Author: Jim Hagarty

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.

The pop was warmer than the pizza.

Just the way I like it.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

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 think My Bunny would like that.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2013 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2022 Jim Hagarty

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.

The Universe decides these things.

©2005 Jim Hagarty

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.

That guy needs a pair of 3D glasses for sure.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2022 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2014 Jim Hagarty