By Jim Hagarty
God.
God is.
God is great.
My God is great.
My God is greater
Than your God is.
Your God is greater
Than my God is.
My God, let’s fight
To see the greater God.
Won’t that be great?
When it ends we’ll say,
“Oh great God,
What have we done?”
By Jim Hagarty
Two months ago today I started this blog, Lifetime Sentences. There will be a parade in your town this afternoon.
As a writer, I should be able to easily describe how I have found the blogging experience so far, but it isn’t that simple. It seems to be part job, part game. There isn’t much I can compare it to. Playing in the traffic on a busy highway, maybe?
Each day, when I get out of bed, the blog sits waiting. Only embers burning now in the fireplace. It awaits new material to combust.
So, I sit down at the keyboard and try to find a few more blogs for the fire.
The biggest thing I notice is how fast the fuel gets eaten up before more is needed. My big worry is one day I will go to the woodshed to find the pile is empty and gone.
But so far, so good.
By Jim Hagarty
I met with a skin specialist in another city a few weeks ago.
She is a very busy doctor and while she always gives me the attention I need, she is forever in a hurry to get to her next patient and I have to be on top of my game to remember everything she says to me. As it always happens, I have already forgotten a few of her instructions.
That day, just before she left the office, she wrote some things down on a notepad with “Clarus – Isotretinoin capsules ISP” at the top of the page. I stuffed it in my pocket.
Twenty-two days later, I found the paper and studied what she had written on it. I could make no sense of it: HBA/Advanced, BMos. What was this? A cream? A spray? A pill? It was not a prescription, so it would be over the counter stuff, but what stuff?
I went into my pharmacy and handed a woman the note. Soon, pharmacists were gathered around, sounding out the words. HBA/Advanced. BMos. They searched back through their professional memories to try to find a medical match, but just couldn’t do it. As they were sounding it out, a vague memory started to creep through my brain.
The doctor had asked after my son and daughter and we got talking about possible university programs. She highly recommended two programs – HBA/Advanced and BMos – at Western University in London and she scribbled them down on a notepad for me.
I had no choice but to call off the investigation by the kind pharmacists who by this time were probably questioning their own competence. They handed me back my note but wrote on it “Western University programs” in the event that I wandered back in with the same problem a week or two from now.
“Could you help me find my way home?” I said, embarrassed. I could hear them all laughing as I left.
At least I could still hear them.
My next appointment is with a hearing specialist on Monday.
From the camera of my son, Chris.
By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker
There was a young chicken named Gwen
Who had a thing for a rooster called Ken.
So they cockled and doodled
And fuddled and foodled
And now have a family of ten.
By Jim Hagarty
I remember thinking,
When my friend and I were boys,
That this would last forever,
Outside playing with our toys.
What could ever happen
To bring this to an end?
Such was the boyhood bond between
Me and my closest friend.
But time and life have sent us both
Down two divergent lanes.
And though we still communicate
It’s never quite the same.
He has his wife and family
And troubles, just like me.
I hardly ever see him
I miss him, don’t you see.
Those summers when we played outside
With all our favourite toys
Were special times that now are gone
Between two kindred boys.
By Jim Hagarty
A favourite expression that is used to explain another person’s crazy notions is that he must have rocks in his head. How rocks would get inside a man’s head where his brain ought to be, I don’t know. We seem to think that in some cases, a man’s brain chamber could fill up with rocks. In that case, he would be stoned, I guess.
But rocks on top of a person’s head is not so difficult to imagine, apparently.
A 54-year-old man from Jilin, China, is making international headlines for his bizarre exercise routine. Cong Yan claims daily walks with a 90-pound rock balancing on his head have helped him lose almost 70 pounds in the last three years. Cong Yan is a familiar, albeit unusual sight in Jilin parks. Every day, he can be seen walking on the narrow pathways, ascending and descending steps alongside other health-conscious Chinese trying to keep in shape. But what sets him apart from everybody else is the heavy-looking block of solid concrete dangling on top of his head.
Rumours that Yan is related to Fred Flinstone have not been confirmed.
His only complaint is that he has trouble keeping his hat on.
By Jim Hagarty
Not too many years ago, I used to spend endless summer nights sweltering in the little tinderbox I call my home, wishing my family and I had central air conditioning.
For most of several months each year, I’d sit in my shorts or less and wipe great rivers of sweat from my eyes as four big fans blew hot air on my sizzling body in a futile effort to keep me from suddenly boiling over. I would drift in and out of various heat-induced psychotic states, issuing the occasional odd utterance that would alarm the other members of my household.
But, those were the old days. Today, we have central air conditioning. A happy little unit sits on a concrete slab just behind our garage with a few discreet tubes and pipes snaking out from it and into our house, like a big intravenous bottle set up to provide life-giving nutrients to the patients sitting helplessly inside.
Acquiring this little genius required some radical surgery on our bank account but it has since been making a slow but steady recovery.
By Jim Hagarty
So I just got told off.
It’s a beautiful morning where I live, so I went outside for a while and sat in a lawnchair on the patio, not far from the bird feeder. Not far, from my vantage point, but too close according to the assessment of some potential customers of the feeder.
I watched as two birds landed on the lawn. A bigger one, which I will call Mom, and a little one trailing behind. Mom scoured the ground for grubs and such and every once in a while, turned around and deposited her finds in the open beak of Junior behind her.
But I could see that her real destination was the bird feeder and there I sat like a Brinks guard, gun at the ready.
This is where another bird joined the drama, a bird I will call Dad. I don’t know if that is fair to make that judgment, but this one was bigger and had a bad attitude. Typical Dad.
Dad flew onto a branch above my head and gave me a long and loud scolding the likes of which I have not had since I beat up a kid on the playground in elementary school.
The longer I sat, the louder was the protest. I finally came inside where I belong, I guess. Pretty cheeky of a man to erect a bird feeder and then go sit beside it when there are birds about.
I just checked out the window.
Guess who is in the bird feeder?
By Jim Hagarty
There is a “meme” that gets shared on Facebook too often. In fact, the first time it was posted, that was once too often.
It states: If I spoke to my parents the way some kids talk to their parents these days, I wouldn’t be around to share this.
Let’s put aside the idea that your parents missed a golden opportunity to improve the quality of a not-yet-invented Facebook by not taking you out, and concentrate on a vital part of this important message.
Were you aware, as you were growing up, according to your own post, that you were sharing a home with two potential murderers? Two people who were prepared to commit infanticide to avenge the crime of snarky talkback from one of their children? And to spend 25 years in prison for the satisfaction of having you shut up for good?
So Dad says, “Take out the garbage, Junior.” And you reply, “Suck it, old man.” This would have, according to your post, been enough to prompt Dad to take you out in the back yard and drown you headfirst in the rain barrel. And something tells me from your post that you think he would have been justified in doing that. You might have even been proud of him for showing some guts.
And maybe Mom could off your sister for telling the woman who gave her life, “Get off my back why don’t you, you loser.” Maybe she could plug in a hair dryer, turn it on and toss it into the tub while Sis is taking a bath.
Yes, those were quality parents you had there Junior, for sure.
But of course, that isn’t really what you meant, was it? What you meant to say was you were an angel when you were growing up so no triggers from you for your murder prone parents. And you also meant to say young people today are awful in comparison to you, and by extension, your generation.
Which begs this question from me: Do you actually know any young people? Have you ever actually heard the way young people talk to their parents today? I didn’t think so.
Here’s a bulletin from someone who has seen more than a few young people in action these past few years, as a college teacher and a dad of two kids whose friends hang around our place all the time: Today’s young people are better than their elders. Less bigoted. Less racist. Less violent. Less sexist. More respectful. More hard working. More wonderful in every way. I love being around them.
So, suck it, Junior. And I beg you. Please don’t sic your Dad on me. He scares me.
And change your damn meme. Try this: If I spoke to my parents the way some kids talk to their parents today, I would have been a lot better son.
