Author: Jim Hagarty

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.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

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)

©2012 Jim Hagarty

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!

©2012 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

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.

If they only knew.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

A man’s needs and wants change with the years.

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.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2011 Jim Hagarty