuspecting world, but some of them have connected with me on Facebook, so maybe I’m forgiven.
Well, I have to have my afternoon nap now, if I can find my photo of Roy. And my PJs with the pictures of that guy from Wings on them.
I hope this doesn’t come as a big shock to anyone, but I am leaving next week for my new life in the United States. This all came up suddenly and I think my family will miss me, but I didn’t have much choice.
This week, I bought some software I wanted from Microsoft. Bang! Within minutes, after I sent the big company $111.49, there was a message in my email inbox, confirming my purchase and giving me instructions on how to download the digital wonder I’ve been wanting. I started plugging in the information that was required but was soon stopped in my tracks by a box that declared I lived in the United States and asking me which state I was as resident of.
There were two instructions as I proceeded. One box said “choose your region” and the other said “United States”. But there were no other regions and I had no choice but to pick the United States if I wanted my prize.
Well, that was a bit frustrating but not as upsetting as the two days I spent on the phone and the Internet dealing with very nice people who, wherever they live, couldn’t get me living in Canada where, after 72 years, I’ve kind of gotten used to dwelling.
I want to stay here, but I also want that software. So, ever practical, I can see no way out but to move to the U.S. I have rented a small unit in Trump Tower in New York and I hope I will be happy there. My place faces the back of the building so I won’t see or hear all the protesters out front.
You never know where life’s gonna take you but adventure is the name of the game.
So off I go.
Look in on my family now and then, if you don’t mind. Thanks a lot.
Thirty-eight years is a long time in a son’s life. Half an average lifetime, in fact. And no matter what period a person lives in, a lot of things change in that time.
In the summer of 1967, when I was 16, I somehow talked my Dad into giving me the car for the night. He must have been suitably nervous: My plan was to go to my first rock concert at a huge auditorium in a big city 30 miles away. A simple plan, really. But to complicate matters, I was going on a hot date and if my memory isn’t playing tricks, I think a couple of my buddies rode along in the back seat.
Raised on a farm northwest of Stratford, Ontario, driving around Kitchener looking for the “Aud” was, for me, like trying to find Times Square in New York.
I had tickets to see a band called The Turtles, a popular Beatles-type group from the United States that had a few big hits around that time. I can’t remember what the tickets cost, but I’m guessing they were under $10 each. The band wore suits, like the Beatles, were polite as boys from a church choir and used not one word of profanity.
I don’t remember what The Turtles sang that night, beyond their signature song, So Happy Together.
“I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you, for all my life …
“When you’re with me, baby the skies will be blue, for all my life …”
Catchy tune. Great sentiment. I think it expressed exactly how I felt about the girl sitting not too far away from me on the bench seat of my parents’ green ’65 Chev Biscayne as we drove home from the concert.
Fast forward almost 40 years, and my son, who is nine, prepares to go to his first rock concert in Stratford. His buddies are all going. His date is a few years older and calls herself Mom. He does not, however, get permission to borrow the car. He wants to see his favourite band – Simple Plan.
Before he leaves, I tell my boy that I was almost double his age before I attended my first rock concert. That I went to see The Turtles. That they sang a song called So Happy Together. He listens, a bit amazed, l think, to consider the idea that his dad would have ever attended a rock concert.
Waiting up till he and his date come home, l want to hear all about his night. It was quite a bit different from my first concert. Not a suit in sight. A band called Sum 41 supplied all the pre-teens in the area with all the bad words they’ll need to know for the next 50 years, 41 apparently standing for the sum of all the swear words they can yell from a stage in every 60-second period.
But finally, Simple Plan came on. My son and his pals were ecstatic. Finally, they would hear live the band they’ve listened to on CDs for the past year.
The first song they performed?
So Happy Together, by The Turtles.
Funny, I thought, that my son and I would both hear our heroes sing the same song at our first rock concerts, almost four decades apart.
That was about the only similarity in our experiences, however. Unless memory fails, I don’t recall the lead singer of the Turtles getting beaned on the side of the head by a bottle thrown from the crowd and having to go to the hospital.
Times do change, I guess.
I miss the Turtles. And bench seats in the front area of cars.
And sometimes, that girl.
We were so happy together that night. For most of all the nights we’ve lived since that one, we’ve been happy apart.
As a dedicated and learned scientist, I wake up one morning and decide today is the day I start work on finding a cure for cancer, dementia, palsy, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, depression and any one of a host of other conditions that afflict members of the human race. Or I might put my good brain to work to solve our many environmental problems and come up with the perfect clean energy solution to keep the planet from burning out like a giant candle. I might work to devise ways to save the many endangered species of wildlife on the planet. Or to come up with ingenious plans for exporting Earthly life to other planets.
But I don’t do any of those things because I have a more pressing matter to spend my energy on.
For many years, I been almost obsessively interested in the mysteries of fish. And so, I, along with a team of like-minded geniuses, set to work fitting cuttlefish with oversized 3D glasses to help us understand how they calculate distance when attacking a moving target.
If we are able to answer this question, it will mark the fulfilment of a lifelong puzzle for me. I remember as a boy of eight years old, asking my father, “Daddy, how do cuttlefish calculate distance when they are attacking their prey?” I remember how Dad tried to answer me and how he finally gave up, saying, “Go ask your mother. She might know something about cuttlefish. She’s always reading.”
So, with this latest experiment and others to come, we will soon pull back the curtain on the Great Cuttlefish Mystery. But our curiosity won’t end there. In fact, it has just begun. We have so many unanswered puzzles to solve when it comes to other fish such as the Fangtooth, the Whitemargin Stargazer, the Asian Sheepshead Wrasse, the Jawfish, the Tassled Scorpionfish, the Frogfish, the Boxfish and the Psychedelic Frogfish.
I won’t lie. I can hardly wait to find out what’s up with the Psychedelic Frogfish.
I needed to renew my health card and driver’s licence one day last week. I went online. Easy peasy.
Except it wasn’t. I was informed (by a robot?) that I would have to go to my local government service centre because I needed a photo taken.
I walked into the office, expecting a throng of customers, and was pleased to see there were only a few. I took a number and a seat and pulled out my phone to check on whether or not Donald Trump is still a rat. But before I could confirm that, my number was called.
I was served by maybe the nicest person I’ve ever met and within a few minutes, I was on my way home.
Tonight, I tried renewing my Microsoft account but kept getting a warning I didn’t understand. So I followed the prompts to get in line for a “chat” with a live agent. I was okay with that as I prefer chatting with live agents over dead ones.
I got in line, alright. There were 236 other people ahead of me. That is half the population of the high school I attended long, long ago. Fifteen minutes later, that number is down to 224. The whiskers on my chin will be a lot longer by the time I get through.
So I pulled out my phone to amuse myself during my long, long wait. (I don’t give up easily.)
And yes, Donald Trump is still a rat. Also, it appears, other rats hate him almost as much as the non-rats of this world do.
I sometimes marvel at what a strange phenomenon it is to be dragged along the sidewalks of my city on a snowy day by a creature which stands eight inches tall and weighs thirteen pounds. And when I write dragged, I mean hauled, as though I was in a sailboat with a gale force wind pushing me out to open sea. I can carry that little imp around the house with one hand but tie him to an oversized fishing line and he has just a little less power than a team of young horses.
On some days, this infuriates me a little, especially those times when I want to be lying toes up on the couch. In other words, most times. Doggie seems to know, as we set out down the driveway for our twice daily Megasniff Mission, when it is I don’t want to go far. Because those are the times when he decides a trip to the next town would suit him just fine.
So he runs and I scramble to keep up. Then, inevitably, he goes too far, even for him, and realizes he needs to get home RIGHT NOW! So, he turns around and drags me homeward, occasionally looking back impatiently at my slow place.
He doesn’t understand, of course, that he is eleven years old and I am not and that he weighs about as much as one of my boots. His desperation to get back into the warm house grows with each section of sidewalk and he is not happy at the slow pace of the proceedings. I explain loudly to him that this is all his fault but he pretends not to understand.
I have taken notice, however, that he goes a lot farther if he is dressed up in his nice warm winter sweater, so darn it all if I don’t forget to put it on him now and then. I am hoping God will forgive me for those oversights and I am using as the main argument in my defence the fact that doggie always does. We have a hard time staying mad at each other, doggie and I. All it usually takes is me back on the couch, toes in the air, and a doggie treat in hand.
When it all comes down to it, of course, both of us are pretty simple souls.
Life is unpredictable. And the events of our lives should not be evaluated as good or bad, though it is so tempting to do that.
I was turning into my driveway one day this summer when I looked in the mirror to see a woman bearing down on me in her car with no intention to stop. I gunned it but too late.
Wham!
An older woman stepped out from behind the wheel of the car which had hit me. Her first words were “Christmas is coming.” Her first thought was she was going to have to pay me for a big repair bill and as a result, would have no money for Christmas, five months away.
Because the damage was not extensive, no one was injured and there had been no public property damage, there was no need to call the police. Or the insurance companies. The woman was relieved by that. She promised to pay me for the repairs and I took her phone number. She went on her way.
She took to dropping in about once a week after that, to see how the car situation was coming along. As it happened, we are both great chatters and so we covered a lot of ground whenever she came around.
It took me a while to get the estimates, but I got three. The lowest was $350 and the other two were over $600. But I had been told to stay away from the $350 guy and I told her that. So, she was looking at a bill of more than $600, and those were just estimates.
But the back bumper she had hit was hardly damaged at all. All that could be seen looked like a bullet hole, maybe one I had picked up as I raced away from a girlfriend’s home after her husband came home unexpectedly. But that bullet hole was not the only blemish on our buggy. It was scraped from stem to stern and while it’s a great car mechanically, it is no beauty queen. So, to fix the bullet hole would have been like squeezing a whitehead on a teenager’s pimple-covered face.
The notion started to build in my mind that it wasn’t worth fixing. Still, she did cause it …
I saw her one day this fall in a fast-food restaurant where I had gotten my morning coffee and was looking for a place to sit. So I sat down with her and she asked immediately about the car.
“Listen,” I said. “About that. We have decided not to get it repaired.” Tears filled her eyes. I carried on. “Maybe if it was a fantastic, expensive car, we would, but it just isn’t worth it.” And I told her that she needn’t worry about it anymore. Even if we changed our minds and fixed it someday, we wouldn’t come back to her.
The rest of the conversation was about everything except the car. Two more times I have seen her there and sat with her as we drank our coffee. During our last meeting, the subject of the accident never even came up.
I have to say, this was one of the more unusual ways I’ve ever made a friend, but the result has been good – for both of us, I believe. I have found someone who will sit still while I tell her my goofy stories. And she found someone whose been given so many breaks in his life, it didn’t hurt him at all to give one back.
I am a pretty materialistic guy, I don’t mind announcing. I sit and read hardware store flyers on the weekends like others might bury their heads in War and Peace or Gone With the Wind. I begin to salivate at the appearance of a new catalogue in the house (and it doesn’t have to be Victoria’s Secret) and I’d rather window shop than sail the Mediterranean.
But there are a few things I have never wanted to own and looming largest in my mind among those is a snowblower. I can’t explain my aversion to these big, efficient marvels of modern technology which are adored so deeply by Canadians. It doesn’t make any sense as I love anything powered by a little motor. I dread the inevitable day when my self-propelled lawnmower – 28 years old and counting – dies a smoky death.
Maybe snowblowers scare me or maybe they’re too costly. I don’t know. But I do know that in the face of my snowblower prejudice, I need one, sometimes badly. I have more sidewalks than a shopping mall and a double wide driveway that can comfortably hold four big cars (if four big cars could be found nowadays).
During snowy days such as these, I feel like a one-man parks department.
But, I have another reason, I suppose, for not hauling a big snowblower home from the store. Four of my neighbours within just a few houses on all sides of me have snowblowers and they appear to be competing to see how many driveways up and down the street they can clean. They’re all men, of course, these mighty snow warriors, who bundle up like earthly astronauts (earthonauts, if you will).
Years ago, I solved a puzzle regarding these neighbours and things have been going my way pretty much ever since. I noticed that these guys seemed more eager to clean out a woman’s driveway than a man’s. They’d chug down the street past me on their way to a female neighbour, leaving me huffing and puffing with my little wee plastic shovel. They avoided eye contact with me and pretended, I’m assuming, not to notice me, though I stared right at them with come hither looks.
This went on for a few back-breaking years until I got married and one cold day realized that I could possibly make use of the fact that there was a woman living in my house all of a sudden. So, I don’t think it was a plan, but before long Barb ended up cleaning out the driveway. But not for long. The race would always be on to see which neighbour could get to our place first with his snowblower.
Because besides her snowblower-attracting gender, Barb is liked by everyone I know and a lot of people I don’t know. If there is anyone who doesn’t like her, they are probably deranged in some pitiful way. As for me, on a good day I could easily elicit a string of profanity from someone as holy as Pope Francis. Let’s just say I was born pissed off and have been getting steadily worse ever since.
So the snowblower dilemma seemed to be solved but a theory as important as this needed to be tested. Therefore, I ventured out a few more times with my shovel only to see the blowers blow right by me. I sent Barb out on the pretence that my back was hurting and voila! Snow was flying in every direction as though we had our very own personal blizzard, but in a good way.
These days, I hide behind the living room curtains and peek out to see that everything’s going according to plan and so far, so good.
During our marriage vows, I mumbled something about “till death do us part” but someday that might be changed to “till driveway do us part.” If we ever move to a part of the world that doesn’t get snow, I don’t know how this 24-year experiment will hold up. But if we’re in a neighbourhood with lots of men on riding lawnmowers, we might just make it all the way.
Especially if my mower goes up in smoke (while Barb is pushing it). And my back keeps bothering me.
They say the only walls that ever imprison us are the ones we build ourselves. And that there are many doors we encounter along the way and we need only open them and walk on through.
Sometimes that is easier said than done and in that, is the challenge of life.
It is an even bigger challenge for some people than for others. Take a Florida couple, for example. Last week, for some reason, they were wandering the halls of a college where they didn’t belong. Apparently, someone chased them into a closet and closed the door. There they stayed for two whole days until, desperate, they phoned 911 and asked the police to come save them.
The police showed up, found the closet and opened the door. With ease. There was no lock on it. And yet, the couple thought they had been locked in.
In this case, however, it doesn’t appear that any fancy philosophy fits the situation. Both of them proved they do not belong in a college. Not because they are too old or too poor, but because they are dumb enough to get locked in a closet behind a door that won’t lock. And to stay there for two days. No food. No bathroom breaks. And, I am going to guess, no intelligent conversation.
Who said, when one door closes, another one opens? I don’t know who said it but it wasn’t one of these two superstars.
If you know any Experts, you might want to call them up and direct them to this message because I believe it to be of some importance and could, in fact, change the world in some wonderful ways. I have been thinking about this for a while and now I am sure of it.
Things have been upside down on our planet since people stopped standing on their heads. If you think I am wrong, tell me when the last time was that you saw somebody standing on his or her head. Better yet, when was the last time you did it?
When I was a kid a half century ago, we all spent a lot of time standing on our heads and I think we can agree that those were the good old days. If you walked through our kitchen/living room/rec room/TV room/family room in our farmhouse on any given day and at any given time, for example, you could expect to see me happily off in a corner standing on my head and sometimes I was joined by some of my brothers and sisters. If I was feeling adventurous, I would stand there freestyle with no support but if a bit lazy, I would rest my back and legs against a wall.
Not more than a few times I heard my father ask my mother, “Why is that boy always standing on his head?” I don’t know what her reply might have been but she usually defended me, so my art was safe from the negative reviewers.
However, when I was taken to get eyeglasses at the ripe old age of seven years, the doctor asked my parents if I had any unusual habits. They thought for a while and then reported the information that I stood on my head a lot. “Well, stop him from doing that,” the doctor commanded them. But by that time it was too late and I was hooked.
I think that’s where my lifetime habit of hiding my sins began. I still stood on my head but was a little less public about it. I can’t tell you what the attraction of head standing was but I do know I wasn’t alone. Boys especially, and even some girls, all around our little rural community, were spending a lot of time in their farmhouses with their feet straight up in the air in those days. The girls weren’t usually so enthusiastic about the practice as their dresses fell down around their faces. But maybe a head full of blood gave us a lift of some sort. I don’t know.
Much later, we relied on alcohol for that but head standing was cheaper and you broke few laws when you did it (except those imposed by those dreaded optometrists.)
Some dishonest kids thought they could cheat the system by standing on their hands but all the rewards were reserved for the purists, not the pretenders. I honestly believe that those poor souls who insisted on standing on their feet, a completely boring and safe orientation to the world, started their lives in the rat race later on a few laps behind.
I love my kids dearly but I feel a bit sorry for them. They have spent very little time on their heads during their lives so far and I think this will serve them ill as they venture forth to face the challenges of life.
Perhaps you did not know that the word “headstrong” was invented to describe a person who could support his weight for long periods of time using only the funny looking orb on his shoulders. I think we are on the wrong track when we tell our kids to go outside and play. We should be commanding them to experience a little upside down time.
It has been many years, alas, since I last stood on my head. I have avoided the practice as I cannot afford new glasses. Maybe I should summon up the courage to face the problem head on.
How often do we hear it. It’s the little things that make life worthwhile. I get the concept and believe in it wholeheartedly, but I have a quibble or two. A little bowl of potato chips? That’s a little thing. I hate to say it’s not worthwhile, but it hardly beats a big bowl of chips.
A little dish of ice cream? A little peck on the cheek rather than a full-on smashmouth? A little bit of money or a pocketful? Hmmm.
But I guess what is being argued is that it is the little moments, gestures, gifts and even brief smiles from strangers that enrich our lives. The events of the past couple of weeks have me wondering.
My 19-year-old Chevy, one year away from claiming classic status, decided to quit running. Not while it was parked n my driveway, but instead as I was driving down the street. One day, it was the main street of our town. It simply died, as though it had run out of gas. I coasted onto a nearby sidestreet and a quick check showed almost a full tank. I restarted the car, no problem. And drove off.
This happened several more times, especially when I was stopped at traffic lights.
So, off to my mechanic I chugged. He opened the hood and was horrified to see that several important wires were missing. And as a result of that, the car was failing to get the right information about things. It kept getting the idea, for example, that the car was out of gas.
“You’ve had a hungry family of mice living in here,” he said, pointing to several chewed off wires. After a little more inspecting, he pulled out a chestnut that had been deposited in a cavity, possibly as a peace offering or a rent deposit by the mice.
Now, mice are little things. Little things in my life. They are not bringing me happiness.
Auto repair bills, on the other hand, are not little things. Nor are the sobs of grief that follow the paying of same.
Today, following the mechanic’s advice, I bought a bag of mothballs, and was advised against my plans to either train a cat to live above my engine or install a bunch of mousetraps. I opened my hood and tucked them here and there wherever I could find an opening. Mice hate the smell they give off and won’t go near the car.
I would like to officially thank all the moths that gave up their precious mothhoods to keep my old car going. Their balls might appear small to me, but they must have appeared gigantic to them.
I have a little car. After all these years, it still makes my life worthwhile.
A friend asked me for a ride to his college this morning. I said that would be no problem as I had to deliver a package to the college anyway.
But I joked there would be a fee. He laughed.
He wanted me to take him to his townhouse near the college so I dropped him off and we said goodbye. I drove across town and found a restaurant for lunch.
Then I drove to the college where I had never been. It’s a big place. One hundred acres, 21 parking lots, three floors, 15,000 students. More entrances than an African jungle.
I found a parking lot near a door. I walked through the door and looked to see there was only one student in a long, empty hallway. The friend I had dropped off at his place an hour before stood there grinning at me.
I showed him the address of the office I needed to go to. He took me there.
Fee paid in full.
My wife and I were touring a large site in ancient Rome many years ago when we managed to get lost. We stopped a couple of tourists and asked for directions. We were grateful they responded in English.
By way of a brief chat, we discovered that the husband used to deliver bread to our farm in Canada more than 60 years ago. We never knew each other but we grew up five miles apart.
He remembered a bunch of kids running around our place.
I was waiting in line at the gas bar today when a small white car drove in out of nowhere and cut right in front of me. That car was followed by a small red car and suddenly, where I had been first in line for a free pump, I was third. I must have missed the sign that announced it was small-car day at the gas station.
I wish I could say I calmly accepted this new situation but I can’t. I was overcome with fury and you know it was serious because I try to never use the word fury.
Finally, I got my tank filled up and left the station. I drove straight to a fast-food joint to grab a burger and as I sat in my car consuming an above-average tasty lunch, I was still fuming about the gas pump fiends.
But then I remembered something that happened to me a couple of months ago. I was in line at a grocery store checkout and my items had been rung up when I discovered that I had left my debit card in my car. I apologized and the woman was very nice. She suggested I go get the card and come back. I did that and when I made it through the line to her again, she told me my $14 or so in purchases had already been paid for. A young man in line behind me, seeing my panic, offered to pay for my stuff.
I asked the cashier about the guy and was told he had a young boy with him. So out I went into the parking lot to see if I could find my benefactor. I couldn’t. But as I was about to get into my car, another car pulled up beside mine and a young man, with a boy strapped into his seat in the back, got out.
“I heard you were looking for me,” he smiled. “I’m the one who paid your bill.” I thanked him profusely and apologized for not having any cash on me (later I thought I could have run into the ATM in the store and came up with the money) but my young friend, who didn’t look like a billionaire and who had a car older and shakier than mine, said he didn’t want to be paid back. He was just glad to help out.
He more than made up for the two jerks at the gas bar and I am glad I have my memory of him and what he selflessly did to counteract my anger.
The homemade Christmas chocolate fudge appeared in its usual tin a few days before the Big Day. With my normal lack of restraint and total absence of conscience, I tore into it like a tiger that happened across a wildebeest by a lake. Incredibly, the apparent bottomless tin of fudge did have a bottom and by Christmas eve, the container sat there pathetically shiny but naked as a newborn.
I moved on to the cookie tins. But two members of our household sat down on the couch to watch a Christmas movie and there on the coffee table between them sat their two cups of tea and a plate of goodies. I had no choice but to inspect those goodies and to my astonishment, I counted on that plate eight large chunks of chocolate fudge.
How, I wondered, do you get eight large chunks of fudge out of an empty fudge tin and using my best logic, I concluded that even Mandrake the Magician couldn’t pull that off. The only other explanation I could think of was that these two close relatives of mine had purposely squirreled away a hidden stash of fudge which they had obviously decided to keep out of my reach.
Such perfidy on the eve of such a Holy Day left me almost in tears. I felt such a stab of betrayal, I could hardly hold back the sobs. But, later that evening, as I sat there Fudgeless on Albert Street, I also came to the conclusion that conspiring with my two close relatives was good old Karma who had decided to pay a visit. I used to hide cookies from our son and daughter when they were kids so I could access them after they had gone to bed.
So all these years later, my sins were revisited and punished.
So what choice did I have? I yelled Fudge It and went off into a corner to pout. And I discovered something else about my family. This soulless bunch, who tried to pass off the extra fudge supply as a Christmas Miracle, are impervious to the sight of a sad man pouting in a corner on Christmas Eve. I was offered not even one small chunk of fudge.
In the morning I saw the dish on the counter in the kitchen and there were not enough crumbs on it to keep a fruit fly from starving. It isn’t always easy to keep the Christmas spirit alive.
P.S. The youngest member of my family has lodged a protest, reminding me I forgot to mention she baked a whole new batch of fudge on Christmas morning which, as far as I know at this point, I was allowed full access to. That batch is now gone.
So the sidewalk snowplow guy phoned the city snow department and told his boss he needed a new sidewalk plow.
“How wide are the sidewalks there Harrufus?”
Harrufus Smith informed the City Snow Man that the city sidewalks are 40 inches wide.
“Perfect,” responded his boss with a somewhat evil chuckle. “We’ll order you a new plow with a 60-inch blade.”
Concerned, Harrufus said that the new plow would carve up 10 inches of sod on either side of the sidewalks and cause homeowners to run to the street, haul him out of the cab of his small tractor and pummel him half to death with their snow shovels.
“You leave that to me,” replied the demented Snow Man. “And Harrufus,” he ordered sternly. “Change that goofy name of yours.”
So the poor sidewalk snowplow driver started using his new machine this week and changed his name to Harrufus Jones.”
Visitation for Harrufus is Monday from 2 to 4 p.m. Mrs Smith-Jones requests monetary donations to the Neighbourhood Sidewalk Vigilance Committee in lieu of flowers.
I don’t know if there are five people in the world who lie awake at night worrying about squirrels. I have no statistics to help me arrive at the number five but I do know for sure that I have never been one of those odd souls if, in fact, they even exist.
The squirrels at our place are complete menaces. They get into our bird feeders and chomp down most of the seed. They rip our flowers out of the soil after we plant them. They chew up things you wouldn’t think any animal would be interested in chewing.
So when our wee poodle caught one of the little buggers a few weeks ago, it didn’t seem to be something to be concerned about, assuming the squirrel was not rabid. I asked the person who saw doggie catch the critter what he did with it. The answer came back, he shook it like one of his toys.
So, it’s all good, as the expression goes.
Or at least, it was, until the next day when I saw a poor squirrel, his head all twisted to his right side, trying to gather up some birdseed the birds had kicked onto the ground. I can’t say I have ever actually hated squirrels, though they can and do annoy me. But instantly I felt very sorry for this little guy. Soon, where there had been two squirrels that regularly roamed our backyard, there now was one. One lonely one, ransacking the bird feeders all by himself.
So the next day, I went searching for that one’s mate, expecting to find his body somewhere in our yards. But unlike the little devils when they visit our feeders, I came up empty handed.
Every day, for three or four days, one squirrel only ran atop our wooden fence and attacked the feeders. No sign of little Crooked Head. Of course, he must have died.
And then there were two and not one twisted skull among them. I don’t know if this is a newcomer to the yard. I hope not. I hope the little crooked dickens somehow survived. So I can yell at him three times a day to get out of the feeders. He and his pal have gotten so used to my rantings now they wait till I’m three feet away before they make a run for it.
Pest or not, I don’t want to start thinking of my sweet little doggie as a mad killer. I already have a cat that has that well-deserved reputation.
It’s not easy keeping the peace in our Backyard Wild Kingdom. But it’s a living.
I got up this morning and dressed myself as I am, happily, still able to do. Then reached for the bedside table for my smartphone. It was missing.
Rats.
So I went upstairs and grabbed one of our cordless landline phones and dialed my iPhone. I immediately heard it ring. Somewhere, pretty loudly, but I couldn’t tell where.
I raced back down to the bedroom. Loud ringing, but no phone. Out to the hallway, laundry, bathroom. Same thing. Lots of sound but no jackpot.
I dialed the number again and wandered upstairs. The sound was loud up there, maybe even louder. In the kitchen, in the living room. I searched the couches. Nothing.
I went out into the garage and dialed again. Riiinnnggg! Loud as hell. But a careful search produced no phone.
More dialing. Back downstairs. In the bedroom once more. Down on my knees looking under the bed.
Riiinnnggg!!! Very loud now. And as it rang, I felt a vibration in the back pocket of my jeans.
I sometimes forget my name too but fortunately, it is sown onto the front insides of my underwear waistband and so I check there now and then and sure enough, I am reminded of who I am: Harvey Woods.
At our home, I am known as Finder Man. I am very proud of that title and the fact that I gave it to myself takes nothing away from it, in my opinion.
I have a superpower, that first came to light when our kids began arriving on the scene almost 23 years ago. As kids will do, they lost things. A lot. And their resultant distress bothered me so much I kicked it into high gear and would search for hours, after they’d gone to bed, sometimes, until I came up with the lost item, usually a toy.
I once trawled the bottom of a lake with my feet for a set of green swimming goggles and amazingly (to me), found them. It was not the largest lake in the world, but still, it was a lake.
Another time, a child’s pearls that had been part of a necklace, were tossed into the garbage by accident when their string broke. This was a major crisis. Unfortunately, also in that bag of wet garbage was an almost full carton of cottage cheese that had gone bad. It is incredible show much a white cottage cheese nugget resembles a child’s pearl. I spread the whole mess out on an old door in the backyard and went through the entire affair, squeezing every round piece. If it was soft, it was cheese, if it was hard, a pearl. I eventually rescued all the pearls.
Whenever something disappears, I yell out, “Don’t worry. Finder Man will find it.” And I do. Then I remind everyone in the household of my sheer amazingness. I can tell they are always on the verge of being impressed.
A few weeks ago, my wife came home discouraged, and told me she had lost a little purse and was sure she would never see it again. She tried to convince me it didn’t matter, but there was a gift inside the purse that our daughter had given her among other items she didn’t want to lose. She kept looking everywhere in the house and car but was convinced it had fallen out of her pocket downtown. So, we went downtown, to the two places outside where she thought she might have dropped it. No luck. We came home and I knew she was dejected.
The next morning, without telling her, I went back to those places to look again. At the first parking lot, there was nothing. My only hope was the other lot, closer to the city centre. I parked my car and went to a machine to pay for parking. When I turned around, I thought I saw something in the grass not far from my car. I recognized it instantly. Someone had picked up the purse, opened it and probably looked for money. Finding none, he or she threw it on the ground without zipping it closed. Its contents spilled out in the wet grass, including our daughter’s gift to my wife.
I gathered everything up and came home. My wife was on the phone. I dropped the purse on her desk in front of her. Her face wore a look of shock I will never get tired of seeing. I might have scored a kiss out of the deal, I don’t remember. Finder Man had struck again.
And this was my biggest find of all. In a city in which at least twenty, one-hundred acre farms, could fit, I found a purse, about four inches by three inches, in one of several hundred parking lots.
My reputation will outlive me. Monuments will be built, awards given in my name, books written, movies made, newborn babies named after me. But none of that matters.
They say Hell is going through life concerned only with your own welfare. Heaven is helping to make someone else happy. It has taken me a long time to find that out, but I did, because, after all, I am Finder Man.
I am not happy. I cannot afford to be. I am doomed to misery because I am unable to come up with $15.99 plus tax to buy the magazine I saw today on a rack at Walmart. On the cover, in blazing big letters, was this announcement: The Secret to Being Happy.
I always knew there was a secret and furthermore, I knew that everyone in my life was conspiring to keep me from finding out what the secret was. I don’t know why they would do that but they obviously did it for some terrible reason. That really bugs the hell out of me.
For a mere $15.99 plus tax, I could finally discover this secret. But I have in my wallet, only $5. Maybe if I gave a Walmart clerk my $5, she would let me look inside the magazine for a few minutes and I might at least score a smidgen of happiness.
In smaller print on the magazine cover is the declaration that new scientific findings are leading the way to happiness. I have no idea what those findings are and I guess I never will.
And even if I could somehow see those scientific findings, the chances of my understanding them are not good as I am not much of a scientist.
They say money can’t buy happiness but apparently, thanks to Walmart, $15.99 plus tax will do the trick.
Oh well. Guess I’ll just stay miserable. Doesn’t seem as though I have much choice. I do know some happy people. Maybe I’ll just hang around them for a while and hope some scientific findings rub off on me.
They’re the kind of folks who always carry $15.99 plus tax with them in the event of an emergency such as this.
I am a walking encyclopedia with an amazing ability to retain and retrieve facts. A lot of people have benefitted from this skill over the years. I hope that doesn’t sound like bragging. I don’t mean it to be. It’s just a fact, identical to the endless supply I have stored in my very active brain.
People at parties, especially, are grateful I am there to enrich every conversation. I was at such a party yesterday and fulfilled my usual duty. Those in attendance were attentive and impressed.
After supplying several low-level tidbits to the talk, I held forth when the subject of the movie White Christmas came up, appropriately so at a Christmas gathering. My family and I had watched the movie the night before so I was primed and ready.
“It’s ironic,” I interjected to the 10 people listening carefully, “that the Danny Kaye character predicts the Bing Crosby character will have nine children some day because in real life, Crosby ended up having nine kids.” That is remarkable when you think about it and those who heard me speak were enthralled at this unexpected enlightenment. I was glad to enlarge their tidbits storehouses.
But one partygoer, a geologist and student at a California university who is actively doing research on the first manned mission to Mars (seriously) pulled out her smartphone and a few seconds later announced that Bing Crosby had seven children in real life. I was surprised that this woman and Google would be wrong about that but I didn’t object.
Instead I steered the conversation to other areas about which I am very knowlegeable. We discussed various historical figures and I mentioned the time I visited the house in England where once lived Mary Arden, the mother of George Washington. My fellow partiers’ eyes widened at that morsel. The geologist, however, who had lived in England for three years when she was younger, narrowed her eyes to help her read from her smartphone.
“Mary Arden was William Shakespeare’s mother,” she said. This was sad I concluded to myself. If someone like this is working on the Mars project, they’ll probably land the damn rocket on Venus instead. Is this the quality of education California universities are supplying?
The California student disputed several more of my facts with the help of her phone which apparently had been surgically attached to her hand by NASA scientists. I grew quiet. It is important to withdraw your encyclopedic mind in certain low-information environments.
“So what’s new?” my uncle asked me. “It’s raining out,” I said, without having to look at my hand. I was going to talk about the record mild temperatures but the phone-dependent geologist was looking right at me. So I decided to switch from holding forth to information gathering mode.
“So when are you going back to California?” I asked her.
By the way, you will be simply amazed to know she is flying back to the States on the space shuttle Discovery.
Once in a while, in this fake and phony world, something truly honest comes along and I like that. In my stocking Christmas morning was a one-serving box of Sugar Pops.
That’s right, Sugar Pops. Honest as the day is long, unlike Fruit Loops which contains 99 per cent sugar and zero per cent fruit not to mention hardly any loops.
And all the other pre-prepared foods on the shelves pretty much disguise their sugar content. Like ketchup, for example. Who knew there is sugar in ketchup, for Pete’s sake? It would probably be a short list, in fact, if I wrote down all the foods that don’t have sugar. Or salt, for that matter. Or both.
In fact, there is probably sugar in salt, and salt in sugar.
But good old Sugar Pops! I’m not sure how many pops are in this cereal but I do know there is lots of sugar. And I am kind of grateful that the makers of Sugar Pops are not ashamed of their product. They put it right out there. No one would be fooled if the cereal was called “Poppin’ Good Round Little Balls”, especially after they were tasted. So why not just be honest?
On the front of a box of Cap’n Crunch, for example, are the words “It’s Cruncharific!” I think we all know what they mean by that.
I haven’t bought any bags of white sugar lately but I’m not even sure they put the word sugar on those.
Long Live Sugar Pops!
(This message brought to you by the Canadian Dental Health Association)
My family and I went public skating in a shopping mall rink on Saturday. I was pretty wobbly out there, not having strapped on my ancient blades in some time. And my skates actually are pretty old. Old enough that other skaters stop and remark, “OMG, what kind of skates are those?”
After a few shaky turns around the rink, I decided to sit on the players’ bench for a break. As I sat there and looked at the throng out on the frozen sheet of water, it occurred to me that I was the oldest skater there. At 61, in my normal, everyday life, I don’t feel that old, but skating that day with a rink full of younger folks, the idea that time is passing swiftly by took hold.
I looked down at my skates and then at the crowd and realized that, at 36 years of age, my skates were older than 95 per cent of the skaters out there. Then, looking at some of toddlers poking along like newborn calves on their shaky pins, struggling to stand, it came to me that my sweatshirt was probably older than some of them.
Finally, rested up, I went back out and felt it coming back to me a bit, my skating was gradually improving. Maybe the fact that my blades are covered in rust accounted for some of my problems.
Then, a tall young man sporting a really nice Team Canada hockey jersey skated my way, and when he passed me, I stared at disbelief at the big number on the back of his sweater: 61.
Aw, c’mon, I sighed to myself in disgust. Really? There were not enough reminders of the passing of my years for me to see that day without a guy skating by with my age emblazoned on his sweater? No other hockey sweaters, no other numbers. Just 61.
Father Time was outright mocking me now. What a jerk!
I don’t want to alarm anyone but I am asking you to think of me as I head into an operating room for major brain surgery in two hours. It is a very delicate operation, designed to remove the song Holly Jolly Christmas from my mind, where it plays 24 hours a day at this time of year.
The surgeon explained to me that he will be touching a nerve inside my brain with a very cold instrument and if successful, the song should be instantly removed from my thought machine forever. However, and this is a considerable risk, if he happens to miss the mark by even the smallest degree and touches instead an adjacent nerve, Holly Jolly Christmas could very well be replaced by Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree or worse, Santa Baby.
I am willing to take the risk. I first heard Holly Jolly Christmas when I was 10 years old after my parents brought the record home from a store in Mitchell. I have been listening to it for 57 years. Doctors say that even 20 years of exposure to it would have lodged it in my brain, probably forever.
The operation to remove the song is known as The Burl Ives, after the folksinger who recorded it.
Wish me luck!
And have a Merry Christmas. I plan to do the same, hoping it will not be holly jolly. We have a nice tree but I have no plans to rock around it. And I am not a Santa expert, but I am pretty sure, at 1,600 years old, that he is not a Baby.
As a noted modern Wise Man, I grabbed a lunchbox full of frankincense and myrrh and headed out into my backyard last night to see the Bethlehem Star and follow it to whatever manger it might lead me to. Unfortunately for the world, just as I missed the star the last time it was this visible in the year 1226, I missed it yet again on Dec. 21, 2020.
Maybe I’ll catch it when it shows up the next time in 2814.
I am not surprised I missed the Star. All my life I have been racing outside at night, usually with other family members, to look up and see some celestial miracle. I never can see the amazing thing though everyone else seems quite able to spot it and marvel at it.
I think the three Wise Men who managed to find Jesus by following the star actually started out as a holy Fab Four (just like the Beatles) but the poor fourth guy, like me (and maybe Ringo), couldn’t see the Special Star he was supposed to see and so went back into his tent for some peanut butter and a good long sleep. He was probably shocked to read in the papers the next day all about what he had missed.
That was probably the first time anyone ever said the word ‘”Jesus” in an inappropriate way.
People think being a Wise Man is all thrills and laughs.
I remember wanting a slot car set one Christmas. A guitar another time. Paint by numbers, cameras, books, records, clothes by the rack full, and in more recent times, digital anything.
I don’t think of myself as materialistic, but I guess I truly am. I excuse all these quests for new acquisitions by saying I am trying hard to keep our consumer economy going. Singlehandedly.
But this year, I scaled back my greediness. I asked for and got – a backscratcher. Twelve hours have passed since I opened that metal beauty with extendable arm and there is not an itch anywhere that is even dreaming of sneaking up on me.
But our dog and two cats have discovered the darned thing too and I can see that a great deal of time will be spent by me in 2016 scratching their little bodies into states of blissful submission.
However, discord has arisen as they fight over whose turn it is next, and in the case of the dog, whether cats are worthy candidates for scratching at all. (Spoiler Alert: He has concluded they are not.)
I have already made up my wish list for next Christmas and there is only one item on it: Another backscratcher.
Almost 30 years ago an earnest young dietitian told me I had to change my ways. Changing my ways is not something I like to do. They are my ways, after all, and being a sensible and serious man, I must have seen some value in my ways or I wouldn’t have adopted those ways as my own.
But a doctor sent me to see this woman who knew all about food so when two experts are lined up against a man, his ways don’t stand much of a chance. Given that pressure, I changed my ways.
I had not been in the habit of looking at food as poison so it took some adjusting. First to go was two per cent milk. The choice I was given was between skim milk and rabbit piss. I chose skim and often wondered if bunny urine might have been preferable.
No more butter, of course, so I sold my churn and started buying my spread by the plastic pailful. I am not going to address the vegetable situation as this is a family show and violence is not acceptable.
But the lowest blow of all was being ordered to eat whole wheat bread. After 30 years of chewing on that crap, my advice to you if you are similarly sentenced to a life of abject misery is to skip the middle man, find yourself a wheat field and walk in and start munching.
This week I saw a loaf of normally expensive white bread on sale. I bought it, ate it and now have bought another one.
To the people at that high-brow bakery, let me raise a glass of cold rabbit piss to you. I know your plan is to kill me, but I have instructed my family to not press charges.
Now hang on. Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, makes more money in one minute than I do in a year. This is the headline.
What I want to know is how the headline writer knows how much I make in a year. Or per minute, for that matter.
I have had good minutes and bad minutes and I am sure none of my minutes have come close to Jeff Bezos’s minutes, but if we are going to compare money-making, I think the same metric should be used for other factors.
Saying Jeff Bezos is 72 inches tall and I am only 6 feet tall makes him seem like a giant compared to me. Or worse, I am only 2 yards tall (kids, look it up).
So comparing Jeff’s 72 to my 2 just doesn’t seem fair. But that is what the headline writer seems to be suggesting.
So, in that one minute that I receive my pay, I have done pretty darned well. Not Bezos well, but Hagarty well. Forget the minute that went before that and the minute to follow.
But the very minute I see all those riches appear magically in my bank account, I can feel very Jeff Bezosian about myself.
The fact that three minutes later it is all gone (and more) to automatic withdrawals means not a thing to me. For one brief, shining moment, Jeff Bezos and I are both 6 feet tall (give or take an inch) and seeing eye to eye.
Now that I look all this over, I realize not one word of it needed to be written, but too late, it’s done. I knew it was going to be a clunker the minute I started writing it.
The first snow of winter had fallen on my not-yet-frozen lawn and I could hear a pick-up truck with a snowplow blade on the front, hustling back and forth, cleaning the parking lot next door. I went to the door and looked out. My jaw dropped to the floor when I saw the truck pushing a skiff of snow onto my lawn and in the process, peeling back the sod from my property like it was taking off a bandage.
Before I could make it out to the truck to stop this madness, he’d torn off another strip or two, leaving raw earth behind. I finally managed to wrestle the truck to a halt and lit into the driver, pointing pitifully at my once beautiful landscape, now torn and tattered.
The driver didn’t apologize but he seemed pretty sheepish and radioed his boss to find out the next step in this little drama. His boss crackled onto the two-way radio. “Hey Frank,” said the driver. “A neighbour says I tore up his lawn with the plow and he’s upset about it. What should I tell him?” Frank, ever in search of a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, replied: “Tell him to go f–k himself!”
“Ah, Frank, the neighbour is standing right beside my open window,” came back the driver. “Oh,” said Frank, cheerily, not the least bit concerned with the suggestion he’d just made. “Tell him I’ll be right over.”
In a few minutes another pick up truck came screeching around the corner and across the lot to me, and out jumped the ever chipper Frank. He and I surveyed the damage and he was so sorry about everything.
“Hey, tell you what,” he said. “I will be back in the spring to fix this up good as new.”
More than 20 springs have come and gone since that day and every year I wait for Frank but he never shows. But I am sure he’s just been a very busy guy these past two decades and one of these days, he’ll appear, ready to get to work fixing my lawn.
I have to believe that because I can’t imagine a sweetheart like Frank would ever let me down.
So there was an ad on the Internet. It offered a $250,000 life insurance policy “from $18 a month” with no health inspection necessary. The ad was accompanied by a picture of an old woman so it was obvious it was legitimate and targeted to seniors.
I’ve been looking at the ad for months and finally decided to check it out. I filled out a simple form, included my phone number, stated my age and, because I am not a greedy man, put down that I would like a policy which would pay only $200,000 after the Grim Reaper pays me a visit. I thought it would help my family pay off all the debt I racked up on the plastic surgery for my face.
I can afford $18 a month, I thought. Maybe even a little more.
Ten seconds after I pressed send, my phone rang. A very nice young man interviewed me. He asked me more questions than I was expecting about my lifestyle and my health and then told me to stay on the line while he came up with my free quote.
Finally, he came back to tell me what I could probably expect to pay.
“It’s expensive,” he said, “because of your age and a few other things. You’re looking at spending at least $1,356.”
I quickly calculated and thought that figure, though high, still amounted to just over $100 a month, which might be doable.
“That is high but I might be interested at just over $100 a month,” I told the sales rep.
“No, you misunderstand,” he replied. “That’s $1,356 a month.”
Well, that call ended quicker than many of the ones I made as a teenager looking for a date.
“You could get $100,000 for under $700 a month,” said the salesman, but it was too late. My dream was shattered.
So, for a mere $16,272 a year, I could have a $200,000 payout upon my death from extreme handsomeness. After 10 years, I would have spent $1,620,720 for my policy, leaving $37,280 for my heirs. After 12 years, they’d have only $4,736 to spend on my going-away party.
But I can now see where I made my critical errors. I shouldn’t have told the interviewer about my frequent skydiving, my penchant for hangliding, my deep-sea diving to explore sunken ships and my sideline as a homemade dynamite maker.
But I think what really did me in was the coughing fit I had during the phone call which seemed to make the sales rep very nervous. He kept asking me if I was okay.
Once again, my quest for riches has fallen through. So it’s back to making 20 cents an hour doing surveys.
By the time a man is rounding third base in this big hardball game of life, he has discovered some valuable truths that he could have used when he was a much younger version of himself.
Some men come to these verities through spiritual exercises such as meditation, others hike off into the wilderness to commune with nature (I might do that but bears live in the wilderness) while still others dedicate themselves to helping humankind, building schools and churches and digging wells in developing lands.
A few years ago, I came to my own Epiphanous Moment, which, while a little less lofty than what other men have arrived at, is of paramount importance in my life.
That Moment of Truth for me came in the form of a little clear plastic jar filled with brown, smoothy peanut butter. I had always known about the Wondrous Butter of the Majestic Peanut and fell face first into it now and then over the years, but it wasn’t until I combined it with the Clear Orchardian Juice of the Orange that I was knocking on Heaven’s Door.
PB, OJ and JH begin communing each night about midnight and these days can be seen standing over the kitchen sink repeating the cycle again at 2, 4 and even 6 a.m. These are my Mountaintop Moments.
In light of all this, it is vitally important that an adequate supply of PB and OJ be kept on hand at all times. Especially the PB. It is possible to substitute apple juice or even lemonade for orange juice but there is no replacement for the butter of the peanut.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, I have been all but locked in a shed in the backyard as it has been determined by other household members that the virus would not be kind to me, for various reasons I don’t fully understand. I haven’t minded this situation too much but it has left me dependent on others to provide me with my necessities. That system has worked out fairly well but a tragedy befell me earlier this week when our supply of peanut butter ran out. I thought we had one jar left. I was horribly wrong.
So by last night, I had gone three nights without my vital elixir. My nerves began to fray. My patience was gone. The dog hid behind the couch and the cat behind the water heater.
Each day I was told by the Authorities that my fix was on its way and each day I was let down as this reason and that prevented grocery store visits. Finally, last night, two family members ventured out to the store on a quest to find me my peanut butter. It was their Sole Mission.
Eventually, they came home, their goods were deposited here and there and they went to bed. I said goodnight and sat on the couch with my laptop and lapdog (I have a big lap), enjoying the quiet beside the Christmas tree and looking forward to midnight.
Finally, at the appointed time, I ventured smugly to the fridge and poured myself a big glass of cold OJ. I opened the cupboard where the PB is kept to find a big empty space. Unfazed, I headed out to our heated garage where our Covid-19 supplies are kept, expecting to see at least four beautiful green-topped jars on the shelves.
There were no jars to be seen.
A wee bit concerned by this time, I pulled on my boots and went out to the car to see if a bag of groceries had been left in the back seat or the trunk. This has happened before.
Nothing.
When the tragic shopping trip was reconstructed the next morning, the sad explanation was offered that the two family members were occupied talking about Christmas and forgot about the only reason they went to the store in the first place, buying little useless bits of this and that instead.
Another important thing to focus on as your sixth decade on this earth draws to a close is Forgiveness. Sometimes, that commodity is harder to find and serve up than the butter of the peanut and the juice of the orange. Nevertheless, if we want to make it peacefully from third base to home plate and beyond, it is our challenge.
One of my favourite features on the TV remote controls we own is their mute buttons, renamed, since 2015, our Donald Trump buttons.
It is so handy to be able to instantly stop the sound of a terrible politician or the horrific scenes of war and natural disasters, not to mention the new blight of election deniers, dedicated doomsayers and committed conspiracy quacks. My getting to sleep at night depends on my mind not being filled with horsecrap and heartaches when my head hits the pillow.
Given all this, imagine my surprise and delight to discover this week that the remote control for my first-ever hearing aids has a mute button. I can now filter out sounds around the house I don’t want to hear including those being made by the people I live with.
I hold the little device discreetly in my right hand and if I need to take a break from listening, all I need to is press mute. All these years, in order to mute the voices of the people who I call my family, I have had to run into my bedroom and slam the door or race out to the shed and hide behind the lawnmower.
I don’t intend to leave the impression that I live with objectionable people. They are wonderful in every way it is possible to be wonderful. Nevertheless, there are a few phrases expressed now and then that I’d rather not hear.
I find my myself muting:
“And another thing …”
“Do you know where the fifty dollars in the cash jar disappeared to?”
“Did you eat the last …”
I don’t know if it’s right or wrong to mute your family. I guess I’ll find that out when I face my judgment in the next dimension after I ask St. Peter to please speak up.
When I was a kid, I had my antennae alert a lot of times for any compliments that might come my way. I was insecure about my value and worth to this world, and welcomed any sign of validation from anyone, even if the words could barely pass the praise test.
For a time, I even became an attention seeker and I didn’t like myself for that but seemed powerless to stop it.
All that was a long time ago and I think I have left most of it behind. I am not one of those hardy souls who brags that, “I don’t care what people think of me,” but I believe I have more balance than ever before in my life.
The other day, I read out a poem to my family as we were all sitting around. They listened intently, not knowing the origin of the piece, and when I was done, my wife said, “Did you write that?” I told her the poem was mine. She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to.
For a writer, in my case anyway, the highest form of praise is to be asked the question, “Did you write that?” Whether it’s a story, a poem or a song, it’s fun to present it to others and hope someone will wonder aloud if it was yours and not the creation of some famous, world-renowned writer. Sometimes they do, other times they don’t.
And this can apply to more than just writing.
“Did you take that photo? Wow!”
“Oh my God. Did you make that coffee table?”
“You painted that? Holy mackerel.”
And those questions are enhanced if they are followed by:
“You’re kidding me.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“You’re telling me you actually did this?”
From the day we are born, our biggest fear is the loss of love. Our biggest hope is to win some love or to keep the love we have. To have others admire something about us, whether it’s the way we decorate our house, or our bodies or, with our art and the things we create with our hands, the world around us, is no small thing.
The important thing to remember, however, is that while what we offer might be great, we should never assume it is the greatest.
Unless we are talking about our children. Because they truly are the best.
Four years ago at Christmas, I was given a GPS tracker for my car. It’s a nice little jobbie which I have never used. I prefer the direction finder on my smartphone.
So, after taking my gift out of the box and fooling around with it for a while, I put it back in the box and set it on a high shelf in the garage.
There I found it yesterday when I was trying to tidy up out there. I brought the box in, charged up the clever little gizmo and hooked it up to my computer to update the maps. Then, realizing I still have no use for this amazing hardware and not wanting to possess it any longer, I put it up for sale on the Internet. I think it cost about $80 or $90 new, so I decided to ask $40.
Two things happened. Within an hour or two, half a dozen people declared their wish to buy it. This had the effect of making me think I was charging too little for it and my greedy nature took over. But it was too late. I will have to live forever with the knowledge that I could have gotten another $20 for it.
The second odd thing that developed was a little feature of human nature I have noticed before many times in my life. Because so many people wanted this thing, I suddenly wanted it too. I have no use for it. I could use the 40 bucks. But it’s kind of like breaking up with a girlfriend and then seeing her walking down the street with someone else a week later. Suddenly, the enormity of your mistake becomes very clear to you in situations like that.
However, I soon won’t own my GPS and out of sight, maybe it will be out of mind someday too. And I will try to comfort myself with the notion that someone else is making good use of something that has sat on my shelf for four years.
But there is one fear that haunts me. The eventual buyer of the item, realizes he got it on the cheap, puts it back on the Internet for $60 and makes the $20 I should have had.
One spring day in 1996, I was sitting with a friend in a coffeeshop when my cellphone rang. It was my wife Barb announcing that it was time to go to the hospital. So we went there and came home with our own new baby boy.
Twenty-two months later I was sitting in the same coffeeshop, again enjoying another coffee, when my cellphone rang, just as it had before. Off to the hospital. Bouncing baby girl.
Obviously something had to be done.
So, I announced to the manager of my favourite little diner that I would not be bringing my cellphone into his coffeeshop any more. And as I expected, that was the end of our population boom.
This reminded me of the story of the young Scottish farmer named Angus whose wife was about to give birth to their first child. The doctor showed up at the farm in the middle of the night and as these were the old days, there was no electricity in their little house.
“Angus, Angus come and hold the light,” commanded the doctor, so Angus did that and lo and behold, a beautiful baby boy was born.
Overwhelmed with joy, Angus went outside for some fresh air when he suddenly heard the doctor call again, “Angus, Angus come and hold the light.” So, in Angus went and did as he was told and soon, he had another baby boy, identical to the first.
In a bit of shock now, Angus went back outside to try to take in these new realities. “Angus, Angus come and hold the light,” yelled Doc. In went Angus. Out came baby boy number three.
Now Angus stumbled outside and could hardly breathe. How would they feed three young boys on the meagre earnings from their little farm?
While he was figuring this out, puffing nervously on a cigarette, he heard once again, “Angus, Angus, come and hold the light.”
This time Angus called back: “I’ll noah hold the light fer yu. I think the light’s attractin’ them.”
I am feeling very good about myself tonight and after I explain to you the reason for that, I am sure you will agree I have every right to be proud.
It took me all day, this fine late autumn day, but lying on my side on my driveway with various tools scattered around me, I finally got my summer tires installed.
I ran into an old friend of mine one day in August and he pointed out that I still had my winter tires on. I felt a bit sheepish about that and pointed out that I have been driving on my snow tires for the past two years.
He shot me a grimace that seemed to have a lot of judgment behind it. Never one to enjoy anyone grimacing at me, especially an old buddy, I decided that this was a situation I could not let stand.
I needed to change my tires.
However, for me, intending to do something and doing it are often as far away as Ireland is from Hawaii.
So, it took me till today, Dec. 11, to get my summers on and now on they are. When August rolls around again, my old friend will not have the opportunity to shoot me some tire judgment.
Actually, the fact is, when I went out to get into my car this morning, it was to discover that my right front winter tire was as flat as Donald Trump’s hairdo and the other one was about six months pregnant.
My poor winter tires, lately, have held air like a pair of fishnet stockings might, and while I am all in favour of fishnet stockings in the right setting, apparently tires are in constant need of air. My summer tires perform that task more like a pair of big woolen socks might, so I should be good to go.
And, lucky for me, I hear we are going to have an early summer next year.
There is a fine line between being late to a thing and being early. I am going out on a limb to suggest that I am the first person in my town to have already installed his summer tires. I think that fact should score me some admiration from the community.
I just hope that someone, maybe even a committee, will soon be busy planning a parade.
I was sitting at my desk this morning, quite placidly, reading the hair-raising news on the Internet. The phone rang at 10:50 a.m. It was the vet. I was supposed to have our dog Toby there for his annual checkup at 10:40. Sorry, I forgot. Rescheduled to 11:20.
Quick, try to convince Toby, at that early in the day, to go for his noon-hour walk. He knows when his noon-hour walk is. Took some pleading and trickery. Get his sweater on. Can’t find his booties. Walked him up the street to pee and poop. He did the former, not the latter. He knew something was up.
Got him in the car. He started crying. Cried all the way from my house to the vet clinic. Got him out of the car, still crying (both of us, by this time), and into the big building he knows and hates so well. Sat on my lap in the waiting room, crying. Finally taken to an examination room. Put him up on the table. He spent the next 10 minutes trying to get off the table. Wrestled with him like I might an angry cobra. Thought he might jump out the window.
Aw, finally, a vet. Short interview. Answer lots of questions. “The vet will be in soon,” she said. Rats. Thought she was the vet. Twenty minutes go by. More cobra wrestling. Finally, in comes the vet. More questions. Doggie’s teeth, ears and eyes checked and he gets a needle. He likes getting needles as much as I do. All clear given. Meet you at the front counter.
Go out there, let Toby run around. My bill is produced. Can I pay that in monthly instalments over the next five years? No instalment program available. Look down after paying to see a large dog poop nugget. Then another. Five in all. Fish out a doggie bag to pick up my poodle’s excrement. Lots of sorries all around. Sorry for missing my appointment, sorry for the dog poo, sorry for sobbing when presented with the bill.
Then I looked up to see a slide show playing on a computer screen. A bunch of nice pictures and “did you knows”. Did you know cats can crawl up in your engine to stay warm in winter? Check. Did you know dogs can get frostbite if left out too long in winter? Check. Did you know winter sidewalk salt can hurt their paws? Double check.
But the best one of all:
Did you know people who have pets live longer, have less stress and fewer heart attacks?
Nope. Didn’t know that one.
Went home. Fell into recliner exhausted. Toby ran around like a well-fed cobra, recently freed from captivity.
I have a very simple mind, no matter that some people think I look brilliant. Well, nobody has actually told me that but I know they are thinking it.
I am not stupid, just simple. And when a person has a brain like that, one feature of this condition is he is very prone to be open to the power of suggestion. For example, if someone in charge of meal planning at our place announces we will have a pizza for supper, that thought consumes me for the next five hours. When things change, for some reason, and there is a beef stew on the table instead of the promised pizza, the disappointment is epic.
Once lodged in my brain, however, it is only a matter of time before I am finally and happily swallowing pizza. On the sly, I will admit.
“Going out to check the mail,” I declare.
“Okay,” is the response.
All this to tell you about an encounter I had last week. I arrived at the medical centre early for my appointment with my doctor. I climbed the two flights of stairs and, a bit winded, passed through the big doors to enter the offices of the doctors who have practices there.
A young woman was sitting at a table before me. She wanted to see my health card and then asked whether I had experienced any of the following conditions: fever; dry cough; tiredness; aches and pains; sore throat; diarrhea; conjunctivitis; headache; loss of taste or smell; a rash on my skin, or discolouration of my fingers or toes; difficulty breathing or shortness of breath; chest pain or pressure; loss of speech or movement.
I thought about all these abnormalities and then told her, “You’re describing a normal day for me.”
I think she laughed, but I couldn’t be sure because I suddenly felt feverish, suppressed a coughing fit, became overwhelmed with tiredness, was acutely aware of a number of aches and pains, and could feel a sore throat coming on as well as a headache. I also realized I had a sudden loss of taste and smell, as well as a rash on my skin, discoloured fingers, shortness of breath and some mild chest pain.
To say the least, I was startled by the sudden decline in my wellness. At least I escaped diarrhea (that would come later.) And I don’t even know what conjunctivitis is so we’ll toss that to the side.
“Well?” the very patient nurse said as she waited for my answers to each of her questions, which seemed to me to be more like suggestions than questions. I thought it best to say no to all of them and I did.
She must not have been a psychiatric nurse as she didn’t try to stop me on my way out after my appointment was over.
I can see now that making light of all these things in these times is sort of like joking about having a bomb at an airport.
My condition improved almost instantly as I left the building.
I always feel better on the way out of the medical centre than I do on the way in.
Every time I went to the malls many years ago, in the 1970s and ’80s, I headed straight for Radio Shack and spent a half hour there drooling over all the techno goodies on the shelves. Sony Trinitron TVs, Panasonic VCRs, wonderful stereos. I rarely bought anything, just did a lot of looking.
This week, a flyer came in my mailbox from Radio Shack, since renamed The Source, in Canada, and I looked it over with extreme intensity. Two things jumped out at me. I do not know what the function is of at least one-third of the items in the flyer. Little gizmos that have no meaning for me at all. But the bigger realization was that probably 95 per cent of all the items in the flyer (and in the store itself) were not even invented when I was wandering around that shop 35 years ago.
Yes, I was using a computer at work back then but it was a primitive one that would have not appeared out of place in Fred Flinstone’s stone house. But absolutely everything else – flat screen this, smartphone that, and Google the other thing, has come along in the past few decades. But the changes came about slowly as to be hardly noticeable.
One thing still haunts me though. Where did all the stuff that filled the Radio Shack stores back then go? Quietly discontinued, not re-stocked, currently unavailable, no longer sold due to low customer demand.
But that’s okay. I was at a Ford dealership a while back and I noticed there was not even one new Model T on the lot.
The matter was urgent and getting worse. And there before me, the golden arches and that little room inside that spells relief. I parked and bolted from my car. Ran like a wild man on a mission.
Emerging with a smile of gratitude and even joy (got Christmas music on the radio so the word joy just sprang to mind) I decided to reward myself and the restaurant by buying a burger and milk. I sat down and enjoyed my meal. Took my time. No need to rush, having already done that.
Finished, I walked out to the very crowded parking lot to see one car sitting there with the driver’s door open and no one inside. “What the …” was all I got out before I recognized the car with the door open and then I promptly and appropriately finished that sentence with the eff word followed by a question mark.
It had finally happened after all these years of carefully locking my doors. Someone had broken in in broad daylight. I approached the car carefully in case a terrorist group had dropped a grenade inside. Everything was just as I had left it when I hit the eject button including my wallet which was sitting on the passenger seat. I checked it right away. I think there was more cash in it than when I jumped out of the vehicle.
My imagination or my Christmas miracle?
Hard to say.
I always want to live in a town where no one can be bothered ransacking a man’s open-door car and stealing his wallet.
I have officially embarked on The Flashlight Years, the period in a man’s life when artificial beams of light are his only hope for survival. Without them, he cannot expect to find the potato chips in the cupboard and without potato chips, of course, he will eventually perish. Without light he is apt to dab the wrong ointment on the wrong wound and put his underwear on backwards. Not even necessarily his own underwear.
I don’t know if girls and women have the same kind of relationship that boys and men have with flashlights but I suspect they don’t. The ones I know seem to have the ability to snatch a flea off a black cat in a dark room in the middle of the night but maybe some of them are light challenged too. With males, there is a lifelong fascination with the idea that when you press a button, a light beams its way out of a little cylinder. If childbirth is a mystery to the female, a flashlight is perhaps the male’s equivalent, minus the baby shower.
I have loved flashlights since I was a boy and have been surrounded by them all my life but strangely, I have hardly ever bought any of them. They just show up. Like the heavenly gifts they are.
And this Christmas, not just one but two flashlights ended up under our tree with my name on them. The bigger one was thought out in a lab somewhere by the smartest person in the world. It uses LED (Light for Every Dude) and has several intense magnets strategically placed on it, allowing me to attach it to practically anything. I have carried this thing with me day and night since I opened my gift and seemingly can’t even find a spoon in the cutlery drawer without it now.
But the smaller package that was wrapped and stuffed in my Christmas stocking held the best surprise of all. A flashlight that attaches to the peak of my caps, allowing me to feel like a coal miner 24/7. It has three LED bulbs on it but here’s the best part. I can make them flash.
A man walking his neighbourhood at night with a cap flashlight blinking is a wealthy man indeed, although his ability to sneak up on people, assuming he might want to do this, is somewhat impaired.
But let’s face it, he has the world by the tail (and if that tail has a flea on it, he’ll spot it right away.)
The day is coming, and it might not be too far off, when I am going to have to pay for my sins.
My little dog Toby rides in the back seat crying all the way to the groomer and the vet. But on the way home, he is so happy to be free he pushes himself under my arm and onto my lap and there he stays for the entire trip, looking out the window with wonder at everything passing us by. I am glad that his trauma is over, so I let him stay.
On the list of driver distractions which includes texting, eating and making love, driving along with a doggie on your lap has to be right up there. So we carefully take back streets home, trying to avoid detection. Toby is 14 years old so we’ve been up to this no-good business for quite a while.
On Wednesday, I dressed him up in his bright green sweater and headed out to see the vet. He cried all the way there and after I got the bill, I cried all the way home. But when the vet brought him out and set him on my lap, he planted his feet as stubborn as a donkey, and refused to move.
So we headed out. I imagined which back streets I would take – Downie, then Norfolk, Romeo, Oxford and Albert – but said to myself, what the heck, let’s go main streets all the way!
And that is where I made my critical error.
We turned right instead of left, and headed for the lights at Lorne Avenue, me as nervous as a cat in a kennel and Toby dressed up in green like a neon Christmas tree.
Approaching the lights, I could see they were about to turn green for us at this main intersection. I also saw a police car stopped at the lights directly to my left. I rolled around the corner as anxious as a man on his wedding day, my miniature Christmas tree in my lap, and glued my eyes to my rearview mirror, awaiting my fate.
Amazingly, I was not followed. I am guessing the officer was on his way to a hostage taking so decided to let me go.
But it’s a dangerous business. One of these days, our town is going to be fresh out of hostage takings and my doom will have arrived.
As for Toby, the hand that reaches through the window to give me my ticket will simply represent some fresh new skin to lick. He will do this, of course, because My Doggie Can’t Hold His Licker.
My family has been yelling at me for years and I have to say, it can be a bit maddening. I try to be a decent husband and father and still, the shouting has just gone on and on.
Fortunately, I have a great tolerance for this kind of abuse, having spent a few years as a journalism professor, so I hid my hurt feelings well. Another, less disciplined man, might have spoken up.
But the speaking up was left to the three other members of our household who didn’t hold back. They used, in their defence, the idea that I was as deaf as a frying pan. Not only deaf but steadfastly opposed to any suggestions that I do something about it.
But faced with living under the Huron Street bridge over the Avon River, I found myself at a hearing centre. Then I went to the bank and took out a mortgage which allowed me to buy hearing aids.
So, for the past six months, I have walked around with two little devices sticking in my ears and the new world this has opened up for me has been amazing. I will never forget the experience of being in my back yard and hearing, in fairly rapid succession, a Canada goose farting, a squirrel burping and a rabbit laughing. I was amazed and grateful.
But, as with all good things, there is always a flaw or two. With my hearing aids in and turned up, I can hear my own voice very well. And I don’t have to speak loudly to hear it. As a result, there has been a reversal of roles at our place.
My family members are now accusing me of whispering when I speak and demanding I increase the volume of my voice.
Being a reasonable man and one who is easy to get along with, I have obliged. In order for my family to hear me, I am now yelling at them.
This seems to be working but it appears the only real solution will be for the three other members of the household to be fitted for their own hearing aids.
So, off they’ll all go on Monday to Ears to You to get fitted.
As they leave the house, I will shout “good luck” to them.
Then sit down and call my friendly bank manager. He hardly ever yells at me.
Twenty years ago my wife presented me with an electronic stud finder to help me hang heavy stuff on our walls. Twenty years later, our walls are full of more holes than a beehive, holes that lead into empty space, not studs. This is because the stud finder is a useless piece of crap.
I could take a stick and go out in the back yard and discover an underground spring of water faster than I could find a stud with this silly thing. And yet, I bring the darned device out every once in a while, pop a new battery in it and proceed to try to get it to find a stud behind some drywall. But it is apparent that it couldn’t find one if our walls were made of glass and the studs were covered in labels stating “Stud Here.”
So, back in the bottom of the toolbox it goes and I start drilling holes into empty drywall like an ice fisherman, looking for a good spot. If I ever hit a stud, it has been completely by accident.
This week, I had to attach something to a wall and this time, no mistakes could be permitted. So, I drilled four huge holes you could stick your little finger through, into the wall in question, and came nowhere near any studs. I should be given a prize for being that successful at avoiding all studs.
Desperate, I got the stud finder and gave it one more shot. Turning it on, I soon saw that it was as useless as ever. The green light should obviously indicate a stud, a red light, no stud. Nope, nope, nope. I was just about to throw that freakin’ thing through the window when I noticed some writing on the back. The words there were instructions on how to use it.
And this is how low I had sunk – I read them for the first time.
The green light only indicates the device is on. The red light comes on when one side of the stud is found and goes off when it leaves the other side. As simple as sneezing in a pepper factory. Applying these directions, I discovered that the thing works perfectly.
Imagine that! And all these years, those stupid directions were hiding in plain sight unlike all those darned studs it has never found.
What is the proper moral protocol for taking stuff back to the store? On Sunday I bought two compact fluorescent light bulbs and put one of them in a lamp by the front door. I hate it and have hated it since I screwed it into the lamp. It’s too freakin’ bright. I need something calmer.
The problem now is the bulb has been burning away every evening since Sunday and now it is Thursday. If I slipped it back into the box – fortunately I didn’t have to destroy the carton to get it out – I could easily take it back to the department store, no questions asked.
But could I live with myself having used up four days’ worth of gas in that little bulb knowing that the next unsuspecting owner of it would find it quitting on him or her four days earlier than it should have?
I’ve got a bit of a bad record, I’m afraid, when it comes to taking stuff back. I hate to do it but I suffer from bouts of buyer’s remorse and sometimes try to undo the wrongs my credit card have done to me. I always approach the return counter with trepidation, worried the person behind that counter will see right through me and know I am trying to blow one past her and every once in a while that person decides to grill me to see if I truly am pulling a fast one. I am so relieved when the money is safely returned or a new item given to me to replace the one I didn’t want any more.
Gutsier people, I know, have no problem with this. A friend of mine was walking through a mall one day with a friend of his when his friend suddenly turned into a random shoe store. “Where are you going?” asked my friend. His companion said, “I want to return these boots.”
However, there were a couple of small problems with this idea. First of all, he had worn the boots for about a year. And secondly, he didn’t have a receipt for the footwear – because he hadn’t bought them in that store. In fact, he had bought them in a store back home, hundreds of miles away.
So in he went and talked to the salesperson. She was pretty skeptical about this guy with no receipt for these scuffed up boots but he was so forward about it all that she finally agreed to let him exchange the boots for a new pair.
Now that takes a quality that rhymes with halls and the conscience of a shaker full of salt to pull off. I would have broken down sobbing halfway through the attempted swindle and ran out of the store.
And whereas that guy left the mall with a shiny new pair of boots, I probably would have left courtesy of a couple of big, burly mall security guys.
The next time I go shopping for a new cat, this will be the conversation I will have with the cat store clerk.
“Yes, I would like to buy a cat,” I will announce, on entering the cat retail outlet.
“What sort of cat would you like?” I will be asked. “We have all kinds.”
I will fish for a list I have been compiling and have stuffed in a pocket somewhere. I will hand it to the woman behind the counter. She will read my list back to me.
“You want a 15-pound housecat that doesn’t eat like it’s a 200-pound cougar,” she will say. “We have cats with normal appetites.”
“You also want a cat that doesn’t purr so loudly to hide the noise of the chainsaw it is slicing up your furniture with,” she says. “Our cats are trained to scratch nothing but scratching posts.”
“You want a cat that doesn’t fill its litter box as though it had somehow invited a half dozen of its closest friends over for an overnight party. Our cats are guaranteed to eliminate the required amount only. And to this related item, they never poop behind the TV.”
“You are hoping to buy a cat that doesn’t swallow three feet of wrapping paper ribbon, causing a vet bill of $300 to open it up like a Christmas present and remove two feet of blue ribbon and one foot of green. Our cats don’t eat ribbon or anything else that might obstruct their innards.”
“You want a cat that is not a food flinger. What is a food flinger, sir?”
I will tell her the tale of a cat that somehow tosses big chunks of its soft canned food all over the rec room when it chows down, those chunks landing on the carpet and even on its owner’s bare face and arms.
“We do not sell food flingers,” the now unsmiling sales clerk will reply. Anticipating my next question, she says her cats never throw up.
The rest of my list will specify that I do not want a cat that climbs through open windows and gets locked for days in a neighbour’s basement. And their garage. Also not on the roof of the neighbour’s house, causing the cat owner to get out his long ladder to go up and retrieve the little dickens which tries to open up some veins in the human’s arm on its descent from roof to ground. Also one that doesn’t crawl up into a neighbour’s car engine and cause his fan belt to fly off when he starts the car.
I am assured by the cat store clerk that none of their offerings will do any of these things. They will also not bring in the remains of mice they have killed and drop them on the kitchen floor.
“Basically,” I will say. “I want a cat that will sit in a corner of the room like a ceramic figurine and smile all day long.
“And I want one that goes by the name of Fred.”
By now the clerk appears to be holding back a lot of pent up rage, and I have no idea why.
“We have no Freds for sale,” she will bark at me (she used to work in a dog store.)
I know I live in a small town but this is ridiculous.
I went to a hardware store this morning looking for some screwnails. A man about my age elbowed his way in front of me and conducted his own search for the same things. I waited him out, went back to my survey and left the store without the screws.
I went to another hardware store just down the road and started the same investigation. Not long after, guess who was moving me out of the way of his all-important search again? As I did before, I stood back and when he apparently found what he needed, I moved in.
Picking up the package of nails I needed, I headed for the cashier. I will give you three guesses as to who was in line in front of me and your first two are wrong. It was Dog the Screwnail Hunter again. And as there was some discrepancy in the price of the FOUR screws he had chosen to buy after much careful consideration, there was a hold up. The price was eventually established at 15 cents and the transaction was made.
Finally, he disappeared out the door and I made my purchase.
I stepped out into the sun and stopped short as a big old sedan went zooming by too fast for a parking lot and threatened to run over my feet. Yes, it was that same guy driving and I will admit, I had one of the worst cases of Screwnail Rage yet seen in these parts. I’m not proud of it, I’ll admit, but that guy is a complete Old Fart Menace and needs a good talkin’ to.
I gobble down 13 pills a day and have done for years and I hate every swallow. The medicines are tasked with producing certain outcomes within and without my body and I guess they do what they’re designed for.
I am still walking around, so something’s working.
But lately, my body is in full rebellion. I gag when I try to take the big ones and if I don’t take them immediately after eating but try to ingest them between meals on an empty stomach, I get a bad case of acid reflux. Consequently, I have developed a phobia about taking them so I talked about it to my pharmacist today.
“Well, we actually have something that will help you cope with all that,” she said, smiling. I started smiling too but stopped when she told me the remedy comes only in pill format.
At first, I thought she was joking. But then no.
I began to feel like I was in the nursery rhyme about the old lady who swallowed a fly, then a spider to catch the fly, a bird to catch the spider, a dog to catch the cat, etc. That didn’t end well at all for her, poor soul, as I recall.
I can’t remember whether or not I took the new pill to catch the others but I might have. I wonder if it affects your memory.
For more proof that the 20th Century just sort of snuck by me when I wasn’t looking I offer the fact that I do not own a power saw. However, I do have three lovely handsaws for wood and two hacksaws for metal and everything that gets cut around our place gets cut by these marvels of modern science.
With those saws my kids and I have built a sturdy little clubhouse and treehouse along with a bunch of other paraphernalia that is needed by the average homeowner. For example, I just cut up an old picnic table into one-foot-long chunks for our fire pit using a handsaw. It was a time-consuming project but I did a bit every day till it was done.
Among the biggest projects was a six-foot-high cedar privacy fence we erected around the back of our double lot. Some neighbours and relatives got so frustrated watching me build this thing (it took me three months) with a handsaw that they started offering their own power saws to help me along. I would just hold up both hands and show them that each of them still sported four fingers and a thumb as my counterargument for using their weapons of man destruction.
My father-in-law insisted I borrow his saw which I did and after two or three cuts, gave it back. For one thing, it made a lot of noise and I didn’t want to put the neighbours through that. The other thing is I am lefthanded and all these saws are made for righties which means the blade, instead of facing away from my body parts, is actually facing into them. So one little slip and I might be walking around on one less leg. We had a power saw on the farm and I used it but was just more comfortable with the handsaws.
My Dad and I would cut logs with a long crosscut saw and I came to like the rhythm and peace that comes from “letting the saw do the work.”
I will admit that sometimes, a good chainsaw or table saw would come in pretty handy but I always look at the size of my project and the cost of the machines and decide it would be cheaper and better for me – exercise-wise – to hack away with my handsaws.
I do own a jigsaw but I hate it. It goes through its little blades faster than my dog Toby goes through kibble and even though it is small, it scares the sawdust out of me sometimes.
So if you have any non-precision cutting to be done, just drop it off and I will get it back to you – some time this century. You’ll know our place when you see it. It’s the one with a very crooked cedar fence.
You know, this is just me. I have my own way of doing things.
For example, whenever I try to break into a car and steal it, or at least steal whatever I can find of value inside it, the first thing I do is check to make sure there is no one inside the vehicle. I do this because I am a Class A chickenshit. Somebody might punch me in the nose and that would probably hurt. I do not like being hurt.
So, I exercise caution during every one of my attempted car heists.
It surprises me to learn, however, that not everyone in the same business as I am, is quite so careful. Take Stephen Titland of Florida, for example. The other day, he was busy going down the street pulling on car latches, hoping to find one open. So far, so good, although he was caught on a surveillance camera trying to get into seven cars.
But Stephen is nothing if not persistent. The next day he went out again in search of an open car. And, EUREKA! He found one. The door opened.
I always rejoice too when that happens for me.
But life is funny. And we all know the old saying that we might not always be happy if we end up getting what we wish for. This was the case with Stephen. The car he managed to open, for example, was occupied. There were several people inside it. Oh oh.
To make matters worse, those people were all police officers. Several members of a Tampa sheriff’s Strategic Targeted Area Response Team.
This was the equivalent of a large bass jumping into a fisherman’s boat. Good ole Stephen saved the law enforcement people the trouble of baiting their hooks and casting their lines.
I can sympathize with Mr. Titland. That is just the sort of thing that would happen to me and probably will someday.
It’s hard for a 49-year-old would-be burglar like Stephen to catch a break these days.
Awareness is often slow in coming and it sometimes arrives like a hammer blow rather than a feather brush.
All my life I have teased older people about their advanced years believing they were fine with it. They chuckled and others within earshot did too.
A man I know wears a ball cap with “100” printed on the front. I think he got it at the centennial of the International Plowing March. So I have told him on numerous occasions in front of our mutual friends that I wish I had a cap with my age printed on it. A crowd-pleaser of a comment, it seemed.
My cleverness was confirmed with every such witty quip.
Today I was dealing with a couple of men from the gas company. One of them was in his 30s. Somehow the topic turned to hockey and I reflected on how the game was played in the 1800s when it first became organized.
“Were you at some of those games?” the young man asked me in front of his partner. My jaw dropped and I smiled, or grimaced perhaps. It hurt big time.
And I was struck by two things. One, that the young man who was a total stranger to me thought I would be okay with being called old. Plus, he had judged me based solely on my appearance. And having been so identified as old. I felt old all day. Aches and pains, shuffling, limping, wistful.
The young man did me a favour. I owe my plowing match friend an apology. My hope is he never hurt like I did all day long.
Over the seven decades I have been wandering around this planet, I have sometimes wondered if I have lived my life all wrong.
I wait as patiently as I can when the service in a shop or bank seems a bit slow and I even let people cut in in front of me without (much) complaint. I am not sure that this behaviour can be attributed to my being a nice guy, a Canadian, or a sucker. No matter, it seems I was raised this way. And it ain’t easy to get too far from your raisin’.
But if I had spent 70 years in Tennessee, I might be a different guy altogether.
I submit as my evidence, your honour, the story of a 53-year-old man in Knoxville, Tennessee, who got agitated because it was taking too long for him to get the food he ordered at a Little Ceasar’s Pizza. After being told he would have to wait a few minutes, the man left the store and returned with an AK-47 in his hands. He demanded his pizza immediately.
I hope you don’t judge me for betraying a character flaw of mine but sometimes I too have felt like doing something dramatic to get my fast food a little faster.
But the world is still a good place, and so is Tennessee, a state I’ve been to and enjoyed. Another person in the store who had already gotten her order handed the machine-gun toting man her pepperoni pizza and he fled the scene before police arrived but not before threatening several people at the restaurant, because when you’re brave, it pays to terrify people who aren’t carrying an AK-47.
One person commenting on this story said, “A pizza does not bake faster because you point a gun at it.” This is basic science and good information to always remember, I would suggest.
Now, our gun-toting hillbilly faces a $50,000 fine and many years in prison and needs $90,000 for bail, all because he did not want to wait an extra ten minutes for a $6 pizza.
I know I shouldn’t mock this poor fellow and the trap he has set for himself. It seems he wasn’t lucky, as I have been, to not be raised in a place where guns are worshipped and patience is scorned.
There have been times I wished I had more patience but not once have I ever wanted my very own machine gun.
So my wife Barb hid behind a wall and stuck her leg out as I ran by. The arsenic in her stew had had no effect on me so she moved on to Plan B. I fell like a mighty oak against a wooden chair.
As I lay on the floor reading myself the Last Rites, our little dog Toby rushed to the scene and knew exactly what to do. He stuck his tongue down my left ear and oddly, it seemed to help. Toby’s Wax Removal Service is available for rental. Just Google it.
Barb finally set down the life insurance policy and then came over to assess the damage. I was bleeding from several wounds on my head. One of them was new having been inflicted by the chair.
Barb said I might need staples to close the gash. She went to the shed and came back with the roof staple gun. I protested as I didn’t want blood on my staple gun.
So my loving wife decided to treat it. She ran upstairs and came back with a bottle of cayenne pepper which she sprinkled liberally into the cut. I asked for another helping of her stew.
She then fetched some turpentine, windshield washer fluid, WD-40 and rubbing alcohol and when I wouldn’t drink the mixture, she poured it all over my head.
More stew, I screamed!
Toby moved on to my right ear.
Barb sent our daughter Sarah to the shed for some duct tape. She came back with a roll of white Gorilla tape. They use that tape to make repairs on the space shuttle.
Toby is my only friend. I would kiss him but he has a bad case of wax breath.
My neighbours are from Newfoundland. They are different. In a very wonderful way.
This summer, they wanted to take down a huge, overgrown evergreen tree in their front yard, close to their house, a tree that blocked a lot of the light from getting into their kitchen and living room. They called in a professional tree-removal company for an estimate.
“They wanted $1,200,” Dave told me. “Then my buddy said he’d take it down for free if he could have the wood. Free is a good price.”
So, one sunny Saturday morning, a group of Dave and Betty’s buddies showed up and two young fellas clambered up that tall tree like they were running up a hill. Off came the branches in a hurry while more buddies and half the neighbourhood showed up to help and/or to watch. Before long, out came a case of beer and everyone who wanted one was offered one.
Dave and Betty are the kind of people who ask nothing of you and yet, you want to do things for them. They are friendly and funny and though they have problems, they don’t complain. Taking down their tree became a block party and before long, that was the place to be. It somehow grew into a week-long affair as almost every day, someone would show up to do a bit more cleaning up, carrying away a truckload of wood or carting branches off to the dump.
I dropped around several times but felt badly that I had nothing much to contribute except a few lame jokes. Finally, one day, when everyone was gone and just Dave was there, I noticed he still had a few scraps of wood lying around. “You want me to take those for our fire pit?” I asked him. “Sure,” he replied. “I was going to have to take them to the dump.” I went home and got my wheelbarrow and was happy to go back and get the scraps. It felt great to be able to contribute to the tree-removal effort even if I was the last one to do so.
That is what happens when people are so likable. Other people like them and want to be around them and help them. Dave and Betty don’t ask for help. They don’t have to.
In contrast, we have other neighbours who are the polar opposite. One day I was walking my dog down the sidewalk past their house and was startled to hear the woman’s gravelly, angry voice yelling out her kitchen window, “Don’t you let that dog crap on my lawn.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He won’t.”
To this day, I cross the street when I walk my dog rather than walk past her place. When she and her husband drive down the street past our house, I always wave if I am out. He waves back, she never does. Takes all kinds, I guess.
Years ago, my wife and I vacationed in Newfoundland. One Sunday morning, we went to a laundromat in the town we were staying in overnight and put our clothes into a washing machine. There were a few other people in there too. A man in his 30s came in, put his clothes into a washer, took a quick look around and left. Soon he came back with a tray of ice cream cones, one for every person in the laundromat. He went around the room distributing them, still having not spoken a word. Eventually he opened up and chatted with us all.
There are nice people everywhere. But there sure seems to be a lot of them in Newfoundland and down east, generally. They have a different outlook on life than we do in our hard-driving society of Ontario.
I have played guitar for 50 years, come 2019. I still play the same guitar I bought when I was learning to play in 1969. I am left handed and so is my classical guitar.
From the time I started, I was aware that the Rolls Royce of acoustic guitars is the Martin. Other amazing instruments have come along in the intervening years and some would say some of them surpass the Martin. But Martin got burned into my brain and I always have wanted to play one, if not own one.
I have seen dozens of Martins at the weekly jams I have gone to over the years but I had never played one: They were all for right-handed players.
That all changed on Saturday when I sat down at our regular jam next to a woman I had never met (and haven’t seen in the years since). She is left-handed, like me, and she was playing a left-handed, Martin steel-string acoustic, the instrument I have always dreamed about.
Eventually, after I mentioned my fantasy to her, she offered to let me play it so we switched guitars.
I have a left-handed steel string at home. It is a quality guitar, a Martin knock off. But here, in my hands, was the real thing.
The next song got going and I started playing my dream come true. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but it was simply amazing. The responsiveness of the strings, the crispness and warmth of the sound, the ease of depressing the strings to the frets.
It was like a car lover finally getting behind the wheel of a Rolls Royce. An experience not soon to be forgotten, if never to be repeated.
It has been suggested I cash in some savings and treat myself to a Martin. And after my experience finally playing one, I did ask about the guitar at my music store. I could have gotten a 1967 Willie Nelson Martin for about $2,500.
I didn’t part with my money. I finally sorted that out and realized that if I really had wanted a Martin all these years, I would have bought one long ago. The fact that I didn’t do that tells me I didn’t really want one. I wanted a house. I got that. I wanted a red sportscar. Got it. I wanted a nice stereo. Ditto. And I wanted to see the world. Off I went.
When I learned guitar, I was soon finger-picking. Someone suggested that skill would easily transfer to a banjo. So for 50 years I have told everyone I want to own and learn to play a banjo.
Once again, that twangy “want” never happened.
Because, for me, it never was a real want. And now I believe, complain though we may, we usually end up with the things we really did want all along.
Wife, son, daughter.
Check, check, and check.
As Mick sang, we can’t always get what we want. But it is hard to be happy if we don’t see at least some of our real wants fulfilled. My fertile mind entertains my fantasies; my heart contains my true desires.
A close family member – wife, son, daughter – leaves the house, gets in the car and drives off. You say goodbye, have a good day, see you later.
A few minutes go by, and then arises the greatest racket from fire trucks, ambulances and police cruisers. Heading down the main street at lightning speed. You can see them out your kitchen window. They’re heading in the same direction your loved one just did.
And you think, “Oh my God. What if they were in an accident?”
There is an intersection not far from your home where, for some reason, there are a lot of fender benders at least and sometimes more serious crack ups.
Then your mind goes to all the horrible follow-up imaginings.
Will a police officer be knocking on your door in the next little while?
Instead, comes a text:
“Anything you want at the store?”
“Can I bring you a coffee?”
“I’m going to stay over at my friend’s tonight, Dad.”
I have been listening to modern country music on a local radio station the past couple of months and I am really enjoying it.
Seriously. No joking. I love it.
I’ve always loved old country and now I love the new. But I believe that the new music is having some strange effects on me and I am not sure what to do.
First off, I have a gigantic urge to buy a pickup truck. And it’s gotta be a Chevy. No furrin’ vehicles for me and not even a Ford or a Dodge. Just a good ole Chevy.
Next, I need to keep it off the highways and drive it only down dirt roads. That might be hard to do because all our non-paved roads are gravel, not dirt, but maybe I could find one north of Millbank somewhere. Someone might declare that a gravel road is a dirt road but I challenge those people to make a mud pie from a pile of gravel.
Then I need to find a girl. Yes, I said it, but I don’t really mean a girl, girl. I mean a young woman. Now, she needs to be little. Not sure why, but she does. Medium sized, plus sized – uh, uh. And purty. I need to find a purty little contray girl and drive around in my truck with her, down some dirt roads north of Millbank.
This girl, whom I will call baybay, needs to dress like a cowboy with hat and boots and jeans and lumberjack shirt during the day. She has to be tough as a grizzly bear and mean as a rattlesnake. However, when not behaving like a gunslinger on the main street of a dusty western town (Millbank), she needs to be ready for the beach in the summer. For that, she will have to wear cutoff blue jeans and either a halter top or tube top, her choice. Blonde hair. Long blonde hair. And she needs to rest her head on my chest at every opportunity.
In the evening, my young cowboy/lumberjack/partial nudist will dress up prettier than a princess except she’ll have way more class than a real one.
Truck, girl, what else? Booze. Plenty of it. Beer. More beer. Hose Cuervo tequila. Jack Daniels whisky. A margareta or 10. Pour me another one.
Oh, and if the truck’s in the shop, an old car will do. Chevy, of course. An el Camino, ideally. (Kids, ask your grandparents what that is.)
I feel an urge I have never had before to go fishing. All day long. But before I head out, I need to get down on my knees and say a prayer to the man upstairs. To thank him for the truck and the girl, the booze and the fishing gear and the dirt road north of Millbank.
After a day of fishin’, I will head for a bar. Maybe get in a fight. Probably win it. Maybe not. It really doesn’t matter as good ole boys such as me all love and forgive each other.
I’m gonna throw a lot of coins in the jukebox even though such a machine hasn’t been seen in these parts for 30 years.
When I stagger home, I will sit on my front porch for a while and look at the stars. Go kiss my truck and then crawl in with my lumberjack/little girl/princess for some kissin’ and who knows what else.
But I can’t stay up too late. Got a busy day tomorrow. I want to listen to great country tunes on the radio by Garth Brooks, George Jones, Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash – even though they aren’t played on the radio any more. Maybe satellite radio.
If I’m feeling adventurous, I might even listen to some Springsteen or Bon Jovi. And I will need to bang out some tunes of my own on my old guitar. I don’t know why my guitar has to be old, but oh well. So are my truck and my car.
I will write some songs and in the songs I will plunk as many American states and cities as I can, but only the country ones – Texas, Alabama, Tennessee. No New York or California. Memphis, Nashville, Fort Worth. No Chicago, no Boston.
So, that’s about it. Can’t think of much else I’m feeling after eight weeks of modern country music except that I’m grateful for the country I live in and feel sorry for any idiot who might criticize it to my face.
Oh yeah, on my to do list: buy a horse and a big dog. Bring ‘em home in my truck. I just can’t wait to get that truck.
Also, wish I was smart as my Dad. Mom made the best pies ever.
I stopped at an interesting, colourful truck today to buy some french fries. No better use of a truck has ever been devised since its invention. These delicious fries are known community-wide to be the best anywhere and so I patiently waited in a long line, happily shivering in the cold, to acquire my fill.
And fill it turned out to be as I carted my overflowing cup of goodies back to my car. I asked the server for extra salt and told her that, as a committed health-food nut, I needed the extra salt. Also a health-food freak, I believe, she obliged.
Comfortably seated in my car, I started the engine and turned up the heat. I looked especially with great anticipation at two very large consumables that had been piled on top of my greasy, vinegar-laden feast. But as I watched in horror, these two beauties jumped from the cup and fell down under my car seat and onto the floor.
I won’t say that my car floor is not regularly cleaned, but I will confess that there are creatures living under the seat. I have grown accustomed to them and even named a few. By far, Hector is my favourite. But now I realized, favourite or not, that he was no doubt chomping away on my snack and had been since it dropped right in front of him.
I tried to retrieve my two prizes but my fingers are too fat (I blame the truck) to slide down between the seat and the middle console. So I gave up. But as I gobbled down all the rest of my delicious feast, the fate of my two woe-begone strays never left my worried mind.
Where there is will and two gorgeous french fries out of reach, there is a way. There just had to be a way.
My mother told each of her seven kids that we all had to eat a pound of dirt in our lives. I can now announce that I have made my quota. I am not sure of the quota status of my siblings, but I have this idea that I might have also just filled the dirt requirements of at least two of them. I will phone them tomorrow to impart the good news.
The floor fries were a little dusty, to be honest, and it was a struggle to pry one of them out of the hungry jaws of Hector, who put up a valiant fight, but I would like to pay homage to the Great Goddess of Potatoes by saying the effort was well worth the struggle.
As it always is when dealing with most of the important things in life.
What I know about Buddhism could be written on a Post-it-Note with room left over for a Christmas gifts shopping list.
But one feature of the belief system that I think is true is the reverence adherents have for all life, not just human and not just animal. There is a certain sect of monks, for example, who carry a brush with them and sweep the sidewalk in front of them as they walk so they don’t step on and kill any bugs.
I thought of that the other day when I was sweeping the floor. I noticed that one of the pieces of dirt in the pile was moving so I watched it. It was a mid-sized spider and it soon extricated itself from the mess and took off.
I kept sweeping and thought, “I really don’t need to kill that spider,” so I made a pact with it. If it could disappear by the time I finished sweeping, I wouldn’t bother it. (The truth is I haven’t purposely killed a spider in years).
Turning back to my job, I soon noticed something else. Three tiny spiders were scrambling across the floor in all directions. My sweeping had disturbed a nest, I guess. Momma was the big one and these were her babies.
I carefully kept working and avoided the little kids and soon, like their Ma, they had safely crawled out of sight under a baseboard.
The next time I see them they will probably be huge and will crawl into my bed and bite me on the nose, but for now, all is well.
As I round third base and head for home, I find myself feeling more connected to all living things and less superior to any. Like that Francis of Assisi guy. When the gigantic outer space aliens invade and are vacuuming us up for breakfast, maybe I’ll catch a break from one of them!
I was happy for the opportunity one hot summer day recently to speak to a class of journalism students all about the ins and outs of headline writing and so I prepared a little talk on the subject in advance.
And when the day of the big lesson arrived, although I was a bit nervous about the encounter, I charged into my responsibility with no small amount of passion, hoping to ignite a flame or two in the 13 eager, young future newspaper reporters who sat in the classroom before me, attentive to my every utterance.
So, I began uttering.
“The biggest task of the headline writer is to capture the essence of the story and to do it with life and colour and without leading the reader to believe he’s about to read something in the article below, which, in fact, he fails to encounter,” I said. “An accurate headline, even if it’s dull, is still better than a lively one which distorts the meaning of the story it’s announcing.”
Hearing my thoughts on the topic expressed in such an intelligent way, I felt a surge of confidence and so I looked around at the group before me to see how it was being received. They were staring at me like people positively hungry for knowledge who were hearing the truth for the very first time and recognizing their need, I started laying out a veritable journalistic banquet for them.
“An important fact about headlines you always want to remember is that they represent probably your best chance to draw the busy reader into a story she might not otherwise stop and read,” I pronounced. “A reporter’s hard work and best effort can be all for naught if her article has been poorly sold off by a lazy or inattentive headline writer.”
More wise words and another glance around at the troops. But this time, not all of them were glancing back. One young man over in the corner was resting his head, face down on his desk, in obvious meditation on the statement I’d just made.
I continued, stressing how the size of the headline should bear some relevance to the significance of the story and warning against the urge to be too flippant, especially with serious stories.
Another look up, at this point, revealed a second meditator, two rows back, this one taking up a different position with his head resting on his arms which were resting on his desk and his face turned to the side. His eyes were closed, as he obviously sought to shut out other data and think only about headlines.
The lesson resumed. Getting headlines to fit. Writing headlines in the present tense. Taking care to avoid headlines clashing with other headlines on the page.
A third contemplator lowered his head to his desk and within seconds was breathing heavily, in an obviously deep, meditative state.
Apparently, I was getting somewhere.
Three down and 10 to go.
My lecture now nearing the 20-minute mark, I took another visual survey around the warm classroom to see how well the rest of the class was responding to what they were fortunate enough to be hearing. None of them had joined their three contemplative classmates, one of whom by this time had managed to curl himself into something resembling a fetal position, all the time sitting in his chair, but they all had adopted various poses which suggested apparent deep thought on their part.
One woman, who’d obviously freed her mind to follow the soaring flights of enlightenment I’d been releasing into the air before her, sat staring at me with a smile Madame Tussaud might have been proud to have achieved on one of the models in her museum. Her eyes, though appearing to be trained on me, were, in fact, wandering independently of each other, looking everywhere and nowhere at the same time. This is true concentration, I thought.
In the middle of the room, directly before me, sat a young man with his arms crossed over his chest, his head having fallen backwards over the back of his chair. His mouth was open as were his eyes which seemed glued to the ceiling tiles above him.
As the talk headed into its second 30 minutes, the surviving students went into other various learning positions and while most of them sat up straight, at least one young man’s eyes wandered upwards and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen eyes turned that far back in anyone’s head before. Several others, resting their heads on their hands, peered my way through eyes half-covered with drooping lids and at least two appeared to have developed a sort of glaze over theirs.
Needless to say, I was pretty happy with the way things were going and when I finished after about 45 minutes, they all seemed very happy too.
Except the guy in the corner who had been first to go into the meditative state and who took a while to come around. He seemed groggy, even disoriented.
But there was no mistaking that other quality on his face. It was the look of a man who now knew more than he expected he ever would about a subject.
I was driving into the city of Sudbury in Northern Ontario from our friend’s nearby cottage when I turned on the radio and tried to find a station I liked. Too hard, too soft, too noisy, too quiet, too much talk; every time I pressed the scan button I landed on another place I didn’t want to be.
And then, finally, there it was: The best radio station I’ve ever heard. Fantastic music. Rolling Stones. Beatles. The Animals. Creedance Clearwater Revival. Bob Dylan. Janis Joplin. One hit after another.
In an instant, I was singing at the top of my lungs as I bombed along down the highway.
What a great Saturday morning this was turning out to be. A couple of hours off by myself with the van and the finest songs in the world. I soon began to lament that I live so far away from this place that I wouldn’t be able to hear this station again. I sure wish we had a station like this back home, I thought. Hardly any commercials.
Wow. Life is good. Do Wa Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Doo. I Wanna Hold Your Hand. The Times They are a Changin’. Perfect.
Then a female announcer came on the air. “It’s 11 a.m.,” she said. “And you’ve been listening to Songs for Seniors.”
It’s funny how you can’t find a good radio station anywhere any more.
This is a story of hope and wonder and persistence. Some might add idiocy but that is not a word that applies, in my opinion.
In April 2013, a good lookin’ young fella (me), bought a nice used car (on the Internet, so you know I couldn’t go wrong). It was fantastic in every way with only a few flaws. One of those little wrinkles was a foggy headlight lens. So foggy it’s a wonder any light ever escaped it.
This was a problem I wanted to address so I took one year to think about it. This is the required waiting time for an issue such as this. To take action any sooner than 12 months would be impetuous and potentially dangerous.
When Phase 2 (obsession takes hold) arrived following the year-long consideration period, I began to research solutions. I am not a car guy in much the same way that Stevie Wonder is not a house painter, and so I defer to our mechanic to solve 99 per cent of our car’s problems. If he says I need a two-phase, four-pronged, self-timing, fully computerized, oil deflector injecting thing, I tell him to go ahead and crack one on there, price be damned.
But I draw the line at a foggy piece of plastic. If I can’t fix that, then I have failed as a human being.
I was willing to do anything it took to clear up this lens cover, anything, that is, except spend any money. I drew the line at that. So, when you want to do something for next to nothing, you turn to the Internet, which I did.
First out of the gate was toothpaste. Several videos by several people showed them smearing on ordinary toothpaste and wiping it off almost immediately to show a perfectly clear lens. I chuckled and laughed, grabbed some toothpaste and took to the task. Those idiots on YouTube need to be rounded up and charged with giving out false headlight lens advice. The only fitting penalty would be to have each of them eat a tube of toothpaste.
Next up, vinegar. The miracle household chemical. More videos. More instant results. I ran outside, vinegar in hand, applied as directed, and voila! Nothing. Now I had a few more YouTube frauds to add to my hate list.
Baking soda and vinegar. It fizzed which is a sure sign of something that would clear up a headlight lens. If I ever bump into the young man who made the video with that solution, I will pour baking soda and vinegar down his pants.
Baking soda and Murphy’s Oil Soap. OMG, why didn’t I think of that? So obvious. And so ridiculously wrong. I will never forgive the chump that posted that video.
Blue Dawn dish soap and vinegar. When I die I want to be embalmed with Blue Dawn and vinegar. I hope that solution keeps me intact for a while because it absolutely fails as a headlight cleaner.
I took to Facebook and posted my problem. I got several replies but I had obviously misled some of my FB friends as they somehow had the impression that I was willing to pay for a kit to clean my headlight lens. I am not.
However, on Sunday, I had to admit defeat. I went to the store and stared blankly at the couple of dozen kits and ointments that promise to clean up my headlight cover. I got discouraged and walked out with nothing.
Home again, and foolishly cruising the Internet one more time, I noticed this little comment from someone, somewhere who I now have a crush on. “If you’re desperate,” wrote the commenter, “and nothing you have tried has cleared up the problem, apply some baby oil. Buff dry.”
I love baby oil and I would like to officially thank all the babies who got together to create this oil, whatever is in it, I don’t care. My headlight lens is clear as a bell now and I am running all over our property applying baby oil to everything that moves.
My problem was solved for less than a nickel. Less than a nickel is my favourite price to pay for anything. I am tempted to do a YouTube video, but am resisting. I don’t want anyone beating me on the head with a baby oil bottle although I could probably treat that bruising with Blue Dawn and vinegar.
I don’t order fries at any of the drive-thrus in my town much any more, but this night I had a hankering for some so I ordered a medium size with my burger. I asked the woman at the order kiosk if I could have some extra salt with that. If you’re going to eat healthy, never skip the extra salt.
There was a pause on the speaker and finally the young woman server asked me, “What kind of sauce do you want with the fries?”
“No, no,” I said, using two no’s in a row for emphasis. “I want extra salt with my fries.”
“Okay, drive up,” came the reply. I paid for my delicacies and picked them up at the second window. Then found a quiet place to park to enjoy my feast.
A search of the bag my food came in revealed no extra salt, not even one little paper packet. However, I was the lucky winner of seven plastic packets of ketchup. Seven. A couple more and I could have opened my own ketchup store.
I might yet do that anyway. I know a business opportunity when I see one staring at me from a junk food bag.
I suppose I could have gotten upset by this but for once, my empathy gene kicked in and I remembered being frazzled and making mistakes at some of my early jobs. (And at all of my later ones.)
I also had the benefit of knowing how quickly fast-food complaining can go badly wrong. In April of this year in Memphis, a 32-year-old woman was upset about the wait at a restaurant and after arguing with several employees at the joint, she grabbed a gun, leaned into the drive-thru window and opened fire. Fortunately, no one was injured.
This was not a scenario that could play out with me as I cannot fit through a drive-thru window any more, having picked up food at too many of them over the years. And secondly, I had left my gun at home on the kitchen table beside my hockey cards and am not sure I would have used it after being denied a small packet of salt. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have. I don’t think so.
As for the ketchup, I have put the seven packets on an Internet marketplace at a reasonable discount. With luck, I’ll earn enough for another helping of fries which I will generously salt with the shaker I now carry with me for such emergencies.
I always have thought this was one of the best business strategies I’ve ever heard of. Peter, a friend of mine, owned a business and sometimes had trouble getting his customers to pay their bills. He could send out reminders that an account was overdue and there would be no response. Threatening letters served no purpose either.
So, being a student of human nature, he hit on an idea. If a client owed my friend $300, he would send him an invoice for $900. The wrongly billed customer would be on the phone immediately, protesting strongly the incorrect billing.
“Well, how much do you think you owe me?” my friend would ask his outraged customer.
“I owe you $300,” would be the reply.
“Well,” Peter would say, “if that’s what you think you owe, then I guess I’ll have to accept that. Just send me a cheque.”
A cheque would be in his hand in a day or two from the customer who was grinning with satisfaction while writing it out, knowing that he had shown my friend who the boss in this relationship was. Darned if anybody was going to overbill him.
I also know of a trick another business owner used to employ. This man, a restaurant owner named Bill, whose establishment I often dined in, paid his waitresses in cash. When a new girl got her first pay, she would find $10 more in the envelope than there should have been. If the girl reported the overpayment to her boss, he would let her work the till. Any girl who kept the extra $10 never got near it. His reasoning was that the girl was either a bit dishonest or not very observant and didn’t notice the extra $10. Either way, not a good candidate to be handling the money.
I’ve always thought that was pretty clever.
Also using creative thinking was Tom, a friend of mine, who opened a small diner and who wanted to be able to sell great homemade pies. So he found out who entered the prize-winning pies at the local fall fair and he went to see the bakers, eventually hiring the second-place winner. His diner became known for its great pies, just as he hoped it would.
I can still taste those fantastic cherry pies today. And the lemon meringue would knock your socks off.
President Donald Trump woke up the day after the mid-term election in 2018 and started firing people. That first day, he fired three, just to get warmed up.
The first one he fired was a Hagarty (seriously). Because of this, I feel badly for all the terrible things I wrote about the Donald and the silly memes I shared. It appears that all that negativity that I put out there has affected the employment of one of my distant relatives.
So, to Donald Trump and the Hagarty who lost her job, I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart for writing such drivel as this:
Not much new happens to me these days. I don’t really mind that. As I get older, no news is good news, I suppose. Especially from the doctor.
But that changed yesterday as I was surveying the delicacies at a burger joint with my friend Patrick, trying to decide on some special menu items, when the server behind the counter asked me if I would like a Senior Coke.
I was a little startled, to be honest, and asked him to repeat the question in case I hadn’t heard him right. Is that a Coke that’s been sitting around for 60 years? Or is it a Coke that is served by a senior named Orville who is kept in the back for just such a person as me?
What, I wondered, is the difference between a Senior and a Junior Coke? Do Junior Cokes have cartoons of dinosaurs on the glasses and Senior Cokes are those that are served to dinosaurs wearing Coke-bottle glasses?
I decided to take a chance and go for it. I looked at the items being rung in on the mini-tv screen on the back of the till facing me and I saw that the Senior Coke was entered at no charge. I am not sure why I didn’t also qualify for a Senior Burger and Senior Fries, but this is a good start.
This senior business is starting to pay off. Already the cashiers at the grocery stores are bagging my groceries for me sometimes. I guess I look frail or something. Not skinny, just frail.
Sort of like a Senior Man. He is someone that isn’t free like a Senior Coke, but a person who has zero in his wallet.
I drove down to the end of the block and knew something was wrong. Another flat tire. I turned around and drove slowly home.
I had blown a tire a month ago but my friendly local tire dealer fixed it. For ten dollars.
So the day after this latest incident I took my sorry-looking band of rubber off the car, dropped it in the trunk of our other car and headed for my friendly local tire dealer.
However, as I pulled into the shop, something seemed different. Sure enough, I had taken a wrong turn and ended up at a different shop. No problem, I thought. I’m sure they can fix it.
A young man came out to have a look at the tire and it seemed when he saw it he might fall over from shock.
“I can’t do anything with this tire,” he said. “My God, it’s like paper. There’s nothing for me to work with.”
Then he checked it over more carefully and said, “It’s eleven years old.” I never knew tires had dates on them. He showed me where it indicated the tire was made in 2007.
I am not an expert at guessing ages but I estimated this young man might have been eight or nine when the tire was fabricated and he was still in elementary school.
“Sorry,” he said. “Oh, that’s alright,” I comforted him. He genuinely seemed like he felt badly for me. “I’ll be getting my snows on in a week or two.”
So, I left, kind of downhearted, and drove by my friendly local tire dealer, the one I would have gone to if I had any idea where in the world I am at any given time.
“What the heck,” I thought. I pulled in. An older fella, maybe in his 50s, came out and looked at the tire. “Think you can save it?” I asked. “We’ll see what we can do,” was the reply.
I phoned the next day. “Your tire’s all ready,” I was told. “You can pick it up any time.” A few minutes later, I did.
The man from the day before showed me where they had patched a hole. I shelled out another ten dollars, picked up a great 2019 calendar for free and came away with what I think is some sort of life lesson. Not sure what it is. Maybe something about age, experience, etc.
But I will readily admit: An eleven-year-old tire deserves a rest.
A friend of mine had the misfortune of having his pet cat Mr. Digger killed by a car this weekend. He is very upset and missing it. But so is his dog.
The day after the accident, the dog went around the house whining and looking for the cat. It went outside and saw Tony preparing to bury the cat and when he saw it lying on a bench, the dog went over and started nudging it, as if to wake it up. Then it sat down and started crying again.
We tend to think, of course, that animals don’t feel as deeply as we do or form relationships that matter much, especially with members of other species. But that has really been called into question over the past few years and researchers are even studying the phenomenon of non-human creatures caring for each other, regardless of species, in times of need.
A startling video recently showed a dog rushing onto a freeway and pulling, with his paws, another dog which had been hit by a car, off to the shoulder of the road. The dog survived because his buddy had put his life on the line for him.
Our little dog Toby has decided that he is the defender of the nine gerbils that live in two glass tanks in our home. If our two cats go to the tanks to have a look at what’s going on with their potential snacks as they run around, Toby goes on the attack and chases them away.
An article I read years ago pointed to an even odder relationship. A farmer had a horse that spent a lot of time under a particular shade tree up by the barn, a tree that attracted a lot of birds. Eventually, he became aware than one specific bird was doing a lot of squawking when the horse was near and the horse seemed to whinny back.
Every winter, the bird would fly south and when it returned in spring, horse and bird would reunite under the tree for a day before moving on with their lives.
One year, while the bird was down south, the horse died. The farmer buried it in a field and just to remember where it was, counted the fence posts from the barn back to the spot where the horse was interred. It was 22 posts away.
In the spring, when the bird returned, the farmer thought he heard a lot of chirping going on. He went out to see that a bird was sitting on a fence post back behind the barn. He counted them. It was sitting on the 22nd post.
After a day, the bird flew back to his favourite tree and spent its time there. And from then on till it didn’t come back anymore, every spring when the bird returned to the farm it would first go sit on the 22nd post and visit with its friend the horse for a while before going back to the tree.
A touching video can probably still be found on YouTube of a female dog going over and thanking the exhausted firefighter that just saved her puppies from a burning house. And another shows the back seat of a car filled with animals rescued from Hurricane Katrina and though the animals were strangers and of different species, they start caring for each other.
One summer I drove a pop truck and killed a beautiful german shepherd farm dog that ran out in front of me. I got out and went to the farmer who dragged the animal off the road. His kids were all crying and he commanded them to stop. When I apologized, he spoke sternly to me: “It was just a dog,” he said.
Is there such a thing as “just a dog?” I don’t know.
This is a metaphor for how times have changed, literally. In our farmhouse in Canada, there was one wall clock, with a long cord reaching down to an electrical outlet. No clocks with batteries in those days. That was it. One timepiece large enough for everyone to read.
One.
When daylight savings time came and went, there was one clock to change. Somebody got up on a chair and changed it. It was always a big deal.
And even though it preoccupied us when the big day for the change was coming, we still managed to make it late (or early) to church occasionally. I am not counting the few wristwatches that might have been in our possession. The owners of those watches could manage to make the changes on their own.
Depending on which car we owned at the time, there might have been a clock in it but we could be 98 per cent sure it didn’t work anyway so we didn’t have to worry about changing it.
Today, in our home, I changed 23 timekeepers, again, not counting wristwatches. But that is less than half of the items that keep track of time in our home. My best count is that we possess 55 objects that display time and I am probably leaving a few out.
The other 32 devices that I didn’t have to physically change, alter their own times automatically.
To me, this proves that life was simpler back when I was young. Not easier, not better, just simpler.
Here’s a breakdown of our timepieces: four wall clocks; four clock radios; two alarm clocks; two stand-alone decorative clocks; a digital thermostat; four cellphones; four cordless phones and one landline phone; two TVs that display time; a cable TV digital box; one VCR; one DVD recorder; six computers; two printers; two microwave ovens; two video cameras; three digital voice recorders; four hand-held gamers (DS and PSP); one X-Box; one Wii; two iPods; two cars; and one lonely little letter opener.
One clock – the one on the stove – doesn’t work.
Fifty-five objects in 2011 to one in 1956. Is life 55 times more complex than it was 55 years ago? Maybe all this says is that they hadn’t figured out how to put timepieces in every little thing back then.
But maybe it goes much deeper than that. I’d explain how for you but I don’t have the time right now.
The miracles of modern technology never cease to amaze.
We have a brand new, streamlined medical centre in my town and if they are looking for a building to house astronauts on Mars, this one would probably do.
To conserve space, I won’t go through the centre’s many features except for one. There are two public washrooms on the main floor, used by male and female alike. The entranceways to these pristine enclaves are designed to prevent the old problem of people pounding on locked doors and being told, “I’ll be right out, for cryin’ out loud,” as a frustrated Ralphie said in The Christmas Story when his little brother Randy needed to pee.
Beside each door is a big square button. Surrounding that button, if the bathroom is free, is a bright green light, indicating it is unoccupied. If the light is red, someone is inside and the door is locked.
Easy peasy.
I used that system the other day to wander into one of the washrooms. The door opened wide and when it opens, it stays open for a long time, no doubt to accommodate people in wheelchairs.
In I went and immediately pressed the big square button labelled “Lock”. The door eventually closed.
I had just gotten down to business when I heard the door open again behind me, exposing me and my business to the people in the hallway. And it might have been my imagination, but it seemed to me a busload of seniors had just then disembarked and were gathered outside my washroom door, looking in. I imagined critical commentary from the nosy crowd.
As we all know, once you begin a washroom procedure such as I was involved with, it’s very difficult to stop it. So there I stood, losing dignity faster than I was losing the pop I had for breakfast and while, in midlife or earlier, I might have been mortified to be on full display like this, as a senior citizen now, I am less embarrassed. I was at least thankful that the operation I had undertaken did not require sitting down, as I then would have been staring into the faces of my tut tutters.
When I was finished, the door having closed again by this time, I read the instructions above the lock button. I was to have pressed it after the door had swung shut and not before, a critical error I will not repeat.
I love modern science and its inventions, but in this moment, I would have rather been Ralphie, yelling to his antsy little brother, “I’ll be right out, for cryin’ out loud!”
This a story about A Great Mind in Decline, aka I’m Losing It Big Time.
One year ago today was my wife Barb’s birthday, so as is my tradition, I went out and bought her a book by her favourite author, Maeve Binchy. (Just to get under Barb’s skin, I used to always call her hero Maeve Bitchy, by mistake, of course. These were misfires on my part.)
Barb and I have been married 22 years and fortunately, Maeve is a very prolific writer and has been able to keep me supplied with birthday presents, Christmas presents and even Valentine’s Day presents. But apparently old Maeve is slowing down and this is complicating my life.
A year ago, I bought my wife Maeve’s 2010 release, Minding Frankie. Barb loved it. Six weeks later, I was back in the stores looking for her Christmas book. I found it, wrapped it up and she opened it Christmas morning.
“Oh, Minding Frankie,” she said. “I love that book.” The one I had gotten her six weeks before was sitting out in the open on a coffee table within sight of us all as we opened our gifts.
Ha, ha, ha. Dad’s an idiot.
So there I was today, almost 11 months later, looking for a gift for Barb again when I picked a Binchy book off the shelf. I phoned my son and asked him to ask his Mom what the words Minding Frankie meant to her and I instructed him to make sure he didn’t tip her off that this was the title of a Maeve Binchy book.
“It’s a Maeve Binchy book,” I heard her say in the background. “And I got it twice last year.”
As the saying goes, I have a wonderful memory but it’s very short. Tomorrow I am writing a stern letter to Ms. Binchy, instructing her in no uncertain terms to get off her aspirations and write some more books. This retirement of hers is killing me.
In any case, who ever heard of a writer retiring? Writers don’t retire, they just get the ultimate rejection notice one day from their publishers by way of their readers.
With any luck, Binchy will join other great novelists such as Agatha Christie who, after retiring or passing away, keep producing best sellers with their name on them but written by others. Great franchises are hard to abandon.
And who knows? Maybe some day long into the future, you’ll be reading Jim Hagarty stories written by some other poor sap who was also dropped on his head as a kid.
I was driving through Manitoba on my way home from the West Coast. Sometime during the night, I got tired so pulled over to the shoulder of the Trans Canada Highway and crawled into the back of my car for a nap.
I woke up about 6 a.m., ready to take off again but my battery was dead. I had left the parking lights on all night.
So I flagged down a trucker who said he couldn’t help me but he said there was a town on the other side of the bush he pointed to and a service station where I could find someone. But it was Sunday morning and I’d have to wait till 9 a.m. for the service station to open.
The trucker told me I could walk the highway around the bend – the long way to the town – or I could just cut through the bush as the town was on the other side of it.
So, just before 9 a.m., I climbed the fence to the field where the bush was located and threw one leg over. But I stopped because of a creepy feeling I had about that bush. It was a beautiful sunshine-filled day and there was nothing sinister about the bush, but I changed my mind about going through it and walked around the long way – a half hour or so – to the town.
I found my service station guy and we got in his truck to go back to my car. When we got there, I almost fainted. The field in front of the bush was filled with a herd of maybe 50 or 60 buffalo – old, young, mothers, fathers and calves. They had all been in the bush that I almost walked through.
I grew up on a farm around beef cattle and developed a healthy respect for them but I’m afraid I would not have been able to handle a bevy of bucking buffalo. My only hope would have been to climb a tree and my tree-climbing skills have never been the best.
It’s been 29 years since that day and I still shudder every time I think about my close encounter with those beasts.
Thank God we humans have not completely lost all our instincts. In this case, listening to that wee small voice within me saved my life.
My daughter says that I have a quirk when it comes to jokes. She doesn’t exactly say it’s an annoying quirk, but secretly, I think she believes it is.
Her contention is that if I tell a joke and no one laughs, instead of giving up on the joke, I keep telling it over and over to everyone I meet, even though no one ever laughs.
She’s right. But here’s my problem. If I find a joke funny, I come to believe in that joke, and like any good preacher, I want to bring others into the sunshine that warms my face. My jokes are my higher power and I am a humour evangelist.
When I was in university 45 years ago, I hung around with a very funny guy. He had a bunch of one liners always at the ready and he would whip them out when he wanted to make someone laugh.
And laugh they always did.
Here is my favourite quip of his.
When anyone would ask him how he was doing, he would say to them, “Oh, I’m able to sit up and take a little nourishment.” Now, the reason I found this so funny, and others did too, was the fact that he was standing there, perfectly healthy, explaining that he was just barely alive.
So, for 45 years, I have used this joke. Over and over and over. When a stranger, often a clerk in a store, asks me how I am, I tell them, “Oh, I’m able to sit up and take a little nourishment.” In 45 years, I have had a total of probably three people laugh at my reply and two of those were out of kindness. Maybe it’s my delivery or maybe I live in the wrong part of the world.
But I do know one thing.
I am going to keep using this line till the day it comes true.
The nurse will ask, “Well, how are we today, Mr. Hagarty.”
And I will say, “Oh, I’m able to sit up and take a little nourishment.”
And she won’t laugh. Instead she will fluff my pillow and hand me my pea soup.
I did a double take while driving a highway near my home in Canada the other day. At first, I thought my eyes deceived me but they didn’t.
I thought I was looking at a yellow Caution Deer Crossing sign with an image of a deer, but instead there was an image of a kangaroo. The sign was professionally done so I’m wondering if someone had visited Australia lately and brought back this unique souvenir which they thought they’d have a little fun with.
There are a lot of exotic farm animals being raised in our area these days from buffalo to llama, to elk and ostrich. But as far as I know, no kangaroos.
This reminded me of a true story from years ago when I worked on our local daily newspaper. A farmer plowing in a field near the village of Rostock in Southern Ontario, not far from my home, overturned a large bone. Authorities got involved, called the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and sure enough, the farmer had uncovered a wooly mammoth, an animal that died out in these parts 12,000 years ago.
So, we did big stories on it, of course, but then something else happened which caused a few more stories.
Someone (identity still unknown) erected a great yellow caution sign along a highway near the extinct animal find warning drivers that this particular spot was a “Mammoth Crossing”. Soon, another sign went up further on down the road, pointing in a farmer’s lane to the Mammoth Conservation Area.
I went in one day and interviewed the farmer in his kitchen. At the end of his lane was a woods and very wet marsh. Every once in a while, he said, he’d see an unfamiliar car go speeding by the window, another wooly mammoth enthusiast, off to the conservation area to see the big beast, seemingly unaware they were 12,000 years too late.
The farmer and his son took turns getting the tractor and pulling the wayward cars out of the swamp.
For some reason, I am fascinated by the wooly mammoth, and am pretty sure they once roamed across the property my family and I live on today. They also were plentiful out in the Rostock area apparently, and people alive when the woolies were lumbering around in elephant-like fashion would chase them into the Ellice swamp (still in existence today) where they would sink and drown. The natives would leave them down there because the cold swamp acted like a refrigerator.
Every once in a while, they’d wade down into the swamp, hack off a large chunk of the beast and bring it up to roast over a roaring fire for supper.
How would that compare to dropping into the local grocery store for a few chops for the barbie, mate?
I recognized a neighbour woman at an event I attended on Sunday and went up to her to say hi. Normally, when I chat with her while we walk our dogs, I have to tilt my head down a bit if I want to talk face to face, as she is shorter than I am. This day, there was not much tilting needed and I came to the conclusion that she had grown which I thought odd as she is in her fifties. I then thought maybe she was wearing high heels or boots but that theory fell through as well.
On Tuesday, I took my svelt five-foot, eight-inch frame to the hospital for a bone density scan. The nurse checked my height. Five feet, six and one half inches. I was shocked. I told her I was a steady five eight and had been for decades.
“Well, you must be shrinking,” she replied, with all the bedside manner of Vlad the Impaler.
“Shrinking?” I thought. How the hell does a man shrink? All my identification cards and papers say I am five eight. A $50,000 machine says I am shrinking. Where in hell did the other inch and a half of Jim Hagarty go? This is not news you toss over your shoulder at a man as you are walking away from him.
This reduction seems to have happened since my last bone density scan three years ago. Assuming the machine is not causing this, it appears I am losing a half an inch per year.
If I live another 33 years, to age 100, which I expect to do, I will apparently lose another sixteen and one half inches. This will leave me a diminutive four feet, two inches tall, or short, whatever. We’re getting into Seven Dwarfs territory here. I will be able to go on kiddies rides at fall fairs and my poor neighbour, if she is still speaking to me by then, and assuming she does not also shrink, will have to look way down to have face-to-face chats with me.
If, by some ungodly chance, I live to be 110, I will by then stand only three feet, seven and one-half inches. At 120, not out of the question, I suppose, given the advances being made by medical science, I will be only a little over three feet, two inches. If I live any longer, I will be getting close to two feet something and my wife will be able to push me around in a toddler’s stroller.
And you know, come to think of it, I’m not sure I will mind that one bit.
P.S
By 2091, I will apparently be only one inch tall and will have to hide from my cats.
My grandfather John Hagarty (1866-1950) believed that two things sometimes kept the Irish in America down – alcohol and superstition. He lived up to his ideals. He took his first drink when he was 80 and had the occasional beer for the last four years of his life.
And he was not quiet when it came to expressing his views about the non-existence of ghosts. He enforced a rule that no ghost stories be told in his home by his family of six kids.
However, he might have been a little too sure of himself on the matter of ghosts, perhaps, as a group of his farmer friends and neighbours decided to put him to the test. They told him that if was so sure there were no such thing as ghosts, then he wouldn’t mind going into a haunted farmhouse in the neighbourhood after dark and retrieving an object from an upstairs bedroom that one of them had bravely put there during the day. He said he would do it, no problem (that’s when no problem meant no problem, not you’re welcome).
So, that night after dark, a group of men gathered on the road outside the abandoned house and watched as Grandpa, lit oil lantern in hand, walked in the laneway, entered the pitch black house, proceeded to the second floor and returned to those who had issued the dare with the hidden item in hand.
My Dad, his son, asked him whether or not he was scared going into the house and he admitted he was borderline terrified.
Visiting Ireland a few years ago, I was told by the woman who lives on the farm my ancestors once dwelled on that some folks believe that “wee people” live in the hills within sight of her home.
“Nobody really believes in leprechauns,” I said to her.
“Of course, nobody believes in them,” she smiled, “and nobody goes up there.”
I wonder if my grandfather, if he could have ever made it to that spot in his lifetime, would have gone up into those hills. I think he would have if he were challenged to. On the other hand, a dark farmhouse at night was something he was used to. Unfamiliar hills populated by tough little buggers with ill intentions in their hearts towards him might have put him off a bit.
I once agreed to look after a friend’s farmhouse while he and his family were away. It was an old house, far in from the road, and a bit spooky to me. For some reason, I never managed to make it there till dusk. I also had to go into the barn briefly every day.
I was pretty jumpy.
One night when I went into the house, I turned the light on in the entranceway before I went upstairs to water plants. When I came back downstairs, the light was off. Thinking maybe the bulb had burned out, I flicked the switch and it lit up again.
My trip from house to road was made in record time and I almost had to change my clothes when I got home.
People I have told this story to say the light thing was just a result of my overactive imagination. I am not so sure. There had been at least one death in that house which is almost 150 years old.
In January, my doctor sent me for diet counselling. That’s a bit humbling at my age but we all have our blind spots.
I met three times with a very nice dietitian who didn’t pull many punches. Among my formerly favourite foods that had to go was my daily chocolate bar, most of the time coming in the form of a bar that has the word “big” in its name. I sometimes joked with people who saw me eating one that the best way to become big is to eat a chocolate bar with the word “big” in its name every day.
Go big or go home.
But there they were – gone! Banished by my counsellor.
I thought I would die from that prohibition but I’ve been getting by pretty well. The theory is that eventually your body wants what it’s being fed on a regular basis so now I get my sugar from natural sources such as fruit and interestingly, my body craves it.
Tonight, however, all this goody two-shoes business was getting me down so I headed for Joe’s Variety to buy me a “big” chocolate bar. If that gets me into the ground a few days earlier, I am willing to go with that, just for the pleasure of that nutty, chewy bar in my mouth.
When I got to the store, I started carefully perusing the shelves trying to find my nectar. The clerk finally had to help me out and when I picked up what she said was my familiar “big” snack, I thought the Chocolate Bar Gods were playing a heartless trick.
My big chocolate bar is not big anymore. It’s more like “puny.” This change was apparently made with absolutely no consultation with me.
I was crestfallen. A development like this can rock a guy’s world. The clerk tried to talk me into buying the gigantic “big x 2” which is double the dose in a huge package and is meant for those who have set obesity as a serious life goal (there is one in my Christmas stocking every year).
I bought the now diminished-sized regular one. I ripped the package open the minute I exited the store and enjoyed every miniature chaw all the way home.
First they stopped making available in Canada a salty treat with the title “bugle” in its name – I searched every store for weeks for a bag of the crusty corn twist – and now this.
Life is cruel for hungry guys who lack willpower sometimes.
We are being eaten out of house and home by a swelling population of non-humans that have swarmed our property like locusts in a drought-stricken wheat field.
And today, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, while most sensible 66-year-olds were rocking in their chairs and fondly remembering the good old days, I was in my car, racing up and down the streets of my town and in and out of shops in a quest for food of every description except anything that I might personally eat myself.
The supply mission began with the purchase of 24 cans of soft food for our two cats who also eat enough kibble to keep five grown horses alive. Then, to another store, where a great big bag of bird seed was bought. It’s like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie now in our backyard when I look to see flocks of every description of winged creature landing on our oversized feeder to gobble down the copious amounts of seed plopped there twice a day.
Then it was off to the bulk food store for peanuts – unsalted, of course – to sprinkle on the tops of the bird food piles for the larger blue jays and grackles to munch on.
All this food, of course, doubles as squirrel, rabbit and skunk snacks as none of these imbeciles can read and are unaware that the bag of seed is clearly labelled “bird seed.”
Off to another shop to pick up a small pill bottle full of munchies for the snails that keep the aquarium clean. Fish food stock holding strong at the moment.
And finally, in today’s lineup, a fourth store where I set down $8.93 for a bag of mouse food. If my farmer parents could see me buying food for a mouse, I would be sent to my room without supper every night for a week. Because to them, a mouse WAS food for the many cats that lived in our barns. The idea that their son would someday pay for some fancy fixins for a mouse, would perplex them to no end.
Tomorrow, it’s off to the vet’s for a big bag of dog food and two bags of cat kibble, one kind to keep their teeth clean, the other to make sure they pee straight. The condition of our many barn cats’ urinaters was never a high priority on the farm, but times change.
If I have any loose change left over, maybe I will pick up a small bag of potato chips for myself on the way home.
It is an oft-repeated recipe for staying young at heart: Hang around with young folks. Their enthusiasm for life will rub off on you and the years will fall away like darkness before a rising sun. (Actually, “hang around” is an ancient expression; you “hang with young folks”, not around them. Write that down.)
As the father of two elementary school-age children, I have had ample opportunity to test that theory, as I have found myself in situations I would certainly not have been in at my age had these kids never come into my life. I refer, for example, to an earlier column in which I detailed my life-threatening descent down a ridiculously high and straight water slide into a baby’s plastic swimming pool of water last summer. And then there was the ride I took on the “Twister” at a fall fair last year when I believe I took hanging on for dear life to a whole new level.
I’ve been “glow bowling”, ice skating, bike riding and toboggan sliding, though I am still at a loss to see what advantage any of these activities might have over a couch and a remote control. But, you’ve got to go along. Who wants to be remembered as the old grump who would never leave the house?
A friend of mine, given somehow to independent thinking, believes the kids-keep-you-young theory is all backwards. A former school bus driver, he says that, while he found the school kids to be a lot of fun, they reminded him of his age every day more than any glance in the mirror ever could. Conversely, he feels young when he’s around people who are older than he is, and so he’s now employed driving seniors to appointments and such. He also shows slides of his many travels to the residents of nursing homes. Works every time, he says. He never fails to come away feeling like a young buck.
But I’m sticking with Theory One and so it was on Sunday that I found myself standing in line with two other dads and our three sons all in the nine-year-old age range for a chance to chase each other, and a bunch of total strangers, around a darkened room with laser packs strapped to our backs, shooting each other with laser-emitting guns. I will admit that I was a somewhat reluctant participant in this activity, highly doubtful, as I was, that much pleasure would be flowing my way as the result of running around in the dark trying to hit the various flashing lights on the shoulder packs of the other players, with the ultimate object of trying to record the most hits.
However, imagine my surprise when, not a minute or two into this enterprise, I found myself involved in some sort of rapid regression whereby the years fell away and soon, there I was, a nine-year-old boy again, hiding behind trees and fence posts and playing cops and robbers with the neighbour kids. I ran up and down ramps, in and out of darkened corners, sneaking up on my prey and blasting them whenever I could. Just as often, my gun would make the tell-tale dying sound that announced I’d been shot and I would have to wait five seconds before I could fire again.
This truly was fun. My friend was oh, so wrong. Hanging around with a bunch of kids was bringing out the kid in me. I was giggling, light on my feet and as stealthy as James Bond. This is a place I’m definitely coming back to.
About this time, a young guy maybe seven or eight years old, came tearing around a corner and shot me directly in the chest, recording a hit and silencing my gun.
“Hey, I killed an old man!” he yelled, I presume, to his buddies hiding somewhere.
An old man?
For the rest of the game, I moved a lot slower. My bum knee was acting up and I could feel my blood pressure threatening to erupt in a volcano through the top of my head. The carpal tunnel pains in my fingers began shooting with every squeeze on the trigger. My friend, in fact, was right. Next week, I’m going lawn bowling.
This is written with love about all the introverts and extroverts in the world. I guess we are all one or the other or a combination of both, although the combination never seems to be 50-50.
I thought about the differences this week during a seven-hour journey in my car. These days, I have no music blasting as I did in my younger days. I use the time to think, much like, I suppose, an introvert would. And, for better or worse, here are the results of all that thinking.
If, for some unknowable reason, an introvert was locked inside a garden shed with no way to escape, this would not represent any sort of opportunity to panic, or even be very concerned, as long as someone kept sliding trays of food under the door from time to time. A week could go by and this is what he would do.
The suddenly incarcerated introvert would find and dust off a lawnchair, and seat himself comfortably in it. He would look around for something to read and seeing a lawnmower manual, would ingest every single word inside it, marvelling about how much he was learning. Then, to his relief, he would notice a recycling box full of old newspapers that were being kept to help start backyard fires. He would read every word in those newspapers, though they were months old.
Then, our ever-shy hero would nod off into pleasant naps now and then, and dream pleasant dreams. As time went by, he would notice various spiders and other bugs occupying the shed with him and he would attempt to befriend them.
But mostly, the introvert would use his break away from humanity to think. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, the subjects wouldn’t matter. He would think about his life and the lives of those around him and about what he might do if he ever was released from the shed.
In other words, leaving an introvert totally alone for a week is not exactly the best way to punish him, if that is what you had in mind when you locked him up. If it was punishment you wanted to inflict, you needed to take him to a place where 500 people were wildly celebrating something and leave him there with no way out.
An extrovert, on the other hand, is as different from an introvert as a dog is from a bird. If you locked up an extrovert in a monastery occupied by Trappist Monks who rarely speak from one year to the next, the extrovert would somehow have a square dance organized and underway within an hour of his arrival in his new digs and the head monk would be doing the calling. He would organize regular Saturday night hoedowns, weekly casual attire days, and happy hours at a local bar on Friday nights.
Introverts are oriented inward, and extroverts, outward. It has been ever thus. And it has been my observation that trying to get an introvert to be an extrovert, and vice versa, is like trying to get a left-handed person to write with his right hand. Our orientation to the world seems to be baked in at birth. In any family, raised in the same environment by the same parents, there will be a mixture of introverts and extroverts. Almost always.
I have no opinion on whether one orientation is better than the other, but I do know that it is painful, for example, for an introvert to try, even for a short period, to be an extrovert. And, I assume, the same would hold in reverse. An introvert locked in the monastery would settle in, put on a robe, and be hardly noticed by the end of his first day. An extrovert locked in a shed, even for a few hours, would kick out a wall and escape at his first opportunity.
But here is where I think the world needs both character types. I have noticed that it is usually introverts who create art, whether it be music, novels or sculptures, and it is extroverts who help those creations see the light of day. Elvis Presley, Anne Murray and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song in their lives, that I know of. But they gave the world wonderful renditions of what writers had created in their studios or their bedrooms late at night.
Some extroverts do create, some introverts do perform. But these are exceptions, I would argue. Stage fright is the introvert’s unwelcome but steady companion, aloneness plagues the song-writing extrovert.
So parents, teachers and preachers, please don’t spend much time, or any, trying to change the two “verts”. Be aware that they will not, maybe cannot, alter their personalities. Instead, find ways to encourage each character type along the paths that seem to have been set out for them.
The shy will create, the bold will perform. And the world will keep on turning.
Every night when I go for my walk which my doctor told me I have to do or die, I walk down Oxford Street past a factory that takes up an entire city block. Half that space is parking lot, storage for trucks, etc., and the other half is this great building that looks like what I imagine the largest ship in the sea must look like at night. Lights everywhere, inside and out.
And the noise that comes from the open windows is a calming, nice sound, not jarring at all.
It is the sound of human beings making things.
From stacks on the roof rises some sort of mist, whether smoke or steam, I can’t tell. But that just makes it even more like an old ship.
On the grounds outside under a bunch of young trees is a picnic table and on nice evenings there are usually workers on their breaks, laughing, having a cigarette, eating a snack. It makes me feel good to see this scene every night as I march by on my life-saving trek.
I worked in a couple of factories when I was young and I have to say, I don’t think I had the pleasant feelings about them that I do about this factory near my home.
And it makes me feel bad that come the end of this year, this big, beautiful ship will be pulling into the harbour for the last time, never to go sailing again. FRAM, which makes auto filters, has been in Stratford for longer than I’ve been alive but you know how it goes – it was bought by a big company a few years ago and we all know what big companies do. They go where they can pay people less and where the environmental rules are more lax.
What a shame for the people who will be left behind by these profit-seeking nomads. My neighbour across the street has worked there for years but she saw the writing on the wall a long time ago and has been preparing for a second career. Still, you can tell she’d rather not have to move on.
And soon I’ll have to walk by a big darkened building and watch the windows get smashed one by one and the graffiti appear along with the grass in the cracks of the parking lot pavement.
And no more smokers at their picnic table. Some of those women were not too hard on the eyes. (I didn’t just write that.)
But the only thing that never changes is that everything always changes so I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and keep on walking and not dying.
(Update 2023. Not all cha1nge is to be feared. The factory closed 12 years ago. The property – a full city block – was sold and the factory was torn down. In its place are four apartment buildings, a beautiful medical centre, an emergency services headquarters, a construction company main offices and a two-storey building hosting several businesses. These are definite improvements for our community.}
Scholars and other smartypants are debating when the decline and fall of modern humans began. I wish they would save themselves the trouble and just ask me because I know precisely when things all started going wrong. It was June 3, 1996, at 3:25 p.m. I walked into my local coffee shop and ordered a bran muffin, as I had done daily for many years. It was then I was informed that the “store”, as these national restaurants now call themselves for some reason, would no longer – as in never, ever – offer plain bran muffins again.
The dinosaurs will return before bran muffins do.
I well remember the feeling. I thought I might collapse and lose consciousness. But, and this is a testament to my great strength of character, I pulled myself together and started screaming instead. I was the first person ever, on that day, to use the expression: “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
The young server was not kidding me. Instead, she began negotiating, offering me alternatives. One of them was the raisin bran muffin, a complete abomination. A raisin bran muffin is a terrible creation, similar to a cherry pie stuffed with mushrooms, if someone was ever so demented as to try such a thing. But what was I to do?
I ordered a raisin bran muffin. It tasted even more awful than I imagined it would and I don’t know if I even finished it. A 10-year period of mourning began, during which time I ordered and ate a raisin bran muffin every day. Then something strange happened. One day I realized that I liked raisin bran muffins. A lot. Like in oh my God these are good. On the occasional special day, I would eat one and order another one right away.
That was in 2006 and the world seemed to be righting itself. But that was an illusion. On June 19, 2014, at 2:21 p.m., I walked into my favourite local coffee shop and ordered a raisin bran muffin. It was then I was informed that the restaurant would no longer be offering raisin bran muffins. As in never, ever again.
Neanderthals will once again roam the earth before raisin bran muffins appear again.
A shock and a sadness overwhelmed me such as I have not known since the day they stopped making Massey Ferguson tractors. I felt the tears filling up the cavities behind my eyes but I held it together.
“What else have you got?”
It turns out they had several new offerings. There was a rhubarb/flax/mustard seed/green pepper/wild carrot/burdock/clover muffin. Also a crabapple/black currant/white potato/green bean/dandelion/seedless grape/brown rice/whole wheat/chives muffin. Several other such combinations too hideous to describe were rattled off for me till I felt like someone had blindfolded me and spun me around six times just to watch me fall down.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the server. “There’s fruit explosion.” An explosion in that restaurant that day would have suited me just fine but the closest I could come was a fruit explosion muffin so I ordered it. It tasted like you stuffed 12 fruits in your mouth and they exploded. I would have rather eaten my car’s spare tire.
So I went back the next day and ordered another one. It’s going to be a long 10 years.
(Update 2019: A couple of years ago, the restaurant brought back the raisin bran muffin, probably because of popular demand. But it was too late. I had moved on. Besides, if they could bring it back, they could make it disappear again some day. On Saturday, I had a banana spice almond, or some such contraption. It was okay.)
In the college where I once tried to teach journalism, there was a sign posted in one of the classrooms: Write to express, not to impress.
Most journalists, I think, try to do that, if only because many of us are kind of simple minded. But bureaucrats try not to. And usually succeed. Impressing, in fact, is the order of the day.
As has been long known and written about, the average paper pusher simply cannot help himself: He has to dream up and use fancy words that convey the impression that there is more going on in that announcement or new program than is actually the case.
Therefore, you get a Canadian health minister announcing that his department is going to “incent and reward” as a way of attracting the best health-care professionals to take jobs in the government system. It would be beyond him, I suppose, to “offer incentives”; that would sound too ordinary. So, make a verb out of a noun and you’re off to the races.
In your day-to-day life, have you ever heard anyone say they were going to incent someone else to do something (even though such a word does exist)? And the first rule of bureaucratese is always use two or three words where one would do. So, we have incent and reward. Is there much of a difference?
I can remember a time when we used to give each other gifts. No more. Now, we gift each other. “The employees pooled their resources to gift their retiring manager with a DVD player.” Press releases that cross my desk often use the word “gifting.” I would like to gift them back to their senders. I am not impressed.
Recently, school boards in my part of the world were given grants to enhance their programs aimed at “recapturing dropouts.” Strange language indeed and perhaps a subtle clue as to why there are so many dropouts in the first place. Why on earth would any bureaucrat talk of dropouts needing to be “recaptured”, as though they were lifers at a penitentiary who walked away into the bush when they were out working in the fields? If the people who run the education system use penitentiary-like terms to describe those who leave school, might it be that some of them left because it felt like a prison to them?
Another press release talks of seeking out community “influencers” to help out on a campaign. What, might I be so rude to ask, is an influencer? Not someone who goes around getting others under the influence, I hope. I suppose it’s someone who has influence in the community. My next question, of course, is what kind of influencers are being sought? Good influencers, or bad? Aren’t we all, sometimes, a bit of both?
Did you know that people who are successful in finding employment are now referred to, in some quarters, as “hires”? A recent board of directors’ report from a local organization announced that two people were the “successful hires” for a new mentorship program. The role of the two new hires is to mentor other new hires, the report says.
I remember a root beer called Hires, but how did a person who has been hired become a hire? Does it follow that someone who is fired becomes a fire? In the future, when a company says it had three fires last month, will it be referring to people who were walked to the door or to washroom wastebaskets going up in flames?
But, in a world where gravediggers are excavation technicians (not kidding), should anything surprise? In need of someone to prepare a traditional opening in the ground in advance of a funeral, who on earth would go directly to the “e” section in the Yellow Pages and not the “g”?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this week I have been posting a box at the end of my stories which gives readers a chance to subscribe to my blog.
I have been thinking of promoting this way of accessing my writing for a while now, but I’m a bit tech challenged and so approached it cautiously. I’ve done some testing and am satisfied that the WordPress system I have put in place will work well.
If you share your email address with me (no one else will see it), you will receive my latest offering in your inbox every day. (I post another story at 12:05 a.m. daily.) The instant my scheduled story is posted, it is sent to you by email.
I realize this could reduce the traffic to my blog, but apparently “newsletters” are the way to go in this day and age when people are so busy. In addition, blogs are less popular than they once were and getting content by email is easier and quicker.
I ran an experiment using my wife’s email and the results were good. Along with my story, there is an opportunity for readers to manage how often you receive my stories. They will appear daily in your inbox at first but if that is too often, you can change the frequency to weekly. There is also a box which invites you to leave a comment.
As well, you can unsubscribe any time you like if you find this whole system to be a bother.
The process is entirely free, although there is an opportunity for fee-based subscriptions in which I have no interest at the present time. But if I do go in that direction, you will never be suddenly presented with an invoice if you simply subscribed. The stories will come to you free of charge – forever.
Some bloggers will sign up fee-based subscriptions for those who would like to access more than the basics, in my case, a story a day. Even if I institute something like this someday, you will never be switched over to that system. You might, however, be invited to go fee-based if that ever comes about. I would publish notices about it and it will be entirely your choice. And, I assume, you will be able to return to the free subscription at any time.
So give it some thought. And if you know of readers who you think would enjoy my stories, it would be great if you could tell them about me and my blog.
I really appreciate your interest in my scribbles which date back more than five decades. Yes, I’m old, but still not beyond my best-before date. Not every story I write and have written is a crackerjack but I do hit one out of the park now and then.
I am not much of a contest guy. I don’t buy lottery tickets or any other kind of tickets and I hate casinos. Games of chance leave me cold.
I especially can’t stand the silliness of calling into a radio show, hoping to be the special one who gets through and wins four tickets to the fall fair. And yet, I am aware that there are a lot of people who do just that. Maybe I am too lazy, but I just can’t get myself well organized enough to call the deejay and warble out my answer to the question of the hour.
So, that is my stand on radio contests and nothing will ever change my mind about that.
The other day, I met my neighbour out walking her dog, I was walking mine. We engaged in a little chit chat.
“Well, I just got back from picking up my cheque,” she said, out of the blue. “Oh no,” I immediately thought. “She’s been let go at work and went to get her final pay.” I felt sorry for her. I have been there and have felt the devastation of being tossed onto the trash heap.
“The cheque?” I asked, cautiously, not wanting to be too intrusive.
“Yes, my cheque from the radio contest I won through Radio 104,” she replied. “I was the 104th caller and got through, and then I had to give them a number to see if I hit the bullseye. My niece shouted out a number, I gave that number to the radio station and I won.”
Well, I thought, that’s pretty cool. I was glad she was still employed and was sure she could use the couple hundred dollars she probably won.
“Do you mind me asking how much you won?” I said to her, nosily.
“Not at all,” she replied. “I won $10,104.”
Then she prattled on about the contest and how hard it was to be the 104th caller and how she was going to save the money for a special trip.
But I didn’t hear much of that. I was already planning my next day’s activities. Which would involve a radio and my lucky phone.
Take Toby Hagarty, our poodle, as an example. The mission he set for himself four years ago was to catch a squirrel, a perfectly reasonable thing for a dog to want to do, I suppose. Catching a squirrel doesn’t appeal to me, personally, but each to his own.
Toby’s daily efforts went unrewarded until last week and then, boy, were they rewarded. For some reason, we seem to dwell in the most densely populated squirrel habitat on the planet so Toby’s failures as a squirrel catcher were not for lack of opportunity. As speedy as our little mutt is, and he can really move, he is no match for one of those overgrown rats with the bushy tail.
Twice a day, when I walk Mr. Toby around the block, he practises his skills which have always fallen just a little bit short. Realizing early on that he was never going to get one, I amused myself by letting him run to the end of the leash after squirrels until I put an end to his fun.
I have never actually wanted him to catch one; I’m afraid one of those little rodents, if that’s what they are, would scratch my dog’s eyes out and another fat vet bill would soon be in the mail.
Last week, as we were coming back from our walk, Toby spied a squirrel by a big maple on the neighbour’s front lawn. He went into his squirrel-catching stance – standing stock still with one paw in the air – and planned his move. I noticed the squirrel had his head buried in a pile of leaves and was distracted and I wondered if this just might be the day.
Sure enough, Toby pounced right onto the little critter and then didn’t seem to know what to do after that. Just as with many of us, he had spent his whole life in pursuit of one thing without giving any thought to how he would handle it if he ever got it. (For reference, reflect on marriage, children, etc.)
Without a plan, he hesitated and his prey escaped and was up the tree like a bullet. I couldn’t stop laughing.
But that all stopped when Toby walked through our backyard gate ahead of me and before I knew it, was wrestling on the patio with another poor bushy-tailed nut-gatherer, only this time, the dog was calling the shots.
I didn’t know what was happening at first, it all transpired so quickly. The poor squirrel ran up a fence post but fell back down again and Toby was on him, even though I was trying to haul him off.
The little animal went back up the post, but stopped right in front of me. I could have reached out and grabbed him. He was in shock. His eyes were bulging out of his head and his stomach heaved in and out because of his rapid breathing.
He moved on up to a ledge, and stopped again, trying to recover. Soon, he disappeared over the fence, but this was not his best day.
And Toby, having experienced the thrill of catching not one, but two squirrels in the space of one minute, now walks around the neighbourhood like Muhammad Ali, itching for his next bout.
That won’t come any time soon, however. I am monitoring him closely now. One more vet bill and I’ll be living in a tree with the squirrels Toby hasn’t caught yet.
I just might need to set up a little recording room in my house, garage or shed.
The other day, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my recorder, wearing a set of headphones and holding my guitar. I pushed the record button and instantly I could hear everything with a lot of clarity. That is the value of wearing the headphones – you can hear your voice and guitar so well and as a result, sing and play better.
So, I began strumming away and started yodelling up a storm. But I was distracted by this weird scratching and scrabbling noise in the background.
I thought, as I sang, “What the heck is that?”
I stopped recording. The noises stopped. I started up again and so did the scratching.
I looked out the window. It sounded like there was a hailstorm in the backyard. There was not. I started again, so did these annoying sounds. I stopped. They stopped.
I took off the phones and looked around, then started playing guitar again.
It was then I realized that the eight gerbils who live in four aquariums in our living room came alive when the music did. They jumped in their little ferris wheels and ran up and down and in and out of their coconuts, looking for all the world like the happy feet crowd at a teen dance.
When I stopped playing, they slowed down and stopped.
I put the headphones back on and started recording again and thought, well, maybe it’s not so bad. It just sounds like some percussion in the background.
So I sang away until our dog, lying on top of the couch and looking out the window, started barking his head off at the mailman.
“Shaddapp!!!” I yelled at him, in the middle of my song. This was clearly not working out. The recording of a sensitive song interspersed with gerbil scrabbling, dog barking and Shaddapp!!! was obviously flawed.
Oh, and the furnace came on now and then, adding yet another delightful little element.
I finally gave up, went out into the garaqe and accomplished my mission. The only ambient sounds that intruded were those made by the occasional passing car in the street.
I don’t know. I might have missed my chance. The gerbils and I did sound pretty good together.
Could we make an act out of it? James and the Jurbils? Jimmy and the Jerbys? Maybe we could figure out a way of working the poodle into the ensemble.
I’ve been told for years, after all, that my music has been going to the dogs.
I just made $100,000 so go ahead and congratulate me. I would share some of it with you, but I don’t want to, so greedy it is then.
After reading that a 33-year-old singer/songwriter/idiot spent $100,000 on plastic surgery to make himself look like his idol Justin Bieber, I decided this was a goal I wanted to achieve too.
After all, Bieber and I were born in the same hospital and grew up in the same town in Canada. He even attended a high school I taught at briefly, though I was long gone by the time he enrolled. In fact, I’ve never met the young star.
So, just like the guy who spent a hundred grand to look like his musical icon, I was ready to bust out my wallet. But I took a picture of Bieber, held it up to the mirror and took a close look at his head and mine.
He has two ears, so do I. Check. He has a nose. I have one too. Two eyes, a mouth, check and check. Chin, cheeks, eyebrows, forehead. So far, the similarities are striking. He has more hair on his head than I do but he always wears a baseball cap and so do I, though being older, I wear mine right side around.
So, as far as I am concerned, we’re pretty much a match. Except maybe for that 44-year age difference thing, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re close enough.
Therefore, I have come to the decision that my $100,000 is staying in my interest bearing account where it is earning me a handsome .00025 per cent.
Turns out money can buy you happiness as I am happy I am not the singer/songwriter/idiot described above who blew a fortune on his folly.
Besides, my look-alike hero is actor George Clooney. I have no idea where he was born and raised but at least he’s got grey hair on his face and head so I’m already half the way there.
Forty years ago, when I was at university, I went over to my sister’s apartment one night for a break from my own apartment full of crazy roommates. She was going out for the evening. A perfect chance for a peaceful night.
Her only rule: I was not to go out on the balcony. Her cat, which was appropriately named “Blah” for its unusual lack of energy, would dash out there if the sliding door was opened and who knows what would happen to her as my sister lived on the 12th floor.
Of course, as soon as she left, I went out on the balcony. When I came back in, I eventually became aware that Blah was no longer in attendance in the apartment.
I panicked. I searched the place from stem to stern: no cat.
My sister came home and I had to tell her the bad news. We went out on the balcony and looked down. My sister’s balcony was located right above the entrance to the building and that entrance had a long canopy over it. We noticed a hole in the canopy. It couldn’t be.
We rushed down to the ground floor and ran outside, calling for Blah everywhere. Finally, I heard a mangled “Mowoweowohwoow” from under a car and on hands and knees, I dug in under the vehicle to retrieve my sister’s pet.
It was alive. We took it upstairs and set it on the floor, wondering if she could walk or would she fall over dead from delayed reaction.
Blah slowly headed for the kitty litter pan, painfully crawled in and had herself the dump of her life. I can’t remember exactly, but I think she then dragged herself away to hide, probably waiting for me to leave before she came out again.
Blah lived for a few more years and that was her most exciting moment.
But I always had a few thoughts about it all. Did she puncture a hole in the canvas canopy when she fell 12 stories onto it, or was the hole already there and did some other part of the canopy just break her fall and bounced her off?
And I always wondered what the person who wandered out on the 10th or 8th or 5th floor balcony below us at that very moment must have thought as they were almost hit by a cat hurtling through space.
Two remarkable things: Blah didn’t die and my sister didn’t disown me.
“What should I do with the old brine tank?” I asked the plumber, as we looked at my unrepairable water softener.
“Just get rid of it!” he answered. Typical plumber, I thought to myself. All he saw was a four-foot-high plastic tank that used to hold salt for the softener. A creative and imaginative person such as I am, on the other hand, saw before me a thing of beauty (the tank, not the plumber, though he was handsome in his own way, I should mention him to a single woman I know) that was being set free to take on a new life in any number of directions. My mind was abuzz for the possible uses for it, but I settled on a bucket for yard waste collection days. I already had a yellow “Yard Waste” sticker to attach to it and it had a nice lid. The only drawback is that yard waste containers have to have handles on both sides and the tank had none, so I would have to work on that.
Today, my first chance to use my new yard waste can arrived as I was taking a load of garbage to the dump. So, I filled the former brine tank with garbage, popped the lid on it and very wisely duct taped it closed so it wouldn’t fly off on the ride to the dump, as it stuck out of the trunk.
When I arrived at the dump, it was to discover to my horror that the lid was gone. It had flown off somewhere on the one-mile trip from home to landfill. Rats and double rats and I am not referring to the ones at the dump.
I quickly threw my refuse into the dumpster and raced back along the route to find my lid. I arrived home lidless and discouraged. So I took the other garbage cans out of the car along with the brine tank, and headed back for another search. This time, I found it, lying lonely on the four-lane street under a railway overpass.
This is a busy street on a Saturday morning and long steel fences on either side of the underpass are designed to keep people from walking along that area. But a man in search of a brine tank lid regards steel fences as mere speed bumps on the road of life (terrible metaphor, yuk, but best I can do as I need some potato chips soon and have to get this done.)
So, there I was, on the wrong side of an underpass fence on a mission to retrieve a plastic brine tank lid when it occurred to me that my life was in danger. Angry drivers whizzed by me and shot me looks that were not pretty. People are mean and lack proper brine tank understanding, in my opinion.
But I came for my lid and I would have it. I dashed out and picked it up, in much the same way a turkey vulture grabs some raccoon guts just before the car gets him though I am much better looking than a turkey vulture if only half as smart. When I got a chance to inspect it, I became aware that someone had found my lid before I did and ran over it. Maybe more than one driver, in fact. I’m pretty sure some of them did it deliberately.
I took it home and put the sad affair on top of the brine tank. The only good thing was the fact that it no longer fit too tightly as it did before and, because half the side was missing, it actually went on and off pretty easily. I started thinking about how I could fix it. Maybe get some plywood, tape, screws (but none of that frickin’ duct tape) …
I related all this news to my wife when I got home.
“What should I do with the old brine tank?” I asked her.
The brain is a funny thing. Everybody has one (I think) but the mind that goes with it can sometimes be missing or defective.
Take David Scofield, 50, of Akron, Ohio, for example. He liked to spend time impersonating a police officer. No big deal. Who hasn’t done that? I often arrest people for fun on weekends and even issue speeding tickets (after I chase them for 10 miles to make sure they speed up.)
In any case, poor old David found a way to screw it up for the rest of us. He got caught this week when he tried to pull over a real officer.
Akron police say a man driving a Ford Crown Victoria with a spotlight and made to look like a police car tried to block the path of a real Akron officer on his way to work Monday night. He had a rifle, shotgun, handguns, a bullet-proof vest, a silencer and ammunition in his car.
Police say Scofield is a firearms dealer from Lancaster. He was arrested on misdemeanor charges of impersonating a police officer, carrying concealed weapons and obstructing official business. He was in the Summit County Jail where records didn’t say if he had an attorney.
However, if I could venture a guess, I think David’s next gig will be impersonating an attorney. After that, he’ll be a jailbird, no impersonation required.
His best impersonation so far is that of a total world-record shattering idiot on steroids but something tells me he did not have to practise for that role in front of a mirror.
Someone somewhere embarked on a critical mission and dedicated hours, maybe years, of their life to successfully inventing a resealable chocolate bar wrapper.
I must have missed the announcement. Did important people the world over identify a need for such a thing? Does the inventor not know that the average chocolate bar eater consumes the whole darned outfit in one sitting usually lasting about 30 seconds?
We chocoholics do not squirrel our treasures away and portion ourselves out one little square of creamy goodness every day. Five hefty chomps and the whole silly thing is gone, as it should be.
I would say a person who reseals chocolate bars for future consumption needs to get themselves to a psychiatrist right away as there are obviously some childhood potty training issues to be worked out.
So, instead of curing cancer, someone spent a year or two of their life coming up with a resealable wrapper.
I could ignore this (and maybe I should have) except for the fact that you have to have the skill and precision of a diamond cutter to open the freakin’ thing. This is not a boycott, but I have to stop buying these stupid bars as I cannot afford the frustration level involved in opening them.
Some day I will tell you about how things were in the good old days but for now I am busy picking away at this little wrapper like a gerbil with a sunflower seed, except I expect the gerbil is making more progress than I am.
I just hope that other important advances in the preservation of sweet treats, such as mini freezers for keeping partially eaten ice cream cones alive and something to extend the life cycle of chewing gum are also keeping scientists in their labs at night, burning the midnight oil.
During the first couple of months at my first job as a newspaper reporter, I made a cringeworthy mistake.
As we all know, because we’re afraid of death, we like to use more neutral words when talking (or writing) about it. So, in newspaper obituaries, nobody ever dies; they pass away. No one is ever dead; they are deceased (a strange word, given that “ceased” should be thought to pretty much describe the act of having died, as you have ceased to live. Wouldn’t “de-ceased” better belong to those who are brought back to life?).
And no one is ever buried; they are interred. “Terra” meaning earth, well you can put it together.
But for a while, no one in the town I was reporting on was interred in Jim Hagarty’s news reports, at least not for a while. One day, a middle-aged man walked into the newspaper office and said something to this effect to me: “Why are all the people who are dying in this town being locked up after they die?” I said, “What?”
He went on to point out that I was using “interned” in all my obituaries instead of interred. Interned means to be locked away, as in internment camp.
Wow! After he broke that news, he could have knocked me deceased with a feather, and having passed away, I would have gladly been interred right there and then, under my desk if need be.
That was my biggest whopper at that paper unless you count my reporting a guy’s home address as being on “Mortgage Lane”, just the way he had given it to me. I don’t know if I even knew what a mortgage was at the time, but I soon learned that he lived on Frank Street. I guess he was just being frank; everyone on his street had a mortgage.
“Youchkins” as a certain undeceased, uninterred brother-in-law of mine often says.
As for my time at that newspaper, for reasons not related to the above described faux pas, it eventually died. Not deceased. Not passed away. It was deader ‘n a mackerel with an exclamation mark!
When I worked on newspapers, I sometimes wrote about my pet subject, bullying, a topic that is rarely out of the news these days.
It’s an emotional issue and I would often get more than the normal response to my columns when I wrote about the problem. Strangely, I suppose, I never heard from any bullies, because, I guess, there aren’t too many people out there who will admit to ever being one.
My favourite response was from a man in his 80s who recalled this story from his early years. Having been bullied at school by a bigger guy who showed no mercy, the boy complained to his father. The Dad tried to help by signing his son up for boxing lessons.
That summer, at camp, the recreation director included boxing matches for the boys as part of the activities. The first day he asked for a volunteer and the boy who was now secretly equipped with some boxing skills, was the first to come forward. He put the gloves on the director handed him.
Then he was asked who he would like to box.
“That guy,” he said, and he pointed to his longtime tormentor who also happened to be attending the same camp. The bully came forward with a big smile on his face.
But the bully’s longtime victim, to the bully’s surprise, laid a little Muhammad Ali on him. After that day, the young boxer never had another problem with the bully.
Another man, however, wasn’t quite so lucky. His dad taught him how to box but the training enjoyed limited success.
“Instead of knocking me down right away, it used to take them five minutes to knock me down,” he said. His newly acquired pugilistic skills didn’t pay him many dividends.
Maybe what he needed was the theme from the movie Rocky playing in the background
I am mad at my cat Luigi. Really mad, in fact. If he lived at your house, you would be too.
The reason I am upset is the boy will not look after his teeth. I have told him and told him to take better care of them, but he won’t. He is stubborn as a billy goat.
As a result, the vet has recommended Luigi be administered the Dental Preventative Package. This will cost Luigi $473.41. As he does not have a very high income at the moment, I will be forced to take it out of his weekly allowance, a bit at a time.
However, if in the course of getting the Dental Preventative Package, it is discovered the Luigi will need a tooth pulled, he is going to have to cough up $8.14 per minute for 30 minutes of surgery for a cost of $244.20. Of course, he will also require 30 units of Isoflurane Maintenance at $3.30 for another $99. He will also need $71.46 of pre-anesthetic/surgery blood work.
And finally, Luigi will have to dig into his mad money to come up with $30.50 for the blood collection fee.
The total for all this work will be $976.44 taxes included. That is if he needs only one tooth pulled. If he needs two, the price would rise by another $503.03 for a total of $1,479.47.
To recap: to clean the cat’s teeth will be $473.41 and to remove one tooth will increase the price to $976.44, two teeth, $1,479.47. To fix the teeth. Of a cat. A cat.
I have lectured Luigi till I am blue in the face and he hides behind the water heater because he doesn’t want to listen anymore. But it’s clear. He is going to have to get a job. If we pay all his bills for him, how will he ever learn to be responsible?
Those mice don’t catch themselves, I have told him.
He doesn’t listen. To him I am just a great big can opener with an attitude.
A smartly dressed woman just came to my door trying to rent me a $1,300 water heater. I told her I wasn’t interested as I owned my own.
She was aggressive and started with the types of questions that insinuate that I am a total fool for not considering her offer.
“Why would I rent my water heater?” I asked her. “I don’t rent other appliances such as my furnace or washer and dryer.”
Yes, but, she said, with her offer, I would never have to worry about repairs or replacement (things I don’t worry about now). If it breaks down, they fix it; if it wears out, I get a new one. No charge.
“When my water heater busts, I’ll phone up my plumber and get a new one.”
Yes, but, she wondered, did I know how much it costs to repair a water heater. “No, I don’t, but I’ll just phone the plumber. He’ll know. We’ve had people in before to repair our washer and dryer and furnace. What’s the difference?”
Well, time for one final zinger.
“Eighty-five per cent of people in Ontario rent their water heaters,” said my antagonist. “They do that for a reason. They can’t be all wrong.”
It considered arguing the idea that 85 per cent of people couldn’t be wrong about a matter such as this, but my patience was a thin as I wish I still was in my 20s.
This is not the first time a door-to-door salesperson has basically called me stupid, except, unlike one lovely young guy, she didn’t actually use the word.
My electric water heater is 16 years old and probably about to die. In the 14 years I rented it before I bought it out for $75, it cost me almost $1,700. My plumber says he can give me a new one installed for $600.
I like my plumber better than the total stranger I talked to today. My plumber’s name is Butch (really).
My kind of guy! He isn’t the type of man who could sell pay toilets in the diarrhea ward of a hospital. He’d just install the pay toilets and send you the bill.
I just got off the phone with Jack, a nice young man from India who was kind enough to give me a call from his number 99-999-9999. He said that my computer had been attacked by a very bad virus and that I needed his help. He would show me what to do.
Well, I was all for that as I hate viruses. I asked him what he was selling and was surprised and pleased to discover he wasn’t selling anything. He just wanted to help me find out the problem I was having with Windows.
First he had to identify my computer so he gave me its Windows ID number. It was, and I quote, “888D(as in Delta)C(as in Charlie)A(as in apple)60F(as in Foxtrot)C(as in Charlie)0A(as in apple)11C(as in Charlie)F(as in Foxtrot)8F(as in Foxtrot)0F(as in Foxtrot)000C(as in Charlie)048D(as in Delta)7D(as in Delta)062.
So we got that figured out.
Turn on your computer, Jack advised me. It was already on. Then he told me to press the Windows key and the letter R at the same time and tell me what I saw. I did this and saw nothing on the screen. He asked me to do it again and again and I did and still, no small box on the screen where there should have been one.
Finally, an older guy came on the phone, maybe Jack’s Dad. He again urged me to press the keys and report what was coming up. I did and nothing came up.
So I asked this guy, probably Jack Sr., “What company do you represent?” and the strangest thing happened. My phone went dead instantly.
I am worried. I hope Jack and his Dad are alright. They seemed like pretty nice guys. Now I’m stuck with this rotten virus I didn’t know I had.
Last week, two guys in Toronto saw a TV program which dealt with the hallucinogenic effects of a toad’s body secretions and so, being men of good judgment engaged in an eternal search for the ultimate high, they went and got a toad and licked it. What they ended up with instead of the pleasant buzz they were seeking were convulsions, unconsciousness and a couple of hospital beds.
This situation is unfortunate but we in the media bear a lot more responsibility in this matter than might be suspected at first glance because generally, we have not paid enough attention to the problem of amphibian licking by humans. In fact, in our haste to address other health and social issues, we’ve woefully neglected this whole problem of animal-tasting. While many well-meaning concerned folks have been running around trying to get us all to stop wrapping our tongues around those parts of animals contained within their hides, no one has been effectively addressing the dangers involved in tasting the outsides of those same critters.
Here then, in question-and-answer form, is the most up-to-date information available on the problem.
Question: Is the skin of the toad’s cousin, the frog, poisonous as well?
Answer: No it isn’t. In fact, frog licking can be a lot of fun although it is not always that easy to keep them from hopping long enough to get your tongue on them. Also, before licking them, it’s advisable to wash the swamp goo off them, unless, of course, you prefer that taste.
Question: Is it okay to lick cows?
Answer: Yes it is. In fact, cows are a great choice for licking because with very little encouragement, they’ll gladly lick you back. One word of caution, however: lick a bull only if you’re completely out of things to lick as he may take offence to this.
Question: Are dogs lickable?
Answer: Yes and no. Most small dogs such as poodles can handle an occasional lick and will even administer a few of their own but some of the larger members of the species, such as doberman pinschers and American pit bull terriers seem more temperamental when it comes to being licked.
Question: What creatures should definitely not be licked?
Answer: Most snakes prefer to be left alone. And some wild animals such as wolverines and bobcats are best avoided. Beyond those, it is advisable to use your best common sense before choosing to lick another being.
Question: Is there anything morally offensive about the practice of licking lower life forms?
Answer: Definitely not. Though some segments of society might try to stigmatize critter-licking as an objectionable act, it should not be seen as such. Australians have been running around licking toads for quite some time and don’t seem much the worse for wear, although they know how to do it without getting sick so there’s the difference.
Let’s face it: Animals have been licking us up and down for centuries. It’s time they got a bit of their own back. Besides, what have we been missing all these years?
You don’t really think your cat licks you ’cause she likes you, do you?
I sat down at the computer this morning to discover that about 60,000 of my emails were missing. I had them all neatly divided into about 20 folders according to category, from business, to banking, to family history and friends.
The proper response to something like this, of course, is to go stark raving nuts and so that is what I did. I tore apart my filing cabinet looking for the name of a person at my Internet company and her email finally in hand, I sent off a sharply worded message which contained only about three Canadian “sorry to bother you’s” as opposed to my usual number. I think she got the message because I also used the words “nasty surprise.” That will tune her in, I surmised.
Then I found her phone number and called but had to leave a message. My barely contained rage properly seeped into my message which started off with an apology, of course, and I might have also repeated “nasty surprise”. The woman did not immediately call me back, as she probably rushed into her boss’s office to resign as soon as she heard my enraged voice on her message machine.
So I called another woman whom I spoke to before she forwarded me to a third woman for whom I left what was by now a familiar anger-tinged and panicky message.
Finally, the first woman called me back, after apparently having reconsidered her decision to quit her job, and she listened patiently as I raved on about my important emails and then she put me through to technical support. A very nice man then tried to walk me through the whole mess and he could honestly not figure out why my email folders were gone.
But, he told me not to worry, they would be somewhere on my computer.
And right about then, and his mentioning “my computer”, a little light went on. Sometimes, it is very dark in my brain but now and then, there is a dim illumination. Low wattage, kind of like a night light. And this light told me I was not at MY COMPUTER but instead had sat down at my wife’s machine where, of course, my email folders would never be.
I thanked the young fella, ran downstairs to my computer and presto chango, there were my emails. Almost twice as many as Hillary deleted. I am thrilled to have found them because if President Trump found out that thousands of my emails had been deleted, I would someday be sitting in a jail cell next to the former U.S. senator and secretary of state.
So, three poor women and an unfortunate man, suffered the barely contained Wrath of Jim. Which, on reflection, does not surprise me. Two days ago, my cat died.
I won’t speak for other men, but that’s often how this one reacts to that sort of thing.
The letter came in the mail in an unassuming presentation. Almost as though the plain, white envelope contained little more than advertising. But it didn’t. Inside were riches unimaginable.
It was a notice from a law firm acting on behalf of the shareholders of a large company trading on the stock market which had run afoul of regulations. There had been a class-action suit filed and a settlement was finally arrived at.
That settlement was $69 million. I will write it out as it seems more impressive done that way. Sixty-nine million dollars.
The law firm was searching for people who owned shares of this company between 2004 and 2009. As it happens, my wife and I did own shares in that company during that period which is why we got the letter. In fact, we owned a lot of shares, 1,091 of them. That is a very large number to me. I do not own 1,091 of anything, not even screwnails though I do have three peanut butter jars full of them.
I am not a stock market expert, not even close, but I cannot imagine anyone else owning even a fraction of the shares in this company that we did. We owned, after all, 1,091 of them. I am also not a mathematician but I have a good feeling with our majority stake in this company back then, we can probably expect a cool thirty or forty million coming our way. We will know for sure in 60 days.
I was at the coffee shop when I opened the envelope and I called my wife from the Cadillac dealership which is located between the restaurant and our home. I told her the good news and wondered what colour of new Caddy she would prefer. She didn’t have an opinion on that but instead, advised me to come right home so we could talk about this new development in our lives. I might be mistaken but I think I remember her using the same tone of voice when she was trying to talk our kids into climbing down carefully from the highest branches of the maple tree in our yard.
So I told the dealer “the red one” and then rushed straight home to celebrate our sudden good fortune with my spouse. She is not usually a spoilsport, but on this occasion, she put forward the idea that we might not see even $20 million of the settlement funds, let alone 40. I was disappointed by her pessimism but pretended to be reasonable. She took the position that there might have been a few investors who owned more than 1,091 shares in the company between 2004 and 2009, as doubtful a possibility as could be.
In fact, she guessed that some people might have actually owned many times more than 1,091 shares, a position I found totally unimaginable. I still maintain that 1,091 is a big number, whether we’re talking screwnails, stars or stocks. And I realized the more she talked the poorer we were becoming so I dropped the subject.
Then I set to work filling out the required forms to ensure we qualified for our cut of the settlement, or our eff ewe money, as I like to call it when my wife is not around.
It took me a month to fill out those stupid forms. And during that period, I discovered something funny. I swore out loud more than 1,091 times during that month and the strange thing is, it hardly seemed like I was swearing at all. All I know is there were long stretches during that process when the dog and cats went missing.
Today was the last day to send in our application. I spent the whole day finishing it up, swearing and rushing it to the post office before the deadline.
I have never known my wife to be wrong on many occasions but boy is she in for a surprise two months from now.
Either that or I will be calling the class-action lawyers and yelling, “Eff ewe!” into the phone.
I will report on the lawyers’ decision in eight weeks’ time but don’t expect me to wave at you from my red Caddy. I will have moved up a class or two by then.
(Update 2023: I am writing this update from my phone while sitting in our 2006 Chrysler Sebring, coloured silver like our knives and forks. I honestly do not remember what the outcome of all this was but I do recall crying more than 1,091 tears when the decisions were announced so that might be a clue. I have a feeling our documentation was not complete enough or something like that and we couldn’t remedy the defects. The day our claim was rejected, my wife spent the afternoon talking me down from the top of our maple tree.)
I recently read an article which stated that coffee is bad for your health.
If you drink too much of it, it will make you grumpy and keep you awake at night.
Given the hard time other addictive substances are having in our health-conscious world nowadays, I feel fairly safe in predicting that coffee is about to go down the drain as a popular national drink.
It had been perking right along, so to speak, missing out on the terrible roasting that alcohol and tobacco have been getting all these years.
And now, in an instant, its reputation has bean run right into the ground.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that before long:
• the government will discover coffee and tax it till it costs about $5 a cup;
• the big behind-the-barn thrill for kids won’t be their first taste of booze or drag on a cigarette but instead, their first sip of coffee;
• coffee will be sold at special government shops with a big sign announcing COFFEE STORE over the front door;
• a lawyer will try to beat his client’s murder rap by arguing the poor schmuck was buzzed out on coffee when he pulled the trigger and never would have done it otherwise;
• proof of age will have to be shown in coffee shops and no one will be allowed a second cup;
• coffee ads on TV won’t be able to show people actually drinking coffee;
• the warning “Coffee Makes You Grouchy” will be printed on the label of every jar;
• police roadside devices known as coffalyzers will be used to measure the caffeine level of every speeder to see if they stayed too long at the restaurant;
• coffee drinking in the workplace will be banned and special consultants will help workers find new ways to spend the hours they normally spent sipping;
• where coffee had once been thought of in society as a great social glue and openly portrayed in the media as a harmless, friendship-promoting beverage, movie, TV and theatre directors will avoid it like the plague and actors will only ever be shown drinking lemonade or ginger ale;
• coffee addicts will be reviled in the world, much as drinkers and smokers are now.
In my long-ago days on the farm, an incident occurred about this time of year that still makes me chuckle.
My Dad and his neighbour were harvesting corn and because all of us extra helpers were back in school, a couple of retired farmers were hired to haul loads of the crop back and forth from the harvester in the field to the silo at the barn.
All went well most of the time. As one wagon full of corn was coming in from the field, another was heading back out to be filled up.
The two retired farmers, Tom and Norman, were driving two old John Deere tractors hauling the loads. This work was taking place on a 100-acre farm with plenty of space everywhere. Hardly a tree in sight or a fence for that matter as everything was in crops.
A 100-acre farm, even by today’s standards, is a big space. I have no way of knowing this, but I suspect that if you filled every square inch of it with tractors, even old John Deeres, you might be able to squeeze in 10,000 of them. Or even 100,000.
My point is, there was lots of room one fateful day when Tom was driving his wagon out to the field and Norman was bringing his in. There was no particular path or road they needed to follow to make the journey. They were basically free to drive wherever they liked.
And yet, they both sort of chose the same stretch of field to guide their green vehicles along. As they headed straight towards each other, Tom decided to veer left to miss Norman who decided to veer right to avoid Tom when two left turns would have been better choices.
If you haven’t guessed by now, the outcome was predictable – probably the first and only head-on collision between two tractors on a wide-open hundred acre farm.
Fortunately, not a lot of damage is done when two tractors travelling probably eight miles per hour meet head-on and no one was hurt in the mishap.
The two men worked many more years drawing corn wagons for my Dad and his neighbour, but it was clearly noticeable how far they kept away from each other whenever they met in the fields after that.
Apparently there are a lot of levels in Hell and the worse you were here on Earth, the farther down you go, closer to the fire.
I hope, and in my prayers tonight I will recommend, that the person who invented the “gable-top” milk carton spends eternity hopping around on the hot coals he or she deserves because this little carton is truly evil.
I wrestled with another one today as I sat at my table in a sub shop and if it hadn’t been for the prominent sign over the door which read, “No Screaming Allowed”, I would have let loose. A person needs the hands and fingers of a brain surgeon to open these stupid outfits and unfortunately, my paws are almost as big and delicate as a bear’s.
I know there is a way to open these awful things as I have been shown all the tricks many times by someone several decades younger than me. But he always demonstrates it so quickly I can never quite get it, like a magician reluctant to show you his whole method.
So there I sat today, ripping and tearing at this horrible little box like the aforementioned bear might have had he been in the sub shop at the time. (Had he wandered in and saw the look on my face, I think he would have run away, maybe even screaming, in violation of the sub shop code.)
By the time my milk was accessible, it was sitting in a pathetically mangled cardboard container and being chocolate milk, it was then I realized it needed to be shaken up. So I tried to close the wreck and gave it a shake. Milk spewed everywhere.
When I finally did get it open again and put it to my lips, the milk dribbled down my face and onto my jeans.
You know, I hope I go to Hell too so I can hop around next to the idiot who invented this abomination and spend my eternity screaming in his ear. I really do.
I have heard there is no prohibition against screaming in Hell. In fact, apparently, it is encouraged.
When I look out my kitchen window in the evening, or even in the middle of the night when I sometimes get out of bed for a snack, I can see a light in the upstairs window of a neighbour’s house behind us and a few doors down.
I don’t know why, but that light gives me comfort.
The light shines through a green curtain, so it isn’t vivid; it’s nice and soft. I think it might be coming from a kitchen, maybe a light over a stove (this is an upstairs apartment in a house, the first floor is a business office.)
I don’t know who lives there. I’ve never seen anyone in the window and don’t expect I ever will. Still, just knowing that light is there makes me feel good. All is right with the world.
In the winter, when I am watering the backyard skating rink at 3 a.m., I glance up at the light and feel warm, despite the cold.
Once in a while, sometimes on weekends, I look out my window to see the light is not on and strangely enough, I feel slightly ill at ease. I assume whoever lives there has gone away for the weekend.
I don’t know where this comes from, this need for this kind of comfort. Maybe it’s a leftover thing from my early days on the farm when houses seemed so far apart and a yard light or light from a window was nice to see.
Or maybe it’s a caveman thing – the light from a fire would keep the predators away at night. People have often compared me to a caveman.
I just hope my neighbour doesn’t move out some day and is replaced by an energy-saving tenant who prefers to live in the dark.
My obsession with artificial light is something I have fully embraced inside our home, as well. A quick look around might cause a visitor to wonder if Lamps ‘R’ Us had gone out of business and I bought out the store. There are lamps on top of lamps and some of them are in unoccupied rooms of the house and serve no actual purpose except to cheer me up if I happen to wander into one of those rooms.
The invention of low wattage LED bulbs has fed my addiction as I don’t feel too guilty about burning the midnight oil. However, I live with some energy-efficient killjoys who seem to delight in extinguishing my omnipresent illumination need.
I have a long list of excuses I hope will reduce the resistance of my family members but none of them ever work very well. My favourite pro-lamp argument is that I leave these lamps on so our old cat can find his way around. My family counters that cats can see in the dark but now and then I run across an article refuting that old notion and I immediately try to get these others to change their view.
“How many lamp haters does it take to kill a light bulb?” is a persistent question. That age-old mystery doesn’t seem to have an answer, at least not in my home.
Perhaps I will use some of the money the lamp extinguishers are saving us to go for some counselling.
But there are a few important basics in life that shouldn’t be ignored. We need good food, fresh water, breathable air …
And, I would argue, lots and lots of lamps.
Besides, counsellors’ offices I’ve been in, and I’ve seen the inside of a few, always have low lighting on, even during the day. I assume the lights are there to calm down the clients.
I will be the first to say it and it might come as a shock to those who think otherwise, but life is not fair. I’ve always believed that and now I have more proof that it is so.
When he was three years old, Donald Trump was earning a salary of $200,000 a year. I am not sure what it was he was doing to bring in a haul like that but when I was three, I was struggling to learn to tie my shoes. My vocabulary consisted of about 50 words and as far as I can recall, I had no money. None. I struggled every day to make ends meet. It was not easy for me. I still bear the mental scars of those tough times.
And when Donald was eight years old, he became a millionaire. This really fries my bacon because it took me till I was 14 to earn my first million. When I was eight, I was still being swindled by my school’s designated bully out of the best hockey coins I had gotten from jello boxes and potato chip bags and which I made the mistake of showing the bully, hoping to impress him and reduce the daily beatings. I think he gave me Al Arbour for Gordie Howe, Stan Mikita and Frank Mahovlich. Or he just stole the coins and ran off. The beatings have left me with a faulty memory.
My parents were always very good to me and they left me with a nice sum when they moved on to the next dimension, an amount that has helped me through the years. But looking back, and comparing them to Donald Trump’s parents, they were not as generous as I had always thought. By the time Trump’s father Fred left this realm, he had given his son $413 million. Mom and Dad, successful farmers though they had been, left me with less than $413 million and I am not sure why they did that. I don’t think any of my six brothers and sisters got $413 million either, though I’d have to check the paperwork on that. Which begs the question, where did the rest of the family fortune go?
And while life is not fair, it sometimes has a way of balancing the scale. Poor though I may be, I have not been sued 3,500 times, 95 per cent of the people in the world don’t hate me, I have no ex-wives wandering around writing books about me and I have never met a porn star let alone paid one to keep quiet. I wouldn’t know what to do with a porn star if one knocked on my door and insisted on coming in. Like my cats, I’d probably run downstairs and hide behind the water heater. As far as I know, no porn stars have ever knocked on my door but you never know. I might have slept in that day.
Eventually, plowing through lots of potato chips and jello and when I got older, finally learning how to swindle the younger kids, I got the plastic coins with the pictures of Gordie Howe, Stan Mikita and Frank Mahovlich on them.
I have been running this winter and trying to get my mile under four minutes (total lie), so I needed a timer.
I dropped into my local surplus store and bought one. It doesn’t work. I opened it up to check the battery and a little piece of metal fell out.
Now this thing didn’t cost me much, so I threw the receipt in the recycling and was going to toss the timer in the electronic waste bin next time I happen upon one. But it kind of bugged me that the timer never worked even one time and never would.
A week went by and every day I thought about this. Would I dump out the recycling bins and search through the debris for the receipt? Or just let it go? I decided to let it go. Still …
This morning I hauled three large recycling bins (the ones on wheels with the lids) out to the curb and after the truck went by after collecting the contents of them, I went out to bring them back in. The recycling guy had emptied all three and stacked them upside down, one on top of the other. I took them apart, set them back on their wheels, and prepared to pull them behind the house again.
As always happens, a few stray recyclables were left behind on the ground. A couple of water bottle caps, a small advertising brochure and – a receipt. I turned over the little slip of paper and was shocked to see that it was the receipt for my crapped-out little timer. How in heck could this possibly be?
Things like this don’t happen to me often, but when they do, they drive me nuts. Those three bins were jam packed with recyclables of every description including fine paper by the fistful and so many receipts it was embarrassing. In our family, we apparently like to buy things.
But in this instance, even the consumer gods were disturbed that I had been ripped off for the price of a timer and weren’t going to let me get away with not taking it back.
So tomorrow morning, timer and (somewhat grimy) receipt in hand, I will be back in the store, righting the great wrong that has the Universe so upset it left me a giant clue showing how it felt about it.
You get the chequebook out, write up the thing and put it in the envelope. No stamps. Days go by before you remember, while in line at the checkout, to buy some. Of course, not every checkout sells stamps so you wander around to find somewhere that does. Everywere but the post office, that is.
Stamp successfully affixed to envelope (what’s an envelope, asks child under 20), stage three approaches – the actual depositing of the envelope with its promissory note enclosed into a red postal box.
As I write, this is a challenge that has not yet been met. The envelope has sat on the passenger seat day after day as the van has driven happily by every red postal box in sight. If there were green and yellow ones, the van would whiz by them too.
Arriving home, curse words escape the mouth at the sight of that silly piece of mail. Into the house it goes again, then back out to the van the next day. Rinse and repeat several times.
This is the very situation that resulted in the invention of the word “aaarrrgh” and a very good word it is too. When aaarrrgh fails to emerge from the vocal chords, other fine words take its place.
The end of this archaic way of transferring funds can’t come soon enough for this absent-minded cheque writer.
(Update 2023: This was written 11 years ago. Lots of ways to transfer funds have come about since then, now digitally, from e-commerce to auto bank cards. One frontier I finally crossed this summer: holding my smartphone up to a reader to pay a bill in a store. Some people still prefer cheques and we keep some around but they are rarely used now. Unlike my kids, I have not yet graduated to depositing cheques I receive by photographing them with my phone and depositing them in the bank through the magic of, well, I don’t know. Just some sort of magic. Aaarrrgh!)
It is an enduring stereotype that describes Canadians as too polite. I see that idea challenged regularly by road ragers on Canadian highways, but, in general, it seems to be true that we are a patient nation.
I don’t have to look far to find proof of the too polite notion. On Sunday, I went out in my backyard with the weekly flyers from two hardware stores. Others have their novels; I have my flyers. As a consumer, I am always on the lookout to consume something, but I want to do it as cheaply as possible.
I didn’t get too far along in my reading when a family member dropped in. When I got up for some reason, he sat down in my chair. No worries, as they say in Australia. I chose another chair.
As we chatted, I started loading up our firepit with twigs to maybe get a little inferno going. My guest loves fires and immediately got in on the act. If he somehow ended up on the moon, he’d have a campfire going within an hour of leaving his spacecraft.
Eager to help, he picked up my unread flyers and started ripping them to pieces and rolling them up, sticking them under the twigs in preparation for starting the blaze.
Now, this is where I realized how Canadian I really am. I didn’t say a word as I watched my cherished unread, colourful flyers disappear. Ten feet away, there was a box of old papers that could have been used, but I just couldn’t bring myself to ask the flyer shredder to stop destroying my reading material.
It was a nice fire my family and I enjoyed Sunday night.
I was a little quieter than I normally am.
My chance at hardware greatness had been put on hold. And, of course, I had only myself to blame. I certainly couldn’t blame anyone else. If I was tempted to do so, I would have to do that silently because blurting out accusations against others just wouldn’t be polite.
Sometimes being a Canuck can be a touch aggravating.
Last week, I received a lovely eight-page, handwritten letter from my oldest sister Betty who lives in another city. She always sends letters and greeting cards where every inch of blank space is filled with her news.
Betty is not a fan of computers and doesn’t use email. I don’t believe she has ever sent one, though her husband prints out ones that are sent to her and brings them to her.
She doesn’t have a smartphone and not even a regular cellphone. She uses her landline.
But she loves her flatscreen TV and sits in the evenings, remote control firmly in hand.
After I receive one of my sister’s letters, I call her and we talk for two hours. But this time, I decided to respond in kind. So I sat down and handwrote her an 11-page letter.
It was tough slogging. My handwriting, which used to be so good I won awards at fall fairs for it, has gone downhill. And it was a real effort to form all the letters and make them legible. My left hand kept wearing out on me and I would have to set down the pen and massage it back into shape.
The problem was I was trying to write like I type on my keyboards – very quickly. I couldn’t slow down and my hand was very tense.
But, the job finally done, I stuffed my treatise into an envelope, addressed and stamped it and took it to the mailbox down the street.
I felt pretty good about myself and tried to figure out when the last time was that I handwrote someone a letter. It might have been 50 years ago when I would write home for money to keep me going in university. They were very carefully written letters, something a defence attorney might present to a jury to try to keep his client from going to jail. The better I presented my argument, the more money I might score.
Then there was the summer I wrote a love letter every day to my girlfriend at the time who took the opportunity to get away from me by going to summer camp. Those letters, looking back, were probably sappy enough to cause rock music icon Roy Orbison, who specialized in writing sad songs, to admonish me and tell me to, “Cheer up, for ‘Crying’ out loud!”
In any case, yesterday my sister called me with some news and I asked her if she’d gotten my letter yet. She hadn’t and was all excited to have been sent one.
“I will read it over and over and treasure it,” she said.
And I know she will.
Next up: Sending her photos of our family. She sends us photos all the time in the mail and we never send any back. That will soon change.
In this fast-paced society we live in, Betty’s feet are still on the ground.
And I am grateful they are.
My feet, on the other hand (can your feet be on your other hand?) are somewhere between clouds seven and nine. Fresh off this victory, one of these days I am going to walk right past our shower stall and lay me down into a piping hot, soapy puddle waiting for me in our bathtub. It might take me two days to get out of the damn thing, but it will be worth it. Back in the day, I used to smoke cigarettes and read a book in the tub. It’s a right bugger trying to do either one of those things, or both, in the shower. However, I have given a lot more shower concerts than I ever have done in the bathtub.
And it seems like forever since I fell asleep in the shower.
There is a place most of us have driven past from time to time and some of us have taken up residence there. It is a cute, tree-lined town where everything is seemingly in order but if you spend any time there at all, you will get a feeling that there is a disturbing rumbling underground, like the entire community was built on top of a simmering volcano. There are lots of smiles on the faces of the people there but they sometimes seem more painted on than real.
If you wonder whether or not you are heading to a life in Curmudgeonville, here are a few signposts that might tell you it is probably just over the next hill or two.
1. You start a lot of sentences, “When I was young …”.
2. Today’s music is crap. You know this even though you have never listened to today’s music.
3. Everything was so much better in the good old days.
4. You start a lot of sentences, “Young people today …”.
5. You worry about immigrants. You don’t know any immigrants, but they worry you. A lot.
6. Today’s TV shows are crap. You know this even though you never watch today’s TV shows. Ditto movies.
7. Nobody respects anybody anymore, especially their elders.
8. Teachers. (Fill in complaints here.)
9. Too much sex, sex, sex everywhere (except in your own bedroom.)
10. Human beings are toast and our planet is doomed.
11. You worry a lot about people swearing too much and ignoring God.
12. Too many people are living on free money, unlike you who works hard for every last red cent.
13. Cops, firefighters, postal workers (fill in complaints here).
14. Nobody knows their “place” anymore and we’d all be much happier if we did. Your place, for example, is a nice little house in the heart of Curmudgeonville, where there are double locks on all your doors, you pay $1.50 a year in taxes and riff raff are never seen or heard from.
15. Drugs. OMG. Drugs.
P.S. You don’t have to be old to live in Curmudgeonville.
P.P.S. I have hung around there a few times myself.
You try to hang onto a little bit of your former coolness as the years fly by, as hard a task as that is, and when a Grade 9 student asks if she can take your hat to school to show the other students, you feel kinda proud of yourself. You aren’t exactly like all the other dads and that makes you smile inside.
“Why do you want to take my hat?” you ask, just to hear her say she wants to impress her friends with her Dad’s cool choice of chapeau. But, alas, that isn’t it at all.
“It’s for history class,” she says. “We’re doing a segment on how people dressed in the forties and fifties and your hat is exactly the kind that paper boys from back then wore.”
Your mid-life crisis is long behind you (I was 46 when she was born) so this only hurts a little. But when history students are examining your wardrobe like archaeologists sifting through Tut’s tomb, it might be time for an extreme makeover.
(Update 2023: I wrote this piece 12 years ago and since then there have been so many style changes, I can’t keep up. I often tell my family I feel like a stranger in a strange land. There is no judgment implied in that comment. Just an observation that so many things keep changing around me all the time and it is sometimes hard to absorb the new ways. But change is inevitable and I welcome it all. I have nothing but complete faith in the generations coming up behind mine, though I know some people my age don’t agree society is heading in a good direction. But for me, as the Beatles sang, “It’s getting better all the time.” To illustrate. Yesterday I was about to settle up at the dentist’s office after some surgery, when a tall young man was doing the same with another receptionist. He was in shorts and a tee shirt. Every square inch of his exposed skin, except for his face and maybe his hands, was covered in intricate tattoos. He was polite and happy and doesn’t need my approval to carry on. If he doesn’t have that, he at least doesn’t have my disapproval. Like the Beatles, I let my hair grow long for a while. That didn’t always go down well with the elders. I was mocked a few times as a girl and other times, as a hippie. I remember a tough guy in our community who made it his mission to beat up hippies. I would see him now and then in the bar where I was working as a waiter. He left me alone as I am sure having his beer brought to him on demand mattered more than whatever it might have been about me he didn’t like. It’s kind of funny how well many barkeeps are treated for that very reason. And a dozen years later, now and then, I still wear the cap that was shown in history class. Just like its owner, perhaps, it’s become a little rough around the edges.)
Take heed, all ye apartment dwellers, and stay right where you are. You could be worse off. You could be in jail or living in an alley.
Or, even worse, you could be a homeowner.
When you own a house, you spend so much time in building supply stores other customers often take you for staff and start asking you questions about prices, where things are kept and how to use the various building materials on display. What’s even scarier is the fact that you’re able to tell them the answers. When the hardware store owner asks you to lock up behind you when you leave Saturday night, you know you’re in big trouble.
You spend the rest of your free time in banks begging for loans to pay for the house, at work trying to make enough money to pay back the loans and at relatives eating meals you can’t afford to buy for yourself because you took out loans to buy a house.
But these are all minor irritations. Compared to the major ones, these sometimes look like the joys of home ownership.
There are some benefits to owning a home, I guess – you can play the one Beatles record you possess as loudly as you like and you don’t have a balcony to fall off of, but still, there’s that one big drawback you just can’t get around: When you own a home, you don’t have a landlord. You’ve got nobody to scream at on the phone when the taps leak or the furnace quits. No one to castigate, blame and berate. Or sue.
And there are times you really need somebody like that.
For me, Monday night was one of those times.
By 9:30, the dishes were done, cats fed, house cleaned up and garbage taken out. I was heading to bed early for the first time in months. Nothing could stand in my way. Unless it could be the phone call I got from a neighbour at 9:45 p.m.
“Did you know the guy plowing snow in the parking lot next to you has dug up the lawn by your house and buried your telephone box in snow?” I was asked.
“WHAT?” I yelled. At 10 p.m., I was bundled up and standing by a truck next to my home, arguing with a snow plower I’d never met before about the dug up lawn, holding clumps of sod in my hands and engaged in a philosophical discussion about whether in the scheme of things, a lawn wrecked by a snow plower matters very much. He was of the opinion it doesn’t and I differed, of course.
So, we chatted on about this until his boss arrived in another truck to take part in the talks as well. At 10:20 p.m., the discussion was over and I was back in the house. By 10:45 p.m., I was calmed down and ready for bed again.
At 10:50 p.m., while turning off lights in the den, my wife found water dripping profusely through the ceiling in a closet there. After removing everything from the closet, I climbed up into the cold attic, armed with a tiny, disposable flashlight, the only one I could find. During Monday’s storm, snow had blown in through a gable vent and covered about 10 batts of pink insulation. The snow was now melting and coming through the ceiling.
At 11:10 p.m., I was on the phone to a friend who’s been a homeowner longer than I have, asking what to do.
At 11:30, I was back in the attic, shivering, scraping snow off a catwalk and off insulation.
By 11:45, I had removed most of the wet insulation and handed it down to my wife to carry to the basement to dry.
At 12:15 a.m., itchy from the insulation and angry from the aggravation, I finally crawled into bed.
My cat Mario and I have a lot in common. We are more alike than you might think a man and a cat could ever be.
To begin with, we are both old now, more days behind us than ahead of us. He is almost 18 in cat years and I am a little more than 10 in dog years.
We both have a touch of arthritis. We are incredibly picky eaters and very lucky guys to have found people to love us in spite of our quirky ways and our tendency to occasional outbursts of crankiness.
We have both lost brothers and are sometimes lost ourselves in our loneliness. We’ve given up a lot of the things of our youth. Neither one of us spends much time playing any more. That doesn’t mean we are unhappy, just that we’ve lost interest in some of the things that used to captivate us.
Mario still goes outside and enjoys doing so but he never leaves the property now and I rarely do as well. Our worlds are shrinking and I like to think that is by choice. We both love our backyard these days and when Mario sees me lounging in a lawnchair under one of our maple trees, he reaches for me to pick him up and sit him in my lap so I do.
Sometimes he sunbathes on the patio and falls asleep. I lie back in my chair and saw off in the shade.
But we do differ in some ways. He has a couple of more legs than I have and a long tail. All I can offer concerning his latter feature is a tailbone. Had I been ripping around the planet a few million years ago, who knows? I might have had a tail longer than his.
Mario isn’t much interested in human food and he doesn’t have to worry that I will eat his. He will still chase a rodent if one makes the mistake of crossing his path but his skills in that field have gone downhill. I haven’t hunted a wily groundhog since my days on the farm though I did chase one out of our yard a few years ago.
Mario sits on more laps than I ever do. He sleeps all day and wanders around at night. I napped during the day more in my twenties than I do in my seventies but like my younger self, I am still a nighthawk. As I write this, it is 4:45 a.m.
Added to these differences are our medications. He gets rabies shots once a year, I get a flu shot. We give him a little paste which helps reduce his furballs. I have no issue with furballs. I also don’t have to take any substance to ward off fleas. Flies and bees follow me around like rockstar groupies when I am outside but the fleas leave me alone.
But there is one major medication area where we are totally alike. (You knew something just had to be coming after reading all this, didn’t you.)
Mario and I both take the same laxative. It is made for humans but the vet recommended it for the cat as well. I pick it up at the pharmacy. We hide his in his soft food so he won’t detect it and refuse to consume it.
But I am braver than my cat. I pour mine in a saucer and lap it up.
Cat and man do have our issues but, all in all, we’re just a couple of totally regular guys.
That is one of my favourite sayings, describing, as it does so succinctly, the inevitable stages of many people’s lives.
But I think the world is in need of another new nugget regarding the aging process and I suggest this ripoff of the adage in the first paragraph: Once long hair, twice a buzz cut.
There are little signposts along the journey that let you know this is a one-way trip you’re on and the day you are told, by the person who looks after your hair, that you don’t really need to come back any more, you feel yourself in semi-shock.
“When you’re using the trimmer on your beard,” says the hair stylist, “just keep on going over the rest of your head.”
She fires up her clippers and takes a run at it, just to show me the way.
Suddenly, l am transported back to Fred Guy’s barbershop in the little village of Monkton near our farm home and the simplicity of what was known back then as a “brush cut.” A few waves of his magic wand and I was back in peak trim.
It’s a bit sad, of course, to be rounding this turn, but a bit liberating as well. I now have one black comb (a bit bent) and one blue brush (fairly new) for sale and expect to earn a fair sum for both. I no longer have to worry about my hair getting “mussed up” and my baseball caps have never fit better.
My total outlay from here on in on hair dryers I expect to add up, with both taxes added on, to zero. A bonus, I suppose, is that some people have been telling me all week that I look much neater. It was never one of my life’s goals to look neater, but I guess if this is considered a positive quality, then I’ll take it.
Another sign that time is moving ever so aggressively on has to do with a man’s “trousers” (as they call them in civilized, English-speaking nations) and how well they resist the pull of gravity.
I remember many years ago having a good chuckle watching a pair of pants fall down around the ankles of an “old” man next door. First of all, he seemed oblivious to the fact that he suddenly had a lot of extra baggage hovering just above his sock lines and secondly, upon discovering this fact, he seemed not to care one whit about it.
The other night, while racing to move some backyard topsoil before the sun went completely down, I bent to heave some rocks when I felt a “pop” followed by a loosening around the waist, sure signs that a button had fled the scene.
But hurry is a terrible thing, with the sun in such a rush to disappear, and so I decided to carry on. While hustling across the lawn with a wheelbarrow full of soil, I suddenly felt much cooler around the leg, thigh and groinal areas and knew that I had been struck by my karma: What we mock, we shall become!
Standing there in the middle of my yard with buzz cut above and no pants below, I had my “aha!” moment: Middle age seemed suddenly in my rear-view mirror.
My only possible salvation is the prospect that I might get in on a little of that “not caring a whit” attitude my neighbour seemed to have. Day by day, I feel that coming on and I can only think that that must be nature’s major compensation for all these completely undeserved changes.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but think that “Mother” Nature has a cruel streak.
I hate to be pessimistic, but it is getting to be an awful world out there. Bombings, torture, arson, assassinations. Environmental crimes. Hate crimes.
Our fellow humans are losing their minds and it is downright scary. What is all this mayhem leading to?
This is what we can look forward to. A woman in Maryland stole three french fries and, incredibly, ate them. She ate them right in front of the man she had stolen them from. You are reading that right. But take heart. The woman was not only hungry and lacked any moral compass, she was stupid enough to steal them in a restaurant from a plate which belonged to a police officer.
Wow!
Thank God, however, that the law moves decisively and quickly in our modern society. The officer arrested her right away and carted her off to jail where she belongs. She has been charged with second-degree theft.
On the arrest sheet, the fast-acting cop listed the items stolen as “French Fried Potato…quantity 3.”
Some might say this is too trivial an event for jail and a subsequent court appearance. Are you kidding me? Across the world, french fry theft is on the increase and out of control. Do you not read the news?
And if you think this is over the top, ask yourself this: Will french fry thieves stop at potatoes? Will they? No, they won’t. Left unchecked, they’ll go on to nab onion rings, salad fixins, gravy containers.
I hope this doesn’t sound like fear mongering, but sooner or later, they will drink your pop!
Good work Maryland police officer. In your honour, I am coining this new slogan: “French Fries Matter.”
I can’t wait for summer so I can get out into the Great Outdoors. The quality of my life will go up about 500 per cent when that blessed day comes that I can don shorts and sandals and venture out of doors (what a strange expression).
Fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away.
Groovin’, on a Sunday afternoon.
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of suuummarr!
Summer arrives soon and I’ll be there, on my front porch, to welcome it with wide open arms – arms that have been slathered with greasy, smelly sunscreen. I will look skyward and feel the warmth on my face and neck, both areas treated in the same fashion as my arms.
I will catch a glimpse of the sun, but not look directly into it, as I wear my UV ray deflecting clip-on sunglasses. My wide-brimmed hat will prevent that same golden globe in the heavens from toasting up the top of my head like a Sunday morning omelette in a frypan.
Yes, I will slide on my $40 sandals, which have more straps, sticky fasteners and clips than the average parachute. The straps will cut into my feet as I walk along, leading me to wonder how long I will be able to hold out on the inevitable fashion faux pas that lies in my future – the socks and sandals horror that befalls so many aging males on our direct and irreversible descent into total uncoolness.
On this day off work, I will glory in bending and stooping to pick up dog dung, tree twigs, discarded pop cans, chip bags and stones from my front lawn. I will water wildflowers and weeds alike and try to figure out which is which, taking a guess and yanking things out that look like they shouldn’t be there. I will err most of the time.
I will climb atop my stepladder and dig out by hand the heavy layer of maple keys and other rotted crap lining the insides of my eavestroughs and as I do I will enjoy the earwigs that slither down my arms and neck as they protest being disturbed from their beds.
From the interlocking paving stones below, I will sweep up the keys and the small mountains of sand that have been excavated and elevatored to the surface by the millions of ants that live in their underground towns and villages, maybe even cities, in my yard.
At lunch, I will attempt to barbecue and finding my propane tank empty, will carry the light container across the street to the gas station and haul the very heavy full one back, enjoying the sensation of the sharp steel cutting into my hand and the dead-heavy canister pulling my arm from its socket.
Finally, a family lunch of burgers, corn on the cob and watermelon out of doors which we share under the maple tree around the plastic table and chairs from which I have spent half an hour with water pail, sponge and garden hose removing bird droppings.
Eating this tasty meal will involve a lot of handwaving and vigilance to ensure that part of the diet does not involve those little black beer bugs or strawberry beetles or whatever they are. I don’t like those guys.
Finally, after an afternoon of cutting lawn, trimming bushes, cleaning shed and garage and swallowing gallons of cold liquid to replenish my dehydrated body, all the while trying to avoid the intense interest of bumblebees the size of hummingbirds and wasps with murder in their hearts, there is time for a little front porch sitdown to enjoy the setting sun.
But first, all exposed skin must be slathered with insect repellent – making sure it has DEET – to avoid those mosquito bites that could pass on to me a lively dose of West Nile Virus. Having missed a spot or two, I will spend some time later administering calamine lotion on the lucky targets those flying finks found before going to bed to enjoy tossing and turning during the long, hot, humid night.
This is a tale of tragedy, trickery, treachery and maybe even treason. Most of all, betrayal.
You might have to follow the bouncing ball here a bit but I promise I would not relate this story to you unless it was of some vital importance. And I am still a little too emotionally overwrought to write clearly.
Last night my wife and I attended a very nice event and sat down to a wonderful banquet, served at our table which we shared with several others. The most important feature of the meal was the gravy, of course. It is commonly known that if there is no gravy, it is usually not worth the effort to even pick up your knife and fork.
When this wonderful food was consumed and enjoyed, we were advised by the wait staff to hang onto our forks, that we would need them. That is a very encouraging sign at any meal. It means there is dessert on its way. The main course, after all, is just something to get out of the way so that you can have dessert. Tale as old as time.
I need to preface the rest of the story by setting some ground rules. People insist on concocting desserts, pies very often, out of various organic materials that were never intended to be served up to humans as an after-dinner confection. Here are some “foods” that are not suitable for consuming at any time, especially after a meal. Rhubarb tops the list, of course. What depraved person first looked at a rhubarb plant and thought, “That would make an excellent pie.”? Similarly, raspberries, suitable for jam only, are wholly wrong in a pie. Apples are a wonderful fruit but to use them in any way other than their natural form is just wrong.
And, it doesn’t even need to be said, that people who bake pumpkin pies should be incarcerated, hopefully with a breaking rocks schedule added to their sentence specifics.
But the good news is, the humble cherry can be used in any of a hundred ways and not one of them is wrong. The cherry pie is the human’s ultimate achievement, moon landing a distant second place. The first person to ever bake up a cherry cheesecake needs to be given sainthood status by the Pope.
Dessert came.
What the hell?
Two fluffy cake-like affairs that were unidentifiable and it is a truism that if a thing cannot be identified, it should not be consumed.
My wife was helpful. The dessert I had been randomly assigned was some sort of rhubarb affair. Oh no! It had a redness to it that was not appealing. Little red things sticking out here and there.
The stranger across the table from me had some other substance. My wife declared that it was an apple cake of some horrific assembly.
“I like rhubarb,” said the man across from me, obviously deranged. He scared me a little.
I generously switched desserts with him. He could have my bloodshot rhubarb disaster and I would take his apple monstrosity. He tore into his newfound gift, I laboured over mine.
When he was close to finished, he got a closer look at everything and declared, “Hey, this isn’t rhubarb. It’s cherry!”
I looked more closely at my dessert. There were green things sticking out of it, items that seemed horribly familiar. They were rhubarb chunks.
I had had a wonderful cherry dessert delivered to me and traded it away, on the erroneous information supplied to me by my own wife, for a rhubarb cake.
Here is the definition of hell. You eat a rhubarb cake, feel faint as you most assuredly would, then fall face first into a pumpkin pie. Fortunately, there were no pumpkins involved in this affair. The authorities have been keeping a close watch on the kitchen staff at this place, which has served pumpkin in the past and been warned not to do it again.
As you might expect me to do and will congratulate me for having the courage to do it, I made a big stink right there and then about my betrayal. The display of righteous indignation paid off. There was one more cherry dessert left in the kitchen and it was brought out in a special container and given to me for later.
There was silence between my wife and I all the way home in the car following the dinner. I am hoping we will be speaking again by Thanksgiving.
Some day I will write a book about a coffee shop in my town called The Donut Mill.
Sadly, it is closed for good now, but it was my home away from home for many years, just behind my house and up the street. A two-minute walk away. It was a place of charm and character, and I loved every nook and cranny.
I drank a hundred gallons of coffee there and ate my weight in muffins and donuts several times over. It was widely acknowledged that the Donut Mill had the best coffee and baked goods in town.
The original building was small, but quaint. It was nicely sided in brown bricks with brown aluminum soffit and fascia and big windows. It wasn’t big inside and there was full-on smoking so every now and then, the formerly white ceiling tiles which turned a sickening yellow after time had to be replaced and the walls re-painted.
The coffee shop had a long counter that jutted out in the middle and tucked back in against one wall. There were stools, covered in red vinyl upholstery, all around the bar and when I went there, whether alone or with a friend, I tried to get the stool next to the wall. So did a dozen other guys.
Besides the busy walk-in traffic, the shop had a very loyal clientele, a gaggle of chatty guys who gathered every night to talk about their cars, trucks and motorcycles.
The place did a good trade but was a bit small and had no drivethrough, so the owners decided they needed to build a bigger spot with a take-out window.
They were progressive in that way but they also knew they needed to keep that loyal following of “car guys” as my friend and I referred to them. The owners worried they might lose these customers in any move so here is what they did.
They bought a nice big lot just up the street, on the same side of the street and only a few hundred feet away from the old shop (and right behind my house). They hired an architect. He was given the job of expanding the coffee shop, putting in a no-smoking section where food could be served, and adding a drivethrough.
His big challenge, however, was to make the new Donut Mill look exactly like the old one. And he did it. From the outside, the new one looked just like the old one – same brick, same trim, same windows and doors.
The sign from the old place was just moved down the street and attached to the front of the new one. Same coach lamps on the outside walls.
Inside there were the new features, but the same island for the till with its glassed-in area for the donuts and muffins.
But most importantly, the exact same counter with the identical red stools from the old shop.
When it opened, it was eerie going inside for the first time. Same tables, decor, everything. The car guys all streamed back in, almost as though they didn’t even notice they were in a new place, sat down on the stools and their discussion about all things automotive never missed a beat.
It was a clever design that took the customers into account.
And here’s what I liked the most.
A big name coffee shop a few blocks away just recently tore down their old store and moved across the street where they built a new one. It looks nothing like the old one and is very nice, but as far as I can see, a whole new, younger staff was hired for the new shop.
When the Donut Mill moved, all the same staff moved with it. We knew all these people from years and years of going there. Their familiar faces were the nicest feature to see when the new shop opened. They were like good friends.
We didn’t “go to” the Donut Mill as much as we visited it. That is what the new building recaptured and the new features added even more to it. But sadly, one owner’s death and the other’s illness forced its closing a few years ago.
I miss it.
And there is one other reason I loved the Donut Mill. I met a wonderful woman at the old coffee shop who would soon become my wife. And after our wedding reception, we dropped into the new place at 4 a.m., me in my tuxedo, my bride still in her wedding dress. We wanted to thank the owners for encouraging us to take the plunge.
Like a lot of things these days, road rage just ain’t what it used to be.
A man on a freeway in Florida cut off a woman while changing lanes so she shrugged her shoulders as if to say WTF? That was his cue, of course, to start chasing her and her carload of kids. Chased her, then pulled out a gun and pointed it at her kids.
She dodged him. So he grabbed an assault rifle, a perfectly logical response to the situation, but before he could mow down anybody, he shot himself in the leg and crashed his car.
I believe what this calls for, to prevent further injuries like this, is the installation of assault rifles on the hoods of cars in Florida. They could be fired by the drivers with the use of a handy remote control. They could even be set up to swivel which would improve accuracy.
Road ragers are people too and have the right to not shoot off their legs when pursuing mommies and kiddies with murder in their heart.
It’s in the Constitution.
Way back in the innocent sixties, shortly after I got my driver’s licence at 16, I began my own career as a road rager. I started off modestly, as most ragers do. I would look at an offending driver and refuse to smile. That didn’t seem to produce the effect I was going for so I graduated to the mildly angry scowl. But it was muted, sort of non-committal. I then moved on to full scowl which was a fearsome thing to encounter and then to horn honking. Finally, I escalated to the ultimate – the middle finger salute!
On one occasion, years ago, after producing the salute, the driver it was aimed at didn’t like it all and proceeded to chase me all over town, his front bumper six inches away from my back bumper. Scared half to death, I kept driving around until I finally pulled up in front of the police station. My tormenter didn’t seem to appreciate that and he zoomed off to somewhere unknown to make someone else’s life enjoyable. I’m wondering if he just emerged from 10 years in prison the day before and didn’t want to associate with officers of the law.
It is also possible he was the first cousin of that peach of a guy with the shot-off leg in Florida.
Whatever the case may be, that was the day I was cured of my road rage mania.
So, my pursuer did me a big favour though I am sure that was not his intention. Road ragers were not put here on Earth to do favours for others.
As for me, I keep my pistols in the fridge now where they belong and my assault rifles are tucked away safely in the attic.
It amazes me what the tee shirt industry has managed to get away with these past few decades. While virtually no one (except me) was watching, the makers of these classic garments have been steadily shrinking the material they put into them while expanding the designations they assign to their clothing.
I remember my earliest tees being sized “small” and even at that, they fit pretty loosely. Then came the mediums, and same thing – hardly snug, just right. But the devious manufacturers began pulling the wool (cotton? polyester?) over our eyes when they began churning out “large” tee shirts. I swear these shirts, in an earlier time, were actually mediums or even smalls, but there I was walking around in large tee shirts which, eventually, somehow, didn’t seem large to me at all. In fact, they felt more like mediums and on hot, humid days, even smalls. And there were times when I actually needed help to pull these larges up over my head and off my sweaty torso.
The day I put on my first extra large tee shirt was as close as I have ever come to writing a hostile letter to a clothing maker or taking even more drastic action but I was too depressed to do it. The fact is, the extra large shirt fit just fine, which obviously meant that in reality, it was a large or even a medium size. How, I wonder, are these greedy capitalists able to get away with such a swindle?
Finally, on Saturday, I put on a new “two times extra large” tee shirt and I was crestfallen to realize that the Great Tee Shirt Scandal was now tipping in a new direction. Rather than being too small, this darned thing was way too big. I wore it to a family reunion anyway, having nothing else that was clean. Since then, I have seen photos of myself from the event and am shocked to realize that I was wearing not a tee shirt at all but a moo moo.
So now, the tee shirt makers are passing off moo moos as tee shirts. And I refuse even to discuss the size designation of “three times extra large”. That one is big enough to do double duty as a barbecue cover.
Whenever Ontario Premier Doug Ford (a possible three times extra large candidate if I ever saw one) gets done with his buck a beer crusade, he might want to take on the tee shirt industry. He could at least get them to come up with new designations after large such as “beach size”, “tent”, “blanket”, “moo moo”. At the very least, get rid of that ridiculous “extra” specification. The connotation of that awful descriptive suggests that the wearer of such a garment is walking around in an “extra large” body, for example.
I have been looking for a cause to champion and realize all the really good ones are gone. With the advent of the tee shirt/moo moo, I think I might have just found my crusade.
I pulled into a very small and very crowded parking lot this afternoon to pick up a pizza.
I squeezed my car into a hairpin of a space and then got out. Confronting me was the sign shown above.
We have a company in Canada called Ticket Defenders which helps people fight tickets they receive for a variety of infractions, some of them issued because of parking violations.
My first thought was, am I going to get a ticket for parking in the Ticket Defenders’ spot? And if I do, can I walk into the Ticket Defenders’ office, situated right in front of my car, and ask them to defend me in court so I can get out of paying the ticket which would essentially be their ticket.
If they turn me down, is there a business anywhere called Ticket Defenders Ticket Defenders which will fight on my behalf to get the ticket issued by Ticket Defenders cancelled?
As my wife and I settled in for a few days’ holidays at a lakeside cottage in Northern Canada last week, I could see that this was not going to be like four days and three nights at the Ramada Inn. Not that our friends’ three-bedroom cabin isn’t modern or clean. In fact, it’s in great shape, with new siding and a wonderful steam bath built on a rock jutting out into the water of a beautiful lake.
But one important feature distinguishes their cottage from the well-known chain of hotels. No Ramada that I’m aware of makes use of a two-hole “outhouse” located about 100 yards from the front doors as do our friends at their get-away property in the bush. Now, despite the fact that I was blessed by being born in a time well after the invention of the indoor flush toilet, I am not, on principle, opposed to the two-holer, which served people well for hundreds of years and is still in use by many today. In fact, there’s something kind of earthy and natural about the whole process which I’m sure must be much more environmentally friendly than the various chemicals thrown down modern toilets to keep them clean.
No, the outhouse is not my natural enemy, as such, unless it is combined with a few other complicating factors. In the case of our friends’ cottage, it is located in a territory which is inhabited not only by humans desperate to get out of the city in the summertime, but by bears that I imagine wish humans would stay in the city where they belong. But even bears and outhouses pose no big threat provided a third element is included, that being the middle of the night.
Jolted awake at 3 a.m. by that old, familiar feeling of urgency that just can’t be wished away, I lay there reviewing my options. Realizing I had none, I dressed and headed for the cabin door, the outhouse for to find. Suddenly, in the darkness of the wooded surroundings, the outhouse which had seemed only a stone’s throw away during the day, had apparently been moved another half-mile or so down the lane. To get there, I would have to pass several perfect bear-hiding objects such as trees, rocks, cars and shacks. This I would do knowing my doom awaited me in the form of the biggest, meanest bear in the country that was obviously hiding behind the outhouse itself and which had a thing about middle-age guys with knobby knees, glasses and fragile bowels. Worse yet, it occurred to me a bear might actually be waiting cleverly right there for me in the two-holer when I opened the wooden door. And even if I survived that surprise, I would not want to follow a bear into a bathroom which I imagine he or she could foul up real bad.
So, with all this on my mind, I had to venture out into the black, still night, treading lightly so as to not make a sound which might be attractive to a hungry bear or that would conceal from my attention the sudden approach of a bear leaping onto my back. As I approached the outhouse, the moment of truth arrived. Flinging open the door, I could see I’d be sharing the facilities with only a few hungry mosquitoes and a spider or two. Unless, of course, a bear ripped open the door while I was in there, which I could see was a distinct possibility.
Three nights in a row, this scene was played out with my last nocturnal trip as scary as my first. Of course, I was given brave assurances that bears never venture into the camps day or night but I wondered why, on my radio as I drove out of the bush on Friday, a local expert was giving advice on what to do if you come face to face with one. Now why give important information about something that never happens?
One thing’s sure. They don’t hand out tips on bears at the Ramada Inn where outhouses are not a common feature.
Jim Hagarty’s neighbours are a prosperous gang and he is happy for them.
One neighbour has a big new pickup truck, a $70,000 pricetag but he got a break on it. What a wonderful machine.
Two doors down, another neighbour bought a beautiful motorhome last summer. Hagarty had a tour inside. He speculates it comes with room service. Or should.
Across the street, one man has a Corvette. It’s used, but still, it’s a CORVETTE! The neighbour beside him has a shiny, fancy motorcycle. Hagarty is not sure of the make but it’s extremely noisy so that must be good.
Still another neighbour directly across the street has a widescreen TV that appears to cover one whole wall of his living room. If the blinds are open, and even if they aren’t, Hagarty can see all the shows his neighbour watches. He seems to be into action movies.
Next door, just yesterday, Hagarty smelled some wonderful cooking aromas coming from those neighbours’ verandah and he looked over to see that the couple there has a very fancy new barbecue. Not sure if it has a sink and running water, but it might.
Farther down the street, in the driveway, sits a new, candy apple red Kia Soul. A few doors to the east, is a new Toyota Rav4. Black. Very sleek.
Then there is the array of backyard hottubs, above-ground pools, in-ground pools, and who knows what else.
Hagarty is not envious of any of these people and the proof of that is the fact that he discusses all these glorious new acquisitions with his neighbours when he sees them out and about.
But he worries that they are jealous of him. Because he has a brand new pooper scooper with which to gather up his doggie’s offerings on their twice-daily walks. It is a marvel of modern engineering. Black. Easy to use. Very efficient. Lightweight, even when filled with poop.
And not one of his neighbours has made any comment to Hagarty at all about his new device. When people will not even acknowledge something new you have, you know they are burning up with envy.
To be honest, Hagarty is a little disappointed in this obvious character flaw in the spendthrifts living around him.
There is a popular song on the radio these days about a guy who is frustrated that his girlfriend doesn’t share the deep feelings of love he has for her. The singer of this catchy song passionately describes what he would do for this woman. He would catch a grenade for her, put his hand on a blade for her, jump in front of a train for her and even take a bullet through his brain for her.
However, he’s concerned that she would not do these same things for him. In fact, he sings that he believes that if his body was on fire, she would just stand there and watch him burn.
I am not a professional counsellor and couldn’t talk an ant from jumping off an apple, but I wish I could spend a little time with this poor lad. First of all, I would advise him that after catching a grenade, cutting his hand on a blade, jumping in front of a train, shooting himself in the head and setting his body on fire, he might be somewhat of a mess and, not to take sides, but after all that, I would think any sensible woman might want to think about whether she would want to do these same things for this guy who would not be much of a prize by then.
So, in that respect, I think she’s probably showing some pretty good judgment where he appears to have no sense of balance whatsoever. Hence, she is quite clearly too good for him and is smart to move on and that’s what he should do too right after he receives some intensive help for these extreme masochistic tendencies of his. And treatment for his terrible injuries.
If it was me, I’d choose no girlfriend over a grenade, a blade, a train, a bullet and a body fire any day. Call me selfish if you want but remember the principle that has guided my life: I’d rather be a live chicken than a dead duck!
I drove into a nice shady spot at my favourtie fast food restaurant and opened my coffee, prepared for a nice 15-minute break. A car pulled in beside me. Its driver got out and peeked inside my open passenger door window.
“Hey Bud. Mind looking after my car?” said the middle-aged man, who, without hearing my answer, then walked away and into a nearby store.
I looked at his car. It was not a car that anybody needed to look after. In fact, I am going to guess that nobody had looked after it for a long time. But now I was looking after it. I had no information to illuminate the task I had been assigned, a job given to me casually by a stranger who offered me no option but to accept the challenge. Were the keys in the ignition? Was there a baby in a child’s seat in the back? A thousand dollars in silver coins lying on the seat?
Immediately, I imagined a horde of car wreckers lurking in the parking lot, waiting to launch a car invasion on the vehicle I was suddenly guarding. I went from relaxed coffee drinker to nervous car-watching pile of human misery in about 15 seconds. I didn’t know if I had what it would take to fight off a bunch of nasty auto vandals.
And here’s the thing. The car owner who had enlisted me in the serious business of protecting his mode of transportation, seemed to be in no hurry to return from the store. For all I knew, he worked there and had just started an eight-hour shift.
I finished my coffee and sat there. The car owner had found the one guy in this town who feels responsible for everything around him, twenty-four hours a day. I would have sat there for three full days watching that bucket of bolts simply because I had been put in charge. Finally, after almost another complete half hour, I came to the logical conclusion that the car owner’s words to me must have been the last he ever spoke. He had obviously been either kidnapped or murdered upon entering the store. Now, I had to worry about his kidnappers/murderers emerging bloodthirsty from the store. Seeing me watching the guy’s car, they would probably toss a grenade, or at the very least a stinkbomb, through my open window.
Wisely, at last, I got the hell out of there.
I seem to attract these kinds of assignments. This morning, a neighbour came to my door. Nicest guy I know. He has done a lot for me and my family over the years. He had a request. A FedEx truck was delivering a package from Spain and he had to leave. He gave them my name and wondered if I would be home to accept the delivery. I did have plans to not be home accepting FedEx packages from Spain, but here I am. Locked inside my home, staring out the window.
My neighour drove away. I have no idea where he is. For all I know, he’s sitting in shorts and straw hat at a seaside outdoor cafe, sipping sasparillas or mint juleps, and contemplating how good life has been to him. Either that or he is at the fast-food restaurant, ransacking the car I had left unguarded there. Seems like that would be out of character for him but it is a crazy world. And I would like to know what it is he has ordered from Spain.
And you wonder why I am a wreck. I feel almost like I am one of those marks in a Just For Laughs TV prank or a Candid Camera episode. Pretty soon I will be directed to look into the disguised camera that has been trained on me all along. I will laugh uproariously.
Meanwhile, would you mind looking after this website for me? Hackers and such. Thanks. Now back to my mint julep. Which should be interesting as I have no idea what the hell a mint julep is. Or a sasparilla, for that matter.
I was born with gorilla fingers. And by that I mean big fingers, not fingers covered in fur.
Of course, the hands to which these massive digits were attached to were also oversized and for some reason, this became a source of pride for me. I seemed to be always daring other kids to go palm to palm with me so I could gloat about my obvious genetic superiority.
But my large-fingers-inspired joy didn’t last forever as the time arrived for me to learn how to play guitar. I couldn’t squeeze four fingers onto the narrow fretboard of a normal steel-stringed guitar and so had to switch to a classical guitar which has a wider neck.
Nevertheless, things went along pretty well for the next few decades until I came into the possession of a smartphone. My hippo hands came back to haunt me when trying to operate this fanciest of gizmos, especially when trying to send text messages. It would take me 15 minutes to ask John how he was doing.
“Hater Jonne. How shit gohnn?”
This went on for years. And several years, I’m pretty sure, have been removed from my lifespan because of the frustration.
My phone allows me to dictate my text messages and every once in a while, I turn on that feature and give it a try. Today that once in a while arrived again. Things started off well, my first few words being laid down almost flawlessly.
Then it began to go badly off the rails and as my go-to reaction in situations such as these is to freak out and start yelling like an angry auctioneer, I did exactly that with my little phone. As I screamed, I watched the phone screen. It recorded my meltdown pretty well, even going with “geez” when the going got too tough.
There was someone else in the room and I gave her a running commentary.
“What the hell?” typed my phone. “This crazy thing is typing everything I say. Crap. Well that’s useless. Geez.” This is just a small sampling of my diatribe.
Finally, I couldn’t take any more.
“Piss off,” I told my phone. It typed that out perfectly, “Piss off.” It also had a perfect record when I told it to piss right off.
So, I had lots of deleting to do. I shut off the microphone and went back to using my panther-sized paws. They deliver a lot less profanity, on an average day.
But on reflection, I am proud of my little phone. Any modern device that will tell itself to piss off is my new best friend.
Okay, it’s time I took this column to a whole new level
I have a few questions to which l would dearly like some answers because I fall asleep every night troubled by these things.
To begin with, why is everyone always bringing something to the table nowadays? And why do we care so much about what the other guy brings to the table? Why do we toss him overboard if he doesn’t bring much to the table? Where is this table, anyway? Oh, for the simple life on the farm. Mom brought it all to the table; we pulled up our chairs and ate it.
And further to that theme, why are we all taunting each other to “Bring it on!”? Are we nuts? Most of the time, I wish people would “Take it away!” and usually have no desire for them to bring it on. There are too many people bringing too many things on, as far as l’m concerned.
Why is it, today, that when someone has no intention of doing something, that person will say, “Ya, I’ll get right on that?” What they mean is, they will not be getting right on that any time soon. Actually, never. Not to sound like I grew up down the road from Abraham Lincoln and walked with him 20 miles through the bush to school every day, but when l was a kid, if I didn’t get right on that, somebody usually got right on me. Then, my reaction was to get right on that.
When will we ever stop taking everything to the next level or a whole new level? Is the level we’re on never enough? And don’t we realize that when we get to the next level, there will simply be another new level to take things to after that? I thought being on the level was a good thing. It meant you weren’t rolling downhill. Character-wise, it meant you were one honest hombre. But now, life is just a series of new levels to be taken to. I wish we were level-headed enough to simply stay on the level we’re on, once things have levelled out.
When Abe and I were young, if we said to each other, “Good luck with that,” we honestly meant we hoped the other guy succeeded at whatever challenge he was up against. Now, the person who utters this expression is not wishing you luck at all, but telling you that you haven’t a hope of accomplishing your goal, and they’re kind of glad you won’t. So why don’t they say, “Bad luck with that!?” In the same vein is, “Yeh, like that’s going to happen!” (Clue: It’s not going to happen.)
Here are a few other puzzlers. “Bang, done!” What? “Done and done!” If something is done, can it be done again? “Not a problem.” What happened to, “No problem?”
And why, oh why, is everyone trying so hard to “get ‘er done?” I remember when teams used to lose hockey games. Now, they just don’t get ’er done. Maybe they forgot to say, before the game, “We can do this.” Or the captain failed to tell them, “We’re good to go.”
But I have got to be honest with you. I miss the days when things were “great”, “terrific”, “good”, “wonderful”. Now everything’s just “sweeeet!!!” and the sound of that word is making me sour.
I know I shouldn’t brag, but if you were in my position, I am pretty sure you would too.
I don’t know if anyone other than me can claim to have the cleanest furnace ducts in North America, but I do.
For years, duct cleaning companies – there must be hundreds of them – have been calling me a couple times a month, asking if they could come to my house and clean my ducts. I started off getting into little arguments with the callers but finally gave up and moved to a new strategy.
“Hi, I’m Simon and my company can give you a fantastic deal on cleaning your ducts.”
“Sorry, Simon, but we just had them done.”
At first, I used to say we had them cleaned last week, but that seemed like too much of a coincidence and caused my salesmen to question my ability to tell the truth. So, I started using “a few weeks ago” and now have settled on one month.
The words “a month ago” trigger a lot of “clicks” on the other end of the line, no goodbyes offered, which leads me to believe that some duct cleaners can be a little rude and maybe should clean up their acts if not my ducts. Or maybe they start crying when they get off the phone with me and give their tear ducts a good workout. But I did get a polite fellow last week who seemed sincere in his hope that my ducts were properly cleaned at a good price.
So, in the past few years, I have had my ducts cleaned a month ago dozens of times.
And I am here to testify, that it is very important to keep your furnace ducts sparkling clean. In fact, I may need to have them done again soon, a month ago would be excellent, so am hoping for another phone call in the not-too-distant future.
This week, Canadian Lawyer magazine published a list of the best and worst judges across the country and editorial writers have been lining up to condemn the legal profession ever since. Judges, the newspapers say, are in the business of dispensing justice. They shouldn’t be involved in popularity contests to win the approval of lawyers.
But maybe we’ve been a little too quick to jump at the throats of the lawyers. Because, after all, they’re about to get as good as they’ve given. Next week’s issue of The Average Joe magazine, coincidentally, will carry an article about the best and worst lawyers in the country. Following is a sample of some the ones the magazine says are the worst.
Mr. Bob N. Weeve
The lawyer who said his client didn’t mean to toss his best friend over Niagara Falls, arguing the accused had been momentarily overcome by an attack of Rushing River Fever, an obscure disease which grips its victims with a terrible urge to throw other human beings into large bodies of water.
Ms. Sue De Panzoffum
The lawyer who acknowledged that, yes, her client did confess to stealing 47 television sets during a one-night wild spree of break-ins, but who went on to argue that when he was a boy, his parents abused him by denying him his own television in his bedroom. He finally snapped and was simply acting out the juvenile anger brought about by this childhood deprivation and which had been festering inside him all these years.
Ms. Bea Leevit-Iffucan
The lawyer who said that, incredible as it may seem, her client was indeed sleepwalking when he got up in the morning, went downtown and bought a gun, hijacked a bus, shot up the town, took four hostages, burned down city hall, stole a car and smashed into the mayor’s house, finally waking up in the cruiser on the way to the police station and saying, “Hey, wait a minute. What’s going on here?”
Mr. I. Deltok
The lawyer who said that, while it was certainly a rotten shame that Junior had blasted Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Sis, Rover and his poor Aunt Bessie out of their beds in the middle of the night, to punish the unfortunate, misunderstood lad for his one, momentary mistake might rob him forever of the feelings of dignity and self-worth which he would need in his struggle to carve out a useful life for himself.
Mr. Bill E. Dinghart
The lawyer who said it was pretty evident to him that most of the people with whom young Brutus Bilgewater had had anything to do with in the past five years before he blew up the courthouse had been guilty of name discrimination. Studies show, the lawyer said, that less than one-tenth of one percent of all jobs in Canada are held by people named Brutus and an astonishing 99.9 per cent of all jobs are held by people of other names. Quotas are needed, he said, so that by the year 2000, every employer with more than 10 employees has at least one Brutus on staff.
On the bright side, the best lawyer award went to Ms. Dawn Toourth, the solicitor who told her clients to quit their scrappin’, forget about suing each other into the poorhouse and go home and grow up.
At least that’s what she told me when I wanted to sue my neighbour who I saw peeing behind his shed in broad daylight, thereby robbing me of my ability to enjoy my property and probably contaminating the groundwater in the area.
I really thought $50 million might ease the distress.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have flossed my teeth in my life. But the calculator on my phone does not have enough digits to count the number of times my dentists have told me to floss in my life.
Now, there appears to be proof, according to a study, that flossing does a person who has teeth in his head very little good if any at all. Meanwhile, the $2 billion floss industry has spent decades making me feel guilty about not sticking a bunch of string in my mouth and flailing away at my gums till they bleed.
I have only this remarkably intelligent comment to make:
“Yay!”
This is one small step for man, one giant leap for lazy oafs.
So I am going to draw up a list of all the other things I am supposed to do but often refuse to do, and check all these things off as future studies debunk them too.
This is my partial list so far.
Eight glasses of water a day. I have tried that once or twice and my tiny bladder practically exploded. I had pee coming out of my wherever.
Skim milk. I once blindfolded myself and did a taste test. One glass held skim milk, the other, chilled rabbit piss. I am not a stupid man, but I could not tell the difference. (As an aside, do you have any idea how long it takes your rabbit to fill a glass with its urine? Me neither. I buy mine at the farmers’ market.)
Walk your ass off every day. No, seriously. Walk until your ass falls off. Those of you who own a large ass will be glad for what will be a longer time with your ass than the skinny ones will have.
Eat chicken. Then some more chicken. The next day, chicken. On the weekends, treat yourself to chicken. A tasty bedtime snack: chicken on a cracker. If this gets boring, eat fish, but only if you can find a way to prepare it so it tastes like chicken.
Enjoy life more. While flossing, eating chicken, drinking rabbit piss, walking your ass off and swallowing a full barrel of water every day.
Further updates to the list as more examples of soon-to-be debunked recommended health practices occur to me.
My dog Toby is 13 inches high. And I like to sit in a lawnchair in my garage with the door open so I can watch life as it passes by. Toby likes to do that too.
However, some of the life that passes by arrives in the form of squirrels, which Toby likes to chase. Sometimes they run right across the street with Toby right behind them. This is a recipe for disaster.
Nothing to do but to build a gate which would go across the garage door opening and keep my critter in. So, I did.
First I measured the height of the dog, then went to the board store. Brought home a bunch of lumber. Toby watched me construct his prison.
The first gate was too high and other family members complained it was too hard to step over when they entered and exited the garage. So I took it apart.
Made another one. A really nice one. I bought two lengths of lattice and stapled them onto the frame. Then I painted the whole affair blue to match the house. The height was acceptable.
I sat down in my chair to watch life go by while Toby sat on the floor beside me. My neighbour came over to inform me that the dog would easily jump over the fence.
My neighbour revels in breaking news like this to me. She would gladly tell me I had a huge whitehead on my nose that was ready to pop and that it looked like hell.
I have not murdered my neighbour yet but only because I haven’t been able to devise a painful enough way to do it.
So my neighbour with the death wish shambled back to her coven and I watched Toby as he tried to look through the lattice. I could see that the darned holes were too small and he couldn’t get a very good view of the squirrels he was never again going to chase.
So I took the gate to the backyard and ripped off the lattice. Went to the board store for some more wood and restyled the whole affair to make it easier for my dog to see all the rodents go flitting by. It seemed to be acceptable so I painted it up.
My neighbour came over to tell me the slats in the new gate were too wide and that Toby would squeeze right through. I calculated that if I squeezed my whitehead at just the right angle, the contents might hit her in the eye.
So the summer went by and man and dog sat in the garage. I watched the young women from the fitness centre next door jog by in their ponytails and spandex and Toby watched the impudent squirrels scoot across the driveway.
Life was good.
Three weeks ago, we were packing up the car for our annual vacation to a hut situated in the middle of a bear compound up north because we don’t want to die natural deaths and as he always does, poor Toby lost his mind. He was sure we were going to leave him behind.
The garage door was open and we all stepped over the gate as we hustled stuff from house to car. I wandered aimlessly with a can of bear repellant in my hand while Toby continued freaking out.
But Toby is a fast learner and he stood in all his panic, watching us step over the gate. And then, in a style reminiscent of every mountain goat that has ever scaled a hillside leaping from rock to rock, Toby backed up, put it into gear and flew over all that lovely painted lumber I had bought at the board store.
Next week, I am putting up an electric fence. Not to keep Toby in. That’s hopeless. To keep my neighbour (and the bears) out.
And once again, I thank the Creator for all the good sense and balanced thinking I was blessed with.
And for the joggers from the fitness centre next door.
We’re getting a fried chicken restaurant in my town and to be honest, I should be happier about this than I am. In fact, I am a bit on edge about it.
Apparently, the food at this up-and-coming American restaurant is so good, people go crazy when they can’t get it. On Monday night, in Houston, for example, an armed group of people rushed the door of one of these dining establishments demanding chicken sandwiches.
Restaurant employees reported a mob of two women, three men and a baby were told at the drive-thru that the chicken sandwiches were sold out, a bit of bad news that apparently triggered the would-be customers, especially the baby who threw a total fit, over the top, in fact, even for a baby.
That is when the hungry gang took matters into their own hands and tried to get inside the restaurant. One man pulled a gun on the employees, but a restaurant worker was able to lock them out.
When you work at one of these restaurants, you need to be skilled at thwarting attacks by armed mobs. I am sure their pay scale takes into account the potential dangers of serving up dead chickens to terrorists.
Call me chicken, no, don’t call me that, when discussing this serious food-service matter. Maybe coward would be better terminology. But I don’t want to be walking past this new restaurant in my town some night and have to put up with armed would-be diners, especially baby diners.
I can just see me getting involved somehow, as I pretty much get involved in everything, and I don’t think that would turn out well for anyone. In fact, if I was really hungry, who knows what side I might be on? I might take the baby hostage and demand four chicken sandwiches as ransom. Could happen.
This would seem to be out of character given the mild-mannered person I present myself as, but hunger has often had the effect of changing a person.
This new dining place is a fast-food restaurant. Normally, that would describe how quickly a hungry customer can get his food. But in this case, my guess is “fast” would describe the speed at which you would have to run away after pulling a gun on the staff, as law enforcement will try to get there as fast as they can.
And it has been my experience that running from the scene of a crime with a baby in your arms can truly complicate the getaway.
This has been an exciting week for me. The other day, I bought a lovely wall calendar for 2022.
Just in time for September.
It’s sort of like getting your winter tires installed in April but these are the reasons the expression better late than never was invented.
I walked by the calendar store now and then this year and had my eye on a beautiful big calendar picturing a dog for every month. But the store wanted $24.99 plus tax for the privilege of looking at lovely photos of other people’s dogs. I thought, and my thoughts are usually bang on as I have a good brain, I can look at my own dog any time I want for free so why lay out all that money.
But last week, there it was. Marked down to $1.99 plus tax so into the store I ran before some other bargain hunter scooped it up. My find cost me $2.25. As I believe the world would be a better place if everything cost $2.25, I was very pleased with myself though I did feel a bit sorry for the store.
I should invite the owner over to have a look at my dog.
For free.
My calendar is open for the next four months.
And yes, I know I am in the company of those who eat their food after the best before dates but I grew up before best befores and somehow am still alive. We used to crack the lid on a jar, stick our noses in and take a sniff. If we didn’t faint, we ate whatever was inside. In the years since, I have dug out many a green section from my bricks of cheese.
Some readers might say the best before date on a wall calendar happens long before September 1 and even suggest the calendar should be hung on the wall on January 1. I am sure they have good reasons to think this as well as $24.99 plus tax in their pocket to spend, but I never want to get above my raisin’.
On Friday afternoon, a firetruck in my small city left its station, siren at full blast. Cars and trucks pulled over to let it pass and pedestrians ran for their lives. The truck was headed for what has now become known as The Great Albert Street Inferno. Through the red light at a main intersection it plowed on its way to Jim Hagarty’s house.
Pushing around, with a stick, the embers of a small backyard fire he had going, straw-hatted Hagarty, as he is happily uninformed of most things, was blissfully unaware of this developing drama, until two young firefighters were standing in front of him, scolding him for having a fire. He explained he had just burned some twigs, branches, and maple leaves, but they had had reports of smoke and someone had called to complain. While they watched, the owner of the above-mentioned backyard was forced to put out his dying cinders with the water from a garden hose, all the while thinking, “I was tending fires while you guys were still filling your diapers.”
He was handed a sheet explaining the backyard fire rules (a sheet that anarchist Hagarty will use to help start his next fire), was wished a good day and was left alone.
Allergic to being scolded, a little thing left over from boyhood, and suddenly feeling surrounded by traitorous neighbours on a street where he has lived for 33 years, Hagarty went Full Idiot, two threat levels up from his usual Idling Idiot, and was determined to find the bugger who had ratted him out, with the purpose of asking that traitor why he or she hadn’t just wandered over to his place to find out what was going on.
Hagarty’s (true, accurate) recollection of events was this: He filled a barrel with twigs, newspapers and leaves and set it ablaze, as he has done dozens of times. For a few minutes, a white, ordourless smoke drifted westward across his lawn and when the wind changed, eastward over his fence to dissipate into his birch tree at the front of his house. This segment of The Great Albert Street Inferno lasted about ten minutes.
The next day, in full investigative mode, with rusty skills left over from his days as a newspaper reporter, Hagarty began recreating the events of the day before. He interviewed neighbours, none of whom gave any hint that they were the ones that shamefully offered Hagarty up to the Fire Gods. In fact, none of them even witnessed the Great Inferno. Not one of them had seen any smoke. It was almost as though the Inferno had never taken place at all. However, they did emerge from their houses to watch the firetruck and its occupants descend on poor, unsuspecting Hagarty. That part of the event was real.
Here is the full story that emerged from Hagarty’s intensive investigation, a story that was put together with great detail 24 hours after the Apocalypse On Albert.
At some point on Friday afternoon, a thick black smoke that gave off a strange, hideous smell, billowed up above Hagarty’s fence and made its way down to the end of the street, entering the open windows of about 15 houses along the way, even the houses with their windows closed. Neighbours, young and old, were practically losing consciousness from the smoke. Cats and dogs were falling over half dead in their tracks. Goldfish were floating bellies up to the tops of their aquariums. Roses instantly withered on their vines.
At a retail business next door to Hagarty, people were emerging from their cars to go shopping and catching a whiff of the smoke, began coughing and covering their mouths as they hurried for the door. Whenever the door opened, great billows of thick black smoke entered the store. And the poor neighbours were left with this one big question: What had happened to the good judgment of Old Jim who had never before done this sort of thing? (A check with that business showed the owners knew nothing about a fire.)
Since then, Old Jim has dialled himself back from Full Idiot to Idling Idiot again, as he sits in his lawnchair on Sunday, a sadder but wiser man. Just once, he thinks, he would like to be a happier but foolisher man.
Maybe some day.
Some bright, fireless day.
As for future fires, they will be scheduled for 4 a.m., when thick, black smoke is difficult to see against the dark night sky.
I am not sure I have the required writing skills to tell this story as delicately as it should be told, but here is my best shot at it.
Our little dog Toby is almost stone cold deaf. The 12-year-old poodle has been gradually losing his hearing over the past few months and two events in the past week confirm he is hearing very little.
Toby used to become frantic during thunderstorms. I became his saviour and he would come to me for comfort. Sometimes he ended up under the covers at night where he stayed at least till the storm had passed.
But last week, we had a bit of a thunderstorm and it never even woke him up. Two nights later, pre-Canada Day fireworks were set off in our neighbourhood and they didn’t disturb him at all. We used to dread local fireworks. He suffered badly till they ended.
So in that respect, the little guy’s life has become a bit easier. Even the ringing of the front door bell drove him crazy. Not any more.
This afternoon, he and I sat under the maple tree in the backyard. I browsed the news on my phone while he slept on the paving stones at my feet. Sound asleep. Still deaf.
Now here is the delicate part. I had eaten a hearty lunch and combined with the pop, I began to feel a familiar rumble in the part of my body were rumbles sometimes take place and I remembered my Mother’s advice: “Wherever ye be, let your wind blow free.”
I did as she had told me to do.
I am not sure if this is something anyone would want to brag about, but I looked at the little dog and watched his head shoot up at the sound of me letting my wind blow free.
Two things.
Apparently Toby is not completely deaf yet.
And it seems my body is able to produce sounds louder than a thunderstorm, fireworks and a doorbell.
There aren’t a lot of areas where I excel anymore, so, unashamed, I will accept the ribbon for this accomplishment.
Besides, Mom used to often exclaim after one of her seven children had freed their wind, “Well, that was better out than an eye.”
As proof that I have always taken my Mother’s advice in this area, I still have two eyes.
The Chevy was parked behind the Pontiac in the driveway and as I was loading up the Chev with two barrels of yard waste destined for the dump, I noticed that I had left my work gloves on the hood of the Pontiac. I thought about grabbing them but figured I wouldn’t need them just to empty a couple of plastic barrels.
Ten minutes later, mission accomplished, I walked up to the Pontiac to retrieve my gloves. They were gone. So I began the everywhere search. In the front of the garage. In the back of the garage. In the Pontiac. In the Chev. In the backyard. Everywhere in the backyard. In the shed.
Nothing.
I repeated the search, leaving no stone unturned and finally, I went into the house and announced that somebody had stolen my gloves. This brought on a lot of oh nos and people started expressing anxiety about strangers walking onto our property to steal our stuff.
For me, below the anxiety, was a bit of anger. My gloves were gone and forevermore I would have to check out the hands of the 35,000 people in my city to see if any of them were wearing my gloves.
I know practically everyone alive at this moment has bigger problems than this right now, but in my world, this was a four out of ten. So, to help forget my troubles, I took the dog for his noon hour walk. Up the sidewalk we strolled and on our way back, I thought I saw two strange objects lying on the street up ahead. I hurried up and dragged the slowpoke dog who was still sniffing up a storm and sure enough, there were my gloves, not far from my driveway.
Whoever had stolen them must have felt guilty and just threw them on the pavement and took off. Or, perhaps, the gloves flew off the hood of the Chevy on the way to the dump. But why would a troublemaker (or prankster) take the gloves off the hood of the Pontiac and place them on the hood of the Chevy?
Wow! Strange doings.
I don’t think I will ever get to the bottom of this. Someone mentioned maybe they were on the hood of the Chevy all along but I know that this was not the case. Definitely not.
It’s getting to be a scary world out there but I am just glad to have my favourite gloves back again.
If you find any mistakes in this essay, it could be because i am typing it out with my gloves on. It will be a while before I go anywhere without them again.
And yes, I have lost a bit of my wide-eyed innocence about the people in my town. There are a few gloves-thieving deplorables walking among us, it seems.
Sitting in the leather recliner, dog serenely in lap, phone in hand, reading the news about the Idiot for the Ages, when the dog launches from the lap and takes off after the cat, for apparently no reason at all.
Except this time there is a reason.
“Oh no,” comes the alarm. “There is a dead mole on the carpet.”
The household is obsessed with keeping the carpets completely free of dead animals, so panic sets in.
Swear words escape lips at this news and, naturally, in the commotion, the left lens pops out of the new eyeglasses, disappearing down the side fold of the chair. Many things have gone down that fold over the years, only some have been retrieved. Luckily, the lens hadn’t hit rock bottom but it was heading that way.
Unable to see ahead more than three inches, the hunt begins for the handy eyeglass kit with its screws and tiny screwdrivers. Blindness requires the head to be plunged into the junk drawer in search of the kit. Remarkably, it appears quickly.
The rodent, meanwhile, remains deceased on the living room carpet. The need to dispose of it outweighs the restoration of eyesight so double plastic grocery haulers are pressed into use to form a body bag for the poor creature. The cat will dine on mice all day long but he draws the line at moles. He is not to be blamed as moles do not appear to be eatable things. But at least a lifeless, bloodless body is not too terrifying to deal with.
Back at the kitchen table to put a screw into the eyeglasses. The original one is long gone so a replacement from the kit is pressed into use. It is too long and too thick but with the application of elbow grease, a half hour of time and twenty well-chosen swear words, the larger screw has managed to force its way into the too-small hole and the human lookers are once again able to see.
All of this activity has produced a blistering headache. A new bottle of painkillers is fetched. The manufacturer, just for fun, sealed the bottle so well it cannot be opened. As in never, ever. A sharp-bladed knife is needed to release the tiny pills.
A semblance of calm has finally been restored. The dog is hiding behind the couch, spooked by all the drama. The murderous cat is downstairs behind the water heater, probably chuckling to itself. The mole is on its way to rodent heaven.
And a few minutes more phone time back in the leather chair reveals the Idiot for the Ages is still an idiot.
I don’t mean to freak anybody out, but I am actively searching for a new place in the world to relocate. I live three miles from the hospital in which I was born and therefore, over my 72 years, I have never gotten very far in life.
Time to spread my wings!
But there are so many places where I could take up residence I am finding it almost impossible to choose.
I love Scotland and can see myself there. In a little place called Dull. It is possible I might be dull enough for there, but I worry there is a total absence of excitement in a place with that name. Same thing with Boring, Oregon and Nothing, Arizona. I’m all for peace and quiet but I sometimes crave a little noise, at least. A summer circus, a holiday parade. Maybe, as I am just a regular guy, I would fit in with the people of Normal, Illinois.
Then there are places with a little too much oomph for me. Rough and Ready, California, for example. Same with Hot Coffee, Mississippi, Batman, Turkey, and Jot-Em-Down, Texas.
Some places I will avoid as the names just kind of turn me off, for no particular reason, I suppose. I don’t want to have to tell friends and family I am living in Poo, India, Windpassing, Austria, Anus in France, or Fartsville, Virginia, Shitterton, England, Slickpoo, Idaho, or Poopsdale, Indiana.
And I have pretty much ruled out moving to Middelfart, Denmark. Town names get shortened, sometimes, and I don’t want to have to tell people that I am in Midfart.
As an Eyeore sort of guy, I maybe could see myself in Pity Me, England, or Lake Disappointment, Australia, or Dum Dum, India.
And I have decided to definitely not go to Hell, Michigan, even though, during my career as a journalist, I was often told to go to Hell. And I am staying away from the state of Maine and its places called Bald Head, Deadmans Corner, Suckerville, and Purgatory. Same with Cranky Corner, Lousiana, though you never know, I might fit right in there.
Little Heaven in Delaware might be okay, but maybe I think it’s too soon for that. Perhaps I would be welcomed in Humansville, Missouri.
And now that I think about it, five miles away from my current home in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, is a little crossroads called Harmony.
Harmony is small. But maybe, at this stage in my life, I could use a little harmony as I go about my days. In fact, it’s a ten-minute drive away. Maybe I don’t have to move at all.
Maybe I will start a movement to have Stratford renamed Staying Put.
When I go out in the woods, there are a few things I want to see. Let me correct that: a few things I DEMAND to see.
There have to be trees, at the minimum. What is a freakin’ bush without trees? And I expect there to be lots of amazing birds in those trees. And they’d better be chirping their beaks off.
I also want to see snakes in the undergrowth, as well as chipmunks and squirrels. And I think my time has been wasted if I haven’t been able to take a selfie with a fox, a coyote or a wolf. Maybe even a mountain lion.
But I am guaranteed to lose my gosh darn mind if I go for a stroll in a forest and don’t encounter a bear. A grizzly bear to be precise. Just one goddam grizzly bear is all I expect. More than one if they’re handy, but there better at least be one available for viewing.
To walk through a bush and not run into bears is like going golfing after the season has ended and finding there are no pins in the holes on any of the greens.
I could write down a list of big problems in the world but you and I both know what they are. Maybe you haven’t spent much time thinking about it, but bear-free bushes belong on that list. In fact, I am going to guess that you don’t give a hoot about it but your lack of concern should not diminish my anxiety surrounding this issue.
However, there is at least one person in this world who is of like mind and I hope one day to meet that enlightened soul. This week a tourist left some feedback for Yellowstone lodge workers after encountering zero bears during a pricey visit to the U.S. park.
“Please train your bears to be where guests can see them,” read a note shared by a Reddit user on Wednesday. “This was an expensive trip to not get to see bears.”
Finally, someone has had the courage to come out and say it. And to agree with my point of view. After seeing that note, I will bet that there is nothing those Yellowstone lodge workers want more than to have that tourist encounter a few grizzlies on his or her next visit. Maybe they might suggest the tourist forward some of their clothing to the park so the workers can introduce the bears to their scent so their next visit will be more fulfilling. Or at least filling (for the bears).
I wonder if this was the same tourist who wrote to a municipality (true story) complaining that wildlife such as moose and deer were wandering across highways wherever they felt like crossing and not at the sections of the roads where signs showing wildlife crossing points had been erected.
In that case, I think it’s the stupid darned animals that are to be blamed. I think they know right from wrong but just ignore the signs on purpose.
I hope my tourist friend above, when they’re done associating with the grizzlies in Yellowstone, get to meet some good old Canadian moose. Maybe they don’t obey all the signs but goddam it, they’re friendly.
I watched the kids dive in the water off the dock for almost an hour. And the big black old shepherd-border collie cross had a great time jumping in after them.
Koda (short for Killer Old Dog Attacker) loves the water, especially the splash created by the swimmers. From my vantage point, it appeared as though the dog was jumping beside the divers when they left the dock. So eventually, I thought I’d invite Koda to jump in beside me.
I called him over and jumped in. As the water closed over my head, so did something else: a 70-pound dog. Bingo! Right on my wet noggin landed pooch and almost immediately I felt the pain.
But something funny happened as I stumbled my way out of the water. Koda was busy watching the other swimmers but when he saw me leaving the lake, he came over for a few seconds to check me out. It was as though he wanted to make sure I was OK.
The nine-hour trip home from our friends’ cottage was a long one as I felt every bump and swerve in the road. I had a mild case of whiplash following a car accident years ago; that is what this felt like.
Today, however, neck and feelings are on the mend. I am, however, haunted by all the laughter the sight of a dog jumping on my head created in the other cottagers, including three members of my own family.
Nevertheless, I am considering a lawsuit against the dog but my family says it was all my fault. Koda wasn’t jumping in beside the divers but right on them. The only reason they got away unharmed was they were diving in and swimming away quickly and not jumping in and staying in one place, as I did.
I disagree and will say so in my affidavit. I might also sue the other cottagers for not providing me with the information I could have used before I went swimming with the dog.
My bucket list isn’t a long and complicated one. A couple of entries involve a movie star, a Rolls Royce and a credit card with no limit. But nowhere on there is listed having my head jumped on by a dog in a lake.
Twice a day, I like to sit under my maple tree in the backyard and enjoy a soda pop.
This should not be too much to want but somehow it is, thanks to a bee that also loves soda pop.
When I snap open a can, I have three minutes to enjoy my drink after which the experience becomes an exercise in survival. It takes this bee – a yellow jacket or whatever the hell it is – that long to find me, but find me he always does. And he attacks the opening in my pop can with no mercy.
I have devised ways to protect my pop. I have a flat surface piece of wood I place over the can after each sip. Today, I discovered that he is somehow able to wriggle his way under the wood.
And he discovered something interesting too. Today, for the first time, he realized that my lips are covered in pop after each drink. So, nothing to do but to attack the moist lower face of the man in the lawnchair. To fend off the assault, after each sip, I learned to curl my lips back into my mouth to remove the temptation but for the bee, that just seemed to heighten the excitement.
I fully expect, before summer ends, that the bee will find its way into my mouth as it explores where the pop goes after I sip it. I am dreading the day this happens but I am no stranger to the experience of swallowing flying creatures. Out in the field on the farm, I used to give open-air concerts as I putted along on a tractor pulling a plow behind me. Every once in a while, in the middle of a wonderful rendition of a Beatles song, an actual beetle or moth or fly would go sailing past my teeth, never to be seen again.
However, given all I’ve endured, I have never swallowed a bee.
And this might come as a surprise to you, but I don’t want to swallow a bee.
“Why don’t you drink your pop in the house?” you ask, ignoring the part about my owning a maple tree. When you have a maple tree, there is only one thing you can do on a hot summer’s day and that is to sit under it.
I am sure this is not true for every senior, but it seems to me that when people get old, some things in the world that everyone accepts almost without question begin to baffle them. They run to keep up, but can’t quite do it.
My Dad could take apart almost any farm machine you could find including a tractor and put it back together again. And yet, he never operated a “stereo” and was bewildered by the VCR. And cars even got beyond him before he left this world in 1984.
Things were a bit simpler with cars in his earlier days. One of the ones he owned needed painting so he bought some housepaint, grabbed a brush and painted it.
I’m still in the stage where I’m running to keep up but I can already feel myself falling behind. And among the things that remind me that the future belongs to the next generations are drones. A woman was sunbathing topless on the balcony of her apartment last week when a drone hovered above her, probably shooting pictures and video. And a police force in the United States has been given the go-ahead to outfit its drones with tasers and guns.
Meanwhile a Canadian company has taken out a patent on its sky elevator, a free-standing pneumatic (think bicycle tire) tube that will stretch at least 20 kilometres into the sky and get tourists and astronauts close to outer space.
I doubt I will ever “pilot” a drone and I know I won’t be riding any elevators into space. I might, however, be able to sunbathe topless. If you need to photograph that from the sky, make sure your camera has a wide angle lens.
Borrowing a phrase from a ’70s TV sci-fi, people often say “beam me up Scotty” to indicate the world is getting too complicated for them and they’re ready to go to the next dimension. Now, they might actually be able to achieve their dream if they simply buy a ticket on the sky elevator.
Many years ago, I started writing little stories which were published in newspapers I worked for. I didn’t get much reaction to them from readers until one day a friend told me I have a great sense of humour and I should inject that into my writing. I did as he said and suddenly, I started hearing from readers.
I write a lot and some of what I write is lame, some is funny and some is very funny. But I might have to close up shop for the physical safety of my readers. They leave me little notes and describe what happens to them when they read my stuff. It is shocking.
For some reason, some of my women readers end up “rolling on the floor” laughing. I don’t mind if they roll on the floor, but I worry they might roll through an open door to the basement and go flying down the steps or bump into the stove and spill a pot of hot spaghetti on themselves.
Other people tell me they “laughed my ass off” at something I wrote. I don’t even want to picture that and I can’t begin to imagine how that would even be possible to laugh your ass off.
Others tell me they “laughed my head off” and this is similarly disturbing. But a compliment, in a way. How hard would a reader have to laugh to have his head fly off his shoulders?
Then there are a few people who “almost wet myself” and I am going to suggest they are holding back. Some of them actually did the deed and it might be necessary for me to post a warning to folks that they should don a set of adult diapers before they read one of my pieces.
Also disturbing are those who laugh so hard their coffee shoots out their nose. I imagine some pretty messed up computer screens and hope I am never held responsible for repairs.
But what I don’t like to hear is that “I laughed so hard, I cried”. I have never wanted anyone to start crying after they read a story of mine and I am sorry if it is happening.
The worst-case scenario, however, are the ones who say they “laughed so hard I almost died.” Now this is where I draw the line. If readers are going to start dying because of words I write, then I will have to give it up.
So far, I hear from readers who “almost died” but somewhere there might actually be someone whose coffee flew through his nose, he fell down and rolled on the floor, his ass fell off, then his head disappeared and at that point, he died.
I guess there are worse ways to go than to die laughing and maybe it will never come to that at all because laughter is supposed to be the best medicine.
I really hope that is true because then I could start charging dispensing fees.
Someone recently delivered to me the unsolicited opinion that I am too sentimental. I flatly deny the assertion but if I even thought there was some small bit of truth to it I would plead guilty to the charge.
This got me thinking about sentimentality and I began looking back to what seemed an easier time when no one would think to tell a man he was too sentimental. A time when a penny was a penny and could buy most of what a kid might need. When $500 would buy a brand new car and $1,000 a house, $4,000 a farm. A time when a man could take a dollar into a bar and stumble out ten beers later with his eyes looking in two different directions and his legs operating as they did when he was learning to walk. A time when the woman you would marry sat for years one pew behind you in church, when every house had one single clock and not twenty and when fast food was food you ate in a hurry, not food prepared quickly.
These were the good old days, I guess, and while I remember them, I don’t miss them. I am surprised to learn there is someone spreading the notion that I do. As we used to say in the old days to people like that, ‘Pshaw!”
It’s time once again for the annual Hagarty News Awards, recognizing those humans and non-humans who have made for interesting headlines lately. The winners were chosen by an esteemed judge who edits a weekly newspaper in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, and immediately go into the running for the $100,000 first prize to be given out on June 31 in the new $400-million twin icepad, recreational, agricultural, swimming, archery, fencing, mountain climbing, scuba diving, lawn bowling, jousting, horseback riding and professional tiddly winks complex soon to be built in the city.
Here are the latest winners.
The Hagarty for the Person With the Most Nerve goes to the man in Anchorage, Alaska, who recently smashed his car into the side of the Motor Vehicle Division building that issues drivers’ licences. He then got out of his auto, walked into the building, smacked down $25 on the counter, renewed his licence, climbed back in his car and drove off.
For the Dumbest Person on the Planet, the Hagarty goes to the woman in Nashville who was having an affair and decided a good idea would be to have her boyfriend live in a closet of her home, where she and her husband still dwelled. The husband, however, disqualified himself for this award by discovering his wife’s secret lover when he heard the sneaky gal pal snoring his head off in the closet. The boyfriend placed a close second in the competition. The husband had been in the running for the prize as he lived for quite some time with his rival in the closet.
The award for the Only Sane People Left in the World goes to the 50 souls in Madison, Wisconsin – male and female – who donned matrimonial regalia recently and ran through town in the first Running of the Brides. Billing themselves as a “drinking group with a running problem”, these folks also hold other themed runs, one where they dress up as pirates and an annual run where everyone sports red dresses.
The Hagarty for Those With Not Enough To Do goes to the people in Shanghai, China who turn out in big numbers to watch the Pig Olympics. The perky porkers, trained from shortly after birth, run over hurdles, jump through hoops, dive, and swim in shows twice a day. Canadian pork producers looking for help with their litters would be well advised to advertise in the Shanghai Times.
The My Kind of Guys Awards go to a baggage handler in Sydney, Australia, who was caught on tape opening a suitcase, donning the head of a camel’s costume he found inside, and walking around the airport with it on, and to the Harvard University professor in Rockport, Mass., who has been accused of trying to steal a farmer’s horse manure.
The Hagarty for the Unluckiest Guy Around goes to the British motorist who was driving home from work near London with his car window wound down when a frozen sausage flew in and broke his nose.
The Cleanest Person Award goes to a woman named Fromal in Hampton, Virginia, who was trapped in her bathtub for five days, unable to lift herself out, raising the question of whether or not there was full Fromal nudity involved. When she was finally rescued, she didn’t ask for food but wanted a cigarette and a soda instead. Who wouldn’t? I ask for exactly that when the firefighters finally get me out of my tub. Unfortunately, this is the second time this has happened to her, begging the question of whether or not she just enjoys the attention. I know I do.
And the Hagarty Award for Heroics goes not to a human this time, but to the dog in Wales which, after seeing its mate fall over a cliff, ran until it found some humans and directed them to his buddy, which was rescued and not too badly hurt.
Personally, I hope the dog wins the hundred thousand. I will give him a bag of milkbones. He is darned smart, but I’m betting it will look to him like a hundred thousand in that bag.
