Author: Jim Hagarty

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.)

©2016 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

We all want things, lots of things.

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.

Bring it on!

©2024 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

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.

I wasn’t called on to hold anything straight.

©2024 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

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.

I miss the old toaster.

And my $54.

©2022 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

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).

©2013 Jim Hagarty

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.)

©2016 Jim Hagarty