In my teens I drove around looking for parties where young single women might be.
In my twenties I drove around looking for pubs with ice cold beer.
In my thirties I drove around looking for coffee shops.
In my forties I drove around looking for hamburger joints.
In my fifties I drove around looking for automatic bank machines.
In my sixties I drove around looking for places to pee.
In my seventies, I drive around looking for my house.
(Updated 2023)
©2015 Jim Hagarty
I love my town.
The matter was urgent and getting worse. And there before me, the golden arches and that little room inside that spells relief. I parked and bolted from my car. Ran like a wild man on a mission.
Emerging with a smile of gratitude and even joy (got Christmas music on the radio so the word joy just sprang to mind) I decided to reward myself and the restaurant by buying a burger and milk. I sat down and enjoyed my meal. Took my time. No need to rush, having already done that.
Finished, I walked out to the very crowded parking lot to see one car sitting there with the driver’s door open and no one inside. “What the …” was all I got out before I recognized the car with the door open and then I promptly and appropriately finished that sentence with the eff word followed by a question mark.
It had finally happened after all these years of carefully locking my doors. Someone had broken in in broad daylight. I approached the car carefully in case a terrorist group had dropped a grenade inside. Everything was just as I had left it when I hit the eject button including my wallet which was sitting on the passenger seat. I checked it right away. I think there was more cash in it than when I jumped out of the vehicle.
My imagination or my Christmas miracle?
Hard to say.
I always want to live in a town where no one can be bothered ransacking a man’s open-door car and stealing his wallet.
Or leaving a grenade on the seat.
©2015 Jim Hagarty
I have officially embarked on The Flashlight Years, the period in a man’s life when artificial beams of light are his only hope for survival. Without them, he cannot expect to find the potato chips in the cupboard and without potato chips, of course, he will eventually perish. Without light he is apt to dab the wrong ointment on the wrong wound and put his underwear on backwards. Not even necessarily his own underwear.
I don’t know if girls and women have the same kind of relationship that boys and men have with flashlights but I suspect they don’t. The ones I know seem to have the ability to snatch a flea off a black cat in a dark room in the middle of the night but maybe some of them are light challenged too. With males, there is a lifelong fascination with the idea that when you press a button, a light beams its way out of a little cylinder. If childbirth is a mystery to the female, a flashlight is perhaps the male’s equivalent, minus the baby shower.
I have loved flashlights since I was a boy and have been surrounded by them all my life but strangely, I have hardly ever bought any of them. They just show up. Like the heavenly gifts they are.
And this Christmas, not just one but two flashlights ended up under our tree with my name on them. The bigger one was thought out in a lab somewhere by the smartest person in the world. It uses LED (Light for Every Dude) and has several intense magnets strategically placed on it, allowing me to attach it to practically anything. I have carried this thing with me day and night since I opened my gift and seemingly can’t even find a spoon in the cutlery drawer without it now.
But the smaller package that was wrapped and stuffed in my Christmas stocking held the best surprise of all. A flashlight that attaches to the peak of my caps, allowing me to feel like a coal miner 24/7. It has three LED bulbs on it but here’s the best part. I can make them flash.
A man walking his neighbourhood at night with a cap flashlight blinking is a wealthy man indeed, although his ability to sneak up on people, assuming he might want to do this, is somewhat impaired.
But let’s face it, he has the world by the tail (and if that tail has a flea on it, he’ll spot it right away.)
©2015 Jim Hagarty
The day is coming, and it might not be too far off, when I am going to have to pay for my sins.
My little dog Toby rides in the back seat crying all the way to the groomer and the vet. But on the way home, he is so happy to be free he pushes himself under my arm and onto my lap and there he stays for the entire trip, looking out the window with wonder at everything passing us by. I am glad that his trauma is over, so I let him stay.
On the list of driver distractions which includes texting, eating and making love, driving along with a doggie on your lap has to be right up there. So we carefully take back streets home, trying to avoid detection. Toby is 14 years old so we’ve been up to this no-good business for quite a while.
On Wednesday, I dressed him up in his bright green sweater and headed out to see the vet. He cried all the way there and after I got the bill, I cried all the way home. But when the vet brought him out and set him on my lap, he planted his feet as stubborn as a donkey, and refused to move.
So we headed out. I imagined which back streets I would take – Downie, then Norfolk, Romeo, Oxford and Albert – but said to myself, what the heck, let’s go main streets all the way!
And that is where I made my critical error.
We turned right instead of left, and headed for the lights at Lorne Avenue, me as nervous as a cat in a kennel and Toby dressed up in green like a neon Christmas tree.
Approaching the lights, I could see they were about to turn green for us at this main intersection. I also saw a police car stopped at the lights directly to my left. I rolled around the corner as anxious as a man on his wedding day, my miniature Christmas tree in my lap, and glued my eyes to my rearview mirror, awaiting my fate.
Amazingly, I was not followed. I am guessing the officer was on his way to a hostage taking so decided to let me go.
But it’s a dangerous business. One of these days, our town is going to be fresh out of hostage takings and my doom will have arrived.
As for Toby, the hand that reaches through the window to give me my ticket will simply represent some fresh new skin to lick. He will do this, of course, because My Doggie Can’t Hold His Licker.
The end.
©2020 Jim Hagarty
My family has been yelling at me for years and I have to say, it can be a bit maddening. I try to be a decent husband and father and still, the shouting has just gone on and on.
Fortunately, I have a great tolerance for this kind of abuse, having spent a few years as a journalism professor, so I hid my hurt feelings well. Another, less disciplined man, might have spoken up.
But the speaking up was left to the three other members of our household who didn’t hold back. They used, in their defence, the idea that I was as deaf as a frying pan. Not only deaf but steadfastly opposed to any suggestions that I do something about it.
But faced with living under the Huron Street bridge over the Avon River, I found myself at a hearing centre. Then I went to the bank and took out a mortgage which allowed me to buy hearing aids.
So, for the past six months, I have walked around with two little devices sticking in my ears and the new world this has opened up for me has been amazing. I will never forget the experience of being in my back yard and hearing, in fairly rapid succession, a Canada goose farting, a squirrel burping and a rabbit laughing. I was amazed and grateful.
But, as with all good things, there is always a flaw or two. With my hearing aids in and turned up, I can hear my own voice very well. And I don’t have to speak loudly to hear it. As a result, there has been a reversal of roles at our place.
My family members are now accusing me of whispering when I speak and demanding I increase the volume of my voice.
Being a reasonable man and one who is easy to get along with, I have obliged. In order for my family to hear me, I am now yelling at them.
This seems to be working but it appears the only real solution will be for the three other members of the household to be fitted for their own hearing aids.
So, off they’ll all go on Monday to Ears to You to get fitted.
As they leave the house, I will shout “good luck” to them.
Then sit down and call my friendly bank manager. He hardly ever yells at me.
©2021 Jim Hagarty
Twenty years ago my wife presented me with an electronic stud finder to help me hang heavy stuff on our walls. Twenty years later, our walls are full of more holes than a beehive, holes that lead into empty space, not studs. This is because the stud finder is a useless piece of crap.
I could take a stick and go out in the back yard and discover an underground spring of water faster than I could find a stud with this silly thing. And yet, I bring the darned device out every once in a while, pop a new battery in it and proceed to try to get it to find a stud behind some drywall. But it is apparent that it couldn’t find one if our walls were made of glass and the studs were covered in labels stating “Stud Here.”
So, back in the bottom of the toolbox it goes and I start drilling holes into empty drywall like an ice fisherman, looking for a good spot. If I ever hit a stud, it has been completely by accident.
This week, I had to attach something to a wall and this time, no mistakes could be permitted. So, I drilled four huge holes you could stick your little finger through, into the wall in question, and came nowhere near any studs. I should be given a prize for being that successful at avoiding all studs.
Desperate, I got the stud finder and gave it one more shot. Turning it on, I soon saw that it was as useless as ever. The green light should obviously indicate a stud, a red light, no stud. Nope, nope, nope. I was just about to throw that freakin’ thing through the window when I noticed some writing on the back. The words there were instructions on how to use it.
And this is how low I had sunk – I read them for the first time.
The green light only indicates the device is on. The red light comes on when one side of the stud is found and goes off when it leaves the other side. As simple as sneezing in a pepper factory. Applying these directions, I discovered that the thing works perfectly.
Imagine that! And all these years, those stupid directions were hiding in plain sight unlike all those darned studs it has never found.
©2012 Jim Hagarty
What is the proper moral protocol for taking stuff back to the store? On Sunday I bought two compact fluorescent light bulbs and put one of them in a lamp by the front door. I hate it and have hated it since I screwed it into the lamp. It’s too freakin’ bright. I need something calmer.
The problem now is the bulb has been burning away every evening since Sunday and now it is Thursday. If I slipped it back into the box – fortunately I didn’t have to destroy the carton to get it out – I could easily take it back to the department store, no questions asked.
But could I live with myself having used up four days’ worth of gas in that little bulb knowing that the next unsuspecting owner of it would find it quitting on him or her four days earlier than it should have?
I’ve got a bit of a bad record, I’m afraid, when it comes to taking stuff back. I hate to do it but I suffer from bouts of buyer’s remorse and sometimes try to undo the wrongs my credit card have done to me. I always approach the return counter with trepidation, worried the person behind that counter will see right through me and know I am trying to blow one past her and every once in a while that person decides to grill me to see if I truly am pulling a fast one. I am so relieved when the money is safely returned or a new item given to me to replace the one I didn’t want any more.
Gutsier people, I know, have no problem with this. A friend of mine was walking through a mall one day with a friend of his when his friend suddenly turned into a random shoe store. “Where are you going?” asked my friend. His companion said, “I want to return these boots.”
However, there were a couple of small problems with this idea. First of all, he had worn the boots for about a year. And secondly, he didn’t have a receipt for the footwear – because he hadn’t bought them in that store. In fact, he had bought them in a store back home, hundreds of miles away.
So in he went and talked to the salesperson. She was pretty skeptical about this guy with no receipt for these scuffed up boots but he was so forward about it all that she finally agreed to let him exchange the boots for a new pair.
Now that takes a quality that rhymes with halls and the conscience of a shaker full of salt to pull off. I would have broken down sobbing halfway through the attempted swindle and ran out of the store.
And whereas that guy left the mall with a shiny new pair of boots, I probably would have left courtesy of a couple of big, burly mall security guys.
I think I’ll keep the light bulbs.
©2011 Jim Hagarty
The next time I go shopping for a new cat, this will be the conversation I will have with the cat store clerk.
“Yes, I would like to buy a cat,” I will announce, on entering the cat retail outlet.
“What sort of cat would you like?” I will be asked. “We have all kinds.”
I will fish for a list I have been compiling and have stuffed in a pocket somewhere. I will hand it to the woman behind the counter. She will read my list back to me.
“You want a 15-pound housecat that doesn’t eat like it’s a 200-pound cougar,” she will say. “We have cats with normal appetites.”
“You also want a cat that doesn’t purr so loudly to hide the noise of the chainsaw it is slicing up your furniture with,” she says. “Our cats are trained to scratch nothing but scratching posts.”
“You want a cat that doesn’t fill its litter box as though it had somehow invited a half dozen of its closest friends over for an overnight party. Our cats are guaranteed to eliminate the required amount only. And to this related item, they never poop behind the TV.”
“You are hoping to buy a cat that doesn’t swallow three feet of wrapping paper ribbon, causing a vet bill of $300 to open it up like a Christmas present and remove two feet of blue ribbon and one foot of green. Our cats don’t eat ribbon or anything else that might obstruct their innards.”
“You want a cat that is not a food flinger. What is a food flinger, sir?”
I will tell her the tale of a cat that somehow tosses big chunks of its soft canned food all over the rec room when it chows down, those chunks landing on the carpet and even on its owner’s bare face and arms.
“We do not sell food flingers,” the now unsmiling sales clerk will reply. Anticipating my next question, she says her cats never throw up.
The rest of my list will specify that I do not want a cat that climbs through open windows and gets locked for days in a neighbour’s basement. And their garage. Also not on the roof of the neighbour’s house, causing the cat owner to get out his long ladder to go up and retrieve the little dickens which tries to open up some veins in the human’s arm on its descent from roof to ground. Also one that doesn’t crawl up into a neighbour’s car engine and cause his fan belt to fly off when he starts the car.
I am assured by the cat store clerk that none of their offerings will do any of these things. They will also not bring in the remains of mice they have killed and drop them on the kitchen floor.
“Basically,” I will say. “I want a cat that will sit in a corner of the room like a ceramic figurine and smile all day long.
“And I want one that goes by the name of Fred.”
By now the clerk appears to be holding back a lot of pent up rage, and I have no idea why.
“We have no Freds for sale,” she will bark at me (she used to work in a dog store.)
“Well, nevermind then,” I will cheerily say.
“Thanks anyway.”
©2022 Jim Hagarty
I know I live in a small town but this is ridiculous.
I went to a hardware store this morning looking for some screwnails. A man about my age elbowed his way in front of me and conducted his own search for the same things. I waited him out, went back to my survey and left the store without the screws.
I went to another hardware store just down the road and started the same investigation. Not long after, guess who was moving me out of the way of his all-important search again? As I did before, I stood back and when he apparently found what he needed, I moved in.
Picking up the package of nails I needed, I headed for the cashier. I will give you three guesses as to who was in line in front of me and your first two are wrong. It was Dog the Screwnail Hunter again. And as there was some discrepancy in the price of the FOUR screws he had chosen to buy after much careful consideration, there was a hold up. The price was eventually established at 15 cents and the transaction was made.
Finally, he disappeared out the door and I made my purchase.
I stepped out into the sun and stopped short as a big old sedan went zooming by too fast for a parking lot and threatened to run over my feet. Yes, it was that same guy driving and I will admit, I had one of the worst cases of Screwnail Rage yet seen in these parts. I’m not proud of it, I’ll admit, but that guy is a complete Old Fart Menace and needs a good talkin’ to.
©2012 Jim Hagarty
I gobble down 13 pills a day and have done for years and I hate every swallow. The medicines are tasked with producing certain outcomes within and without my body and I guess they do what they’re designed for.
I am still walking around, so something’s working.
But lately, my body is in full rebellion. I gag when I try to take the big ones and if I don’t take them immediately after eating but try to ingest them between meals on an empty stomach, I get a bad case of acid reflux. Consequently, I have developed a phobia about taking them so I talked about it to my pharmacist today.
“Well, we actually have something that will help you cope with all that,” she said, smiling. I started smiling too but stopped when she told me the remedy comes only in pill format.
At first, I thought she was joking. But then no.
I began to feel like I was in the nursery rhyme about the old lady who swallowed a fly, then a spider to catch the fly, a bird to catch the spider, a dog to catch the cat, etc. That didn’t end well at all for her, poor soul, as I recall.
I can’t remember whether or not I took the new pill to catch the others but I might have. I wonder if it affects your memory.
©2015 Jim Hagarty
