Author: Jim Hagarty

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.

God, I love that guy.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

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.

What a showoff!

©2012 Jim Hagarty

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 …

Who could know a speedometer is fixable?

My brain, it could use an adjustment or two.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2017 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