I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.
I just made $100,000 so go ahead and congratulate me. I would share some of it with you, but I don’t want to, so greedy it is then.
After reading that a 33-year-old singer/songwriter/idiot spent $100,000 on plastic surgery to make himself look like his idol Justin Bieber, I decided this was a goal I wanted to achieve too.
After all, Bieber and I were born in the same hospital and grew up in the same town in Canada. He even attended a high school I taught at briefly, though I was long gone by the time he enrolled. In fact, I’ve never met the young star.
So, just like the guy who spent a hundred grand to look like his musical icon, I was ready to bust out my wallet. But I took a picture of Bieber, held it up to the mirror and took a close look at his head and mine.
He has two ears, so do I. Check. He has a nose. I have one too. Two eyes, a mouth, check and check. Chin, cheeks, eyebrows, forehead. So far, the similarities are striking. He has more hair on his head than I do but he always wears a baseball cap and so do I, though being older, I wear mine right side around.
So, as far as I am concerned, we’re pretty much a match. Except maybe for that 44-year age difference thing, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re close enough.
Therefore, I have come to the decision that my $100,000 is staying in my interest bearing account where it is earning me a handsome .00025 per cent.
Turns out money can buy you happiness as I am happy I am not the singer/songwriter/idiot described above who blew a fortune on his folly.
Besides, my look-alike hero is actor George Clooney. I have no idea where he was born and raised but at least he’s got grey hair on his face and head so I’m already half the way there.
Forty years ago, when I was at university, I went over to my sister’s apartment one night for a break from my own apartment full of crazy roommates. She was going out for the evening. A perfect chance for a peaceful night.
Her only rule: I was not to go out on the balcony. Her cat, which was appropriately named “Blah” for its unusual lack of energy, would dash out there if the sliding door was opened and who knows what would happen to her as my sister lived on the 12th floor.
Of course, as soon as she left, I went out on the balcony. When I came back in, I eventually became aware that Blah was no longer in attendance in the apartment.
I panicked. I searched the place from stem to stern: no cat.
My sister came home and I had to tell her the bad news. We went out on the balcony and looked down. My sister’s balcony was located right above the entrance to the building and that entrance had a long canopy over it. We noticed a hole in the canopy. It couldn’t be.
We rushed down to the ground floor and ran outside, calling for Blah everywhere. Finally, I heard a mangled “Mowoweowohwoow” from under a car and on hands and knees, I dug in under the vehicle to retrieve my sister’s pet.
It was alive. We took it upstairs and set it on the floor, wondering if she could walk or would she fall over dead from delayed reaction.
Blah slowly headed for the kitty litter pan, painfully crawled in and had herself the dump of her life. I can’t remember exactly, but I think she then dragged herself away to hide, probably waiting for me to leave before she came out again.
Blah lived for a few more years and that was her most exciting moment.
But I always had a few thoughts about it all. Did she puncture a hole in the canvas canopy when she fell 12 stories onto it, or was the hole already there and did some other part of the canopy just break her fall and bounced her off?
And I always wondered what the person who wandered out on the 10th or 8th or 5th floor balcony below us at that very moment must have thought as they were almost hit by a cat hurtling through space.
Two remarkable things: Blah didn’t die and my sister didn’t disown me.
“What should I do with the old brine tank?” I asked the plumber, as we looked at my unrepairable water softener.
“Just get rid of it!” he answered. Typical plumber, I thought to myself. All he saw was a four-foot-high plastic tank that used to hold salt for the softener. A creative and imaginative person such as I am, on the other hand, saw before me a thing of beauty (the tank, not the plumber, though he was handsome in his own way, I should mention him to a single woman I know) that was being set free to take on a new life in any number of directions. My mind was abuzz for the possible uses for it, but I settled on a bucket for yard waste collection days. I already had a yellow “Yard Waste” sticker to attach to it and it had a nice lid. The only drawback is that yard waste containers have to have handles on both sides and the tank had none, so I would have to work on that.
Today, my first chance to use my new yard waste can arrived as I was taking a load of garbage to the dump. So, I filled the former brine tank with garbage, popped the lid on it and very wisely duct taped it closed so it wouldn’t fly off on the ride to the dump, as it stuck out of the trunk.
When I arrived at the dump, it was to discover to my horror that the lid was gone. It had flown off somewhere on the one-mile trip from home to landfill. Rats and double rats and I am not referring to the ones at the dump.
I quickly threw my refuse into the dumpster and raced back along the route to find my lid. I arrived home lidless and discouraged. So I took the other garbage cans out of the car along with the brine tank, and headed back for another search. This time, I found it, lying lonely on the four-lane street under a railway overpass.
This is a busy street on a Saturday morning and long steel fences on either side of the underpass are designed to keep people from walking along that area. But a man in search of a brine tank lid regards steel fences as mere speed bumps on the road of life (terrible metaphor, yuk, but best I can do as I need some potato chips soon and have to get this done.)
So, there I was, on the wrong side of an underpass fence on a mission to retrieve a plastic brine tank lid when it occurred to me that my life was in danger. Angry drivers whizzed by me and shot me looks that were not pretty. People are mean and lack proper brine tank understanding, in my opinion.
But I came for my lid and I would have it. I dashed out and picked it up, in much the same way a turkey vulture grabs some raccoon guts just before the car gets him though I am much better looking than a turkey vulture if only half as smart. When I got a chance to inspect it, I became aware that someone had found my lid before I did and ran over it. Maybe more than one driver, in fact. I’m pretty sure some of them did it deliberately.
I took it home and put the sad affair on top of the brine tank. The only good thing was the fact that it no longer fit too tightly as it did before and, because half the side was missing, it actually went on and off pretty easily. I started thinking about how I could fix it. Maybe get some plywood, tape, screws (but none of that frickin’ duct tape) …
I related all this news to my wife when I got home.
“What should I do with the old brine tank?” I asked her.
The brain is a funny thing. Everybody has one (I think) but the mind that goes with it can sometimes be missing or defective.
Take David Scofield, 50, of Akron, Ohio, for example. He liked to spend time impersonating a police officer. No big deal. Who hasn’t done that? I often arrest people for fun on weekends and even issue speeding tickets (after I chase them for 10 miles to make sure they speed up.)
In any case, poor old David found a way to screw it up for the rest of us. He got caught this week when he tried to pull over a real officer.
Akron police say a man driving a Ford Crown Victoria with a spotlight and made to look like a police car tried to block the path of a real Akron officer on his way to work Monday night. He had a rifle, shotgun, handguns, a bullet-proof vest, a silencer and ammunition in his car.
Police say Scofield is a firearms dealer from Lancaster. He was arrested on misdemeanor charges of impersonating a police officer, carrying concealed weapons and obstructing official business. He was in the Summit County Jail where records didn’t say if he had an attorney.
However, if I could venture a guess, I think David’s next gig will be impersonating an attorney. After that, he’ll be a jailbird, no impersonation required.
His best impersonation so far is that of a total world-record shattering idiot on steroids but something tells me he did not have to practise for that role in front of a mirror.
Someone somewhere embarked on a critical mission and dedicated hours, maybe years, of their life to successfully inventing a resealable chocolate bar wrapper.
I must have missed the announcement. Did important people the world over identify a need for such a thing? Does the inventor not know that the average chocolate bar eater consumes the whole darned outfit in one sitting usually lasting about 30 seconds?
We chocoholics do not squirrel our treasures away and portion ourselves out one little square of creamy goodness every day. Five hefty chomps and the whole silly thing is gone, as it should be.
I would say a person who reseals chocolate bars for future consumption needs to get themselves to a psychiatrist right away as there are obviously some childhood potty training issues to be worked out.
So, instead of curing cancer, someone spent a year or two of their life coming up with a resealable wrapper.
I could ignore this (and maybe I should have) except for the fact that you have to have the skill and precision of a diamond cutter to open the freakin’ thing. This is not a boycott, but I have to stop buying these stupid bars as I cannot afford the frustration level involved in opening them.
Some day I will tell you about how things were in the good old days but for now I am busy picking away at this little wrapper like a gerbil with a sunflower seed, except I expect the gerbil is making more progress than I am.
I just hope that other important advances in the preservation of sweet treats, such as mini freezers for keeping partially eaten ice cream cones alive and something to extend the life cycle of chewing gum are also keeping scientists in their labs at night, burning the midnight oil.
During the first couple of months at my first job as a newspaper reporter, I made a cringeworthy mistake.
As we all know, because we’re afraid of death, we like to use more neutral words when talking (or writing) about it. So, in newspaper obituaries, nobody ever dies; they pass away. No one is ever dead; they are deceased (a strange word, given that “ceased” should be thought to pretty much describe the act of having died, as you have ceased to live. Wouldn’t “de-ceased” better belong to those who are brought back to life?).
And no one is ever buried; they are interred. “Terra” meaning earth, well you can put it together.
But for a while, no one in the town I was reporting on was interred in Jim Hagarty’s news reports, at least not for a while. One day, a middle-aged man walked into the newspaper office and said something to this effect to me: “Why are all the people who are dying in this town being locked up after they die?” I said, “What?”
He went on to point out that I was using “interned” in all my obituaries instead of interred. Interned means to be locked away, as in internment camp.
Wow! After he broke that news, he could have knocked me deceased with a feather, and having passed away, I would have gladly been interred right there and then, under my desk if need be.
That was my biggest whopper at that paper unless you count my reporting a guy’s home address as being on “Mortgage Lane”, just the way he had given it to me. I don’t know if I even knew what a mortgage was at the time, but I soon learned that he lived on Frank Street. I guess he was just being frank; everyone on his street had a mortgage.
“Youchkins” as a certain undeceased, uninterred brother-in-law of mine often says.
As for my time at that newspaper, for reasons not related to the above described faux pas, it eventually died. Not deceased. Not passed away. It was deader ‘n a mackerel with an exclamation mark!
When I worked on newspapers, I sometimes wrote about my pet subject, bullying, a topic that is rarely out of the news these days.
It’s an emotional issue and I would often get more than the normal response to my columns when I wrote about the problem. Strangely, I suppose, I never heard from any bullies, because, I guess, there aren’t too many people out there who will admit to ever being one.
My favourite response was from a man in his 80s who recalled this story from his early years. Having been bullied at school by a bigger guy who showed no mercy, the boy complained to his father. The Dad tried to help by signing his son up for boxing lessons.
That summer, at camp, the recreation director included boxing matches for the boys as part of the activities. The first day he asked for a volunteer and the boy who was now secretly equipped with some boxing skills, was the first to come forward. He put the gloves on the director handed him.
Then he was asked who he would like to box.
“That guy,” he said, and he pointed to his longtime tormentor who also happened to be attending the same camp. The bully came forward with a big smile on his face.
But the bully’s longtime victim, to the bully’s surprise, laid a little Muhammad Ali on him. After that day, the young boxer never had another problem with the bully.
Another man, however, wasn’t quite so lucky. His dad taught him how to box but the training enjoyed limited success.
“Instead of knocking me down right away, it used to take them five minutes to knock me down,” he said. His newly acquired pugilistic skills didn’t pay him many dividends.
Maybe what he needed was the theme from the movie Rocky playing in the background
I am mad at my cat Luigi. Really mad, in fact. If he lived at your house, you would be too.
The reason I am upset is the boy will not look after his teeth. I have told him and told him to take better care of them, but he won’t. He is stubborn as a billy goat.
As a result, the vet has recommended Luigi be administered the Dental Preventative Package. This will cost Luigi $473.41. As he does not have a very high income at the moment, I will be forced to take it out of his weekly allowance, a bit at a time.
However, if in the course of getting the Dental Preventative Package, it is discovered the Luigi will need a tooth pulled, he is going to have to cough up $8.14 per minute for 30 minutes of surgery for a cost of $244.20. Of course, he will also require 30 units of Isoflurane Maintenance at $3.30 for another $99. He will also need $71.46 of pre-anesthetic/surgery blood work.
And finally, Luigi will have to dig into his mad money to come up with $30.50 for the blood collection fee.
The total for all this work will be $976.44 taxes included. That is if he needs only one tooth pulled. If he needs two, the price would rise by another $503.03 for a total of $1,479.47.
To recap: to clean the cat’s teeth will be $473.41 and to remove one tooth will increase the price to $976.44, two teeth, $1,479.47. To fix the teeth. Of a cat. A cat.
I have lectured Luigi till I am blue in the face and he hides behind the water heater because he doesn’t want to listen anymore. But it’s clear. He is going to have to get a job. If we pay all his bills for him, how will he ever learn to be responsible?
Those mice don’t catch themselves, I have told him.
He doesn’t listen. To him I am just a great big can opener with an attitude.
A smartly dressed woman just came to my door trying to rent me a $1,300 water heater. I told her I wasn’t interested as I owned my own.
She was aggressive and started with the types of questions that insinuate that I am a total fool for not considering her offer.
“Why would I rent my water heater?” I asked her. “I don’t rent other appliances such as my furnace or washer and dryer.”
Yes, but, she said, with her offer, I would never have to worry about repairs or replacement (things I don’t worry about now). If it breaks down, they fix it; if it wears out, I get a new one. No charge.
“When my water heater busts, I’ll phone up my plumber and get a new one.”
Yes, but, she wondered, did I know how much it costs to repair a water heater. “No, I don’t, but I’ll just phone the plumber. He’ll know. We’ve had people in before to repair our washer and dryer and furnace. What’s the difference?”
Well, time for one final zinger.
“Eighty-five per cent of people in Ontario rent their water heaters,” said my antagonist. “They do that for a reason. They can’t be all wrong.”
It considered arguing the idea that 85 per cent of people couldn’t be wrong about a matter such as this, but my patience was a thin as I wish I still was in my 20s.
This is not the first time a door-to-door salesperson has basically called me stupid, except, unlike one lovely young guy, she didn’t actually use the word.
My electric water heater is 16 years old and probably about to die. In the 14 years I rented it before I bought it out for $75, it cost me almost $1,700. My plumber says he can give me a new one installed for $600.
I like my plumber better than the total stranger I talked to today. My plumber’s name is Butch (really).
My kind of guy! He isn’t the type of man who could sell pay toilets in the diarrhea ward of a hospital. He’d just install the pay toilets and send you the bill.
I just got off the phone with Jack, a nice young man from India who was kind enough to give me a call from his number 99-999-9999. He said that my computer had been attacked by a very bad virus and that I needed his help. He would show me what to do.
Well, I was all for that as I hate viruses. I asked him what he was selling and was surprised and pleased to discover he wasn’t selling anything. He just wanted to help me find out the problem I was having with Windows.
First he had to identify my computer so he gave me its Windows ID number. It was, and I quote, “888D(as in Delta)C(as in Charlie)A(as in apple)60F(as in Foxtrot)C(as in Charlie)0A(as in apple)11C(as in Charlie)F(as in Foxtrot)8F(as in Foxtrot)0F(as in Foxtrot)000C(as in Charlie)048D(as in Delta)7D(as in Delta)062.
So we got that figured out.
Turn on your computer, Jack advised me. It was already on. Then he told me to press the Windows key and the letter R at the same time and tell me what I saw. I did this and saw nothing on the screen. He asked me to do it again and again and I did and still, no small box on the screen where there should have been one.
Finally, an older guy came on the phone, maybe Jack’s Dad. He again urged me to press the keys and report what was coming up. I did and nothing came up.
So I asked this guy, probably Jack Sr., “What company do you represent?” and the strangest thing happened. My phone went dead instantly.
I am worried. I hope Jack and his Dad are alright. They seemed like pretty nice guys. Now I’m stuck with this rotten virus I didn’t know I had.
