Author: Jim Hagarty

Five minutes.

That is all it took.

Sitting in the leather recliner, dog serenely in lap, phone in hand, reading the news about the Idiot for the Ages, when the dog launches from the lap and takes off after the cat, for apparently no reason at all.

Except this time there is a reason.

“Oh no,” comes the alarm. “There is a dead mole on the carpet.”

The household is obsessed with keeping the carpets completely free of dead animals, so panic sets in.

Swear words escape lips at this news and, naturally, in the commotion, the left lens pops out of the new eyeglasses, disappearing down the side fold of the chair. Many things have gone down that fold over the years, only some have been retrieved. Luckily, the lens hadn’t hit rock bottom but it was heading that way.

Unable to see ahead more than three inches, the hunt begins for the handy eyeglass kit with its screws and tiny screwdrivers. Blindness requires the head to be plunged into the junk drawer in search of the kit. Remarkably, it appears quickly.

The rodent, meanwhile, remains deceased on the living room carpet. The need to dispose of it outweighs the restoration of eyesight so double plastic grocery haulers are pressed into use to form a body bag for the poor creature. The cat will dine on mice all day long but he draws the line at moles. He is not to be blamed as moles do not appear to be eatable things. But at least a lifeless, bloodless body is not too terrifying to deal with.

Back at the kitchen table to put a screw into the eyeglasses. The original one is long gone so a replacement from the kit is pressed into use. It is too long and too thick but with the application of elbow grease, a half hour of time and twenty well-chosen swear words, the larger screw has managed to force its way into the too-small hole and the human lookers are once again able to see.

All of this activity has produced a blistering headache. A new bottle of painkillers is fetched. The manufacturer, just for fun, sealed the bottle so well it cannot be opened. As in never, ever. A sharp-bladed knife is needed to release the tiny pills.

A semblance of calm has finally been restored. The dog is hiding behind the couch, spooked by all the drama. The murderous cat is downstairs behind the water heater, probably chuckling to itself. The mole is on its way to rodent heaven.

And a few minutes more phone time back in the leather chair reveals the Idiot for the Ages is still an idiot.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

I don’t mean to freak anybody out, but I am actively searching for a new place in the world to relocate. I live three miles from the hospital in which I was born and therefore, over my 72 years, I have never gotten very far in life.

Time to spread my wings!

But there are so many places where I could take up residence I am finding it almost impossible to choose.

I love Scotland and can see myself there. In a little place called Dull. It is possible I might be dull enough for there, but I worry there is a total absence of excitement in a place with that name. Same thing with Boring, Oregon and Nothing, Arizona. I’m all for peace and quiet but I sometimes crave a little noise, at least. A summer circus, a holiday parade. Maybe, as I am just a regular guy, I would fit in with the people of Normal, Illinois.

Then there are places with a little too much oomph for me. Rough and Ready, California, for example. Same with Hot Coffee, Mississippi, Batman, Turkey, and Jot-Em-Down, Texas.

Some places I will avoid as the names just kind of turn me off, for no particular reason, I suppose. I don’t want to have to tell friends and family I am living in Poo, India, Windpassing, Austria, Anus in France, or Fartsville, Virginia, Shitterton, England, Slickpoo, Idaho, or Poopsdale, Indiana.

And I have pretty much ruled out moving to Middelfart, Denmark. Town names get shortened, sometimes, and I don’t want to have to tell people that I am in Midfart.

As an Eyeore sort of guy, I maybe could see myself in Pity Me, England, or Lake Disappointment, Australia, or Dum Dum, India.

And I have decided to definitely not go to Hell, Michigan, even though, during my career as a journalist, I was often told to go to Hell. And I am staying away from the state of Maine and its places called Bald Head, Deadmans Corner, Suckerville, and Purgatory. Same with Cranky Corner, Lousiana, though you never know, I might fit right in there.

Little Heaven in Delaware might be okay, but maybe I think it’s too soon for that. Perhaps I would be welcomed in Humansville, Missouri.

And now that I think about it, five miles away from my current home in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, is a little crossroads called Harmony.

Harmony is small. But maybe, at this stage in my life, I could use a little harmony as I go about my days. In fact, it’s a ten-minute drive away. Maybe I don’t have to move at all.

Maybe I will start a movement to have Stratford renamed Staying Put.

The End.

©2023 Jim Hagarty

When I go out in the woods, there are a few things I want to see. Let me correct that: a few things I DEMAND to see.

There have to be trees, at the minimum. What is a freakin’ bush without trees? And I expect there to be lots of amazing birds in those trees. And they’d better be chirping their beaks off.

I also want to see snakes in the undergrowth, as well as chipmunks and squirrels. And I think my time has been wasted if I haven’t been able to take a selfie with a fox, a coyote or a wolf. Maybe even a mountain lion.

But I am guaranteed to lose my gosh darn mind if I go for a stroll in a forest and don’t encounter a bear. A grizzly bear to be precise. Just one goddam grizzly bear is all I expect. More than one if they’re handy, but there better at least be one available for viewing.

To walk through a bush and not run into bears is like going golfing after the season has ended and finding there are no pins in the holes on any of the greens.

I could write down a list of big problems in the world but you and I both know what they are. Maybe you haven’t spent much time thinking about it, but bear-free bushes belong on that list. In fact, I am going to guess that you don’t give a hoot about it but your lack of concern should not diminish my anxiety surrounding this issue.

However, there is at least one person in this world who is of like mind and I hope one day to meet that enlightened soul. This week a tourist left some feedback for Yellowstone lodge workers after encountering zero bears during a pricey visit to the U.S. park.

“Please train your bears to be where guests can see them,” read a note shared by a Reddit user on Wednesday. “This was an expensive trip to not get to see bears.”

Finally, someone has had the courage to come out and say it. And to agree with my point of view. After seeing that note, I will bet that there is nothing those Yellowstone lodge workers want more than to have that tourist encounter a few grizzlies on his or her next visit. Maybe they might suggest the tourist forward some of their clothing to the park so the workers can introduce the bears to their scent so their next visit will be more fulfilling. Or at least filling (for the bears).

I wonder if this was the same tourist who wrote to a municipality (true story) complaining that wildlife such as moose and deer were wandering across highways wherever they felt like crossing and not at the sections of the roads where signs showing wildlife crossing points had been erected.

In that case, I think it’s the stupid darned animals that are to be blamed. I think they know right from wrong but just ignore the signs on purpose.

I hope my tourist friend above, when they’re done associating with the grizzlies in Yellowstone, get to meet some good old Canadian moose. Maybe they don’t obey all the signs but goddam it, they’re friendly.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

I watched the kids dive in the water off the dock for almost an hour. And the big black old shepherd-border collie cross had a great time jumping in after them.

Koda (short for Killer Old Dog Attacker) loves the water, especially the splash created by the swimmers. From my vantage point, it appeared as though the dog was jumping beside the divers when they left the dock. So eventually, I thought I’d invite Koda to jump in beside me.

I called him over and jumped in. As the water closed over my head, so did something else: a 70-pound dog. Bingo! Right on my wet noggin landed pooch and almost immediately I felt the pain.

But something funny happened as I stumbled my way out of the water. Koda was busy watching the other swimmers but when he saw me leaving the lake, he came over for a few seconds to check me out. It was as though he wanted to make sure I was OK.

The nine-hour trip home from our friends’ cottage was a long one as I felt every bump and swerve in the road. I had a mild case of whiplash following a car accident years ago; that is what this felt like.

Today, however, neck and feelings are on the mend. I am, however, haunted by all the laughter the sight of a dog jumping on my head created in the other cottagers, including three members of my own family.

Nevertheless, I am considering a lawsuit against the dog but my family says it was all my fault. Koda wasn’t jumping in beside the divers but right on them. The only reason they got away unharmed was they were diving in and swimming away quickly and not jumping in and staying in one place, as I did.

I disagree and will say so in my affidavit. I might also sue the other cottagers for not providing me with the information I could have used before I went swimming with the dog.

My bucket list isn’t a long and complicated one. A couple of entries involve a movie star, a Rolls Royce and a credit card with no limit. But nowhere on there is listed having my head jumped on by a dog in a lake.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

I don’t ask for much.

I am a simple man, living a simple life.

Twice a day, I like to sit under my maple tree in the backyard and enjoy a soda pop.

This should not be too much to want but somehow it is, thanks to a bee that also loves soda pop.

When I snap open a can, I have three minutes to enjoy my drink after which the experience becomes an exercise in survival. It takes this bee – a yellow jacket or whatever the hell it is – that long to find me, but find me he always does. And he attacks the opening in my pop can with no mercy.

I have devised ways to protect my pop. I have a flat surface piece of wood I place over the can after each sip. Today, I discovered that he is somehow able to wriggle his way under the wood.

And he discovered something interesting too. Today, for the first time, he realized that my lips are covered in pop after each drink. So, nothing to do but to attack the moist lower face of the man in the lawnchair. To fend off the assault, after each sip, I learned to curl my lips back into my mouth to remove the temptation but for the bee, that just seemed to heighten the excitement.

I fully expect, before summer ends, that the bee will find its way into my mouth as it explores where the pop goes after I sip it. I am dreading the day this happens but I am no stranger to the experience of swallowing flying creatures. Out in the field on the farm, I used to give open-air concerts as I putted along on a tractor pulling a plow behind me. Every once in a while, in the middle of a wonderful rendition of a Beatles song, an actual beetle or moth or fly would go sailing past my teeth, never to be seen again.

However, given all I’ve endured, I have never swallowed a bee.

And this might come as a surprise to you, but I don’t want to swallow a bee.

“Why don’t you drink your pop in the house?” you ask, ignoring the part about my owning a maple tree. When you have a maple tree, there is only one thing you can do on a hot summer’s day and that is to sit under it.

Unhappily, I also own a bee.

And it is up for sale.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

I am sure this is not true for every senior, but it seems to me that when people get old, some things in the world that everyone accepts almost without question begin to baffle them. They run to keep up, but can’t quite do it.

My Dad could take apart almost any farm machine you could find including a tractor and put it back together again. And yet, he never operated a “stereo” and was bewildered by the VCR. And cars even got beyond him before he left this world in 1984.

Things were a bit simpler with cars in his earlier days. One of the ones he owned needed painting so he bought some housepaint, grabbed a brush and painted it.

I’m still in the stage where I’m running to keep up but I can already feel myself falling behind. And among the things that remind me that the future belongs to the next generations are drones. A woman was sunbathing topless on the balcony of her apartment last week when a drone hovered above her, probably shooting pictures and video. And a police force in the United States has been given the go-ahead to outfit its drones with tasers and guns.

Meanwhile a Canadian company has taken out a patent on its sky elevator, a free-standing pneumatic (think bicycle tire) tube that will stretch at least 20 kilometres into the sky and get tourists and astronauts close to outer space.

I doubt I will ever “pilot” a drone and I know I won’t be riding any elevators into space. I might, however, be able to sunbathe topless. If you need to photograph that from the sky, make sure your camera has a wide angle lens.

Borrowing a phrase from a ’70s TV sci-fi, people often say “beam me up Scotty” to indicate the world is getting too complicated for them and they’re ready to go to the next dimension. Now, they might actually be able to achieve their dream if they simply buy a ticket on the sky elevator.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

Many years ago, I started writing little stories which were published in newspapers I worked for. I didn’t get much reaction to them from readers until one day a friend told me I have a great sense of humour and I should inject that into my writing. I did as he said and suddenly, I started hearing from readers.

I write a lot and some of what I write is lame, some is funny and some is very funny. But I might have to close up shop for the physical safety of my readers. They leave me little notes and describe what happens to them when they read my stuff. It is shocking.

For some reason, some of my women readers end up “rolling on the floor” laughing. I don’t mind if they roll on the floor, but I worry they might roll through an open door to the basement and go flying down the steps or bump into the stove and spill a pot of hot spaghetti on themselves.

Other people tell me they “laughed my ass off” at something I wrote. I don’t even want to picture that and I can’t begin to imagine how that would even be possible to laugh your ass off.

Others tell me they “laughed my head off” and this is similarly disturbing. But a compliment, in a way. How hard would a reader have to laugh to have his head fly off his shoulders?

Then there are a few people who “almost wet myself” and I am going to suggest they are holding back. Some of them actually did the deed and it might be necessary for me to post a warning to folks that they should don a set of adult diapers before they read one of my pieces.

Also disturbing are those who laugh so hard their coffee shoots out their nose. I imagine some pretty messed up computer screens and hope I am never held responsible for repairs.

But what I don’t like to hear is that “I laughed so hard, I cried”. I have never wanted anyone to start crying after they read a story of mine and I am sorry if it is happening.

The worst-case scenario, however, are the ones who say they “laughed so hard I almost died.” Now this is where I draw the line. If readers are going to start dying because of words I write, then I will have to give it up.

So far, I hear from readers who “almost died” but somewhere there might actually be someone whose coffee flew through his nose, he fell down and rolled on the floor, his ass fell off, then his head disappeared and at that point, he died.

I guess there are worse ways to go than to die laughing and maybe it will never come to that at all because laughter is supposed to be the best medicine.

I really hope that is true because then I could start charging dispensing fees.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

Someone recently delivered to me the unsolicited opinion that I am too sentimental. I flatly deny the assertion but if I even thought there was some small bit of truth to it I would plead guilty to the charge.

This got me thinking about sentimentality and I began looking back to what seemed an easier time when no one would think to tell a man he was too sentimental. A time when a penny was a penny and could buy most of what a kid might need. When $500 would buy a brand new car and $1,000 a house, $4,000 a farm. A time when a man could take a dollar into a bar and stumble out ten beers later with his eyes looking in two different directions and his legs operating as they did when he was learning to walk. A time when the woman you would marry sat for years one pew behind you in church, when every house had one single clock and not twenty and when fast food was food you ate in a hurry, not food prepared quickly.

These were the good old days, I guess, and while I remember them, I don’t miss them. I am surprised to learn there is someone spreading the notion that I do. As we used to say in the old days to people like that, ‘Pshaw!”

The best time to be alive is now.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

I take seven pills a day for various doctor-detected ailments.

One pill is to control my handsomosity as extreme good looks can be dangerous even on an innocent stroll through the mall. I often emerge from the food court with my face covered in lipstick.

Another pill keeps my geniosity under control. This is necessary to keep my ability to outsmart even myself in check. I have discovered, painfully, that an overabundance of intelligence can be curse.

A third pill tempers my virtuosity as I am too good to be believed. Always out there trying to improve the world. I was on track to apply for sainthood until I was advised you have to be dead to qualify for that, so I told the authorities that I was going to take a pass. For now.

A fourth little pill manages my inventivosity. I took that pill this morning but too late to prevent me from inventing the word inventivosity. Sorry about that.

The other medications curtail my intelligensity, my profitablosity and my bullshitosity. That last pill, I’m afraid, is not working very well, and there is a critical shortage of it as politicians have been hoarding the supply for decades.

All in all, I need a new pill to counter the effects of my over medicating family physician who I’m sure would prescribe me something to control my urge to become a ballerina, if I told him about that particular affliction.

That’s right. I am suffering from a very bad case of doctorosity.

Seriously.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

It’s time once again for the annual Hagarty News Awards, recognizing those humans and non-humans who have made for interesting headlines lately. The winners were chosen by an esteemed judge who edits a weekly newspaper in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, and immediately go into the running for the $100,000 first prize to be given out on June 31 in the new $400-million twin icepad, recreational, agricultural, swimming, archery, fencing, mountain climbing, scuba diving, lawn bowling, jousting, horseback riding and professional tiddly winks complex soon to be built in the city.

Here are the latest winners.

The Hagarty for the Person With the Most Nerve goes to the man in Anchorage, Alaska, who recently smashed his car into the side of the Motor Vehicle Division building that issues drivers’ licences. He then got out of his auto, walked into the building, smacked down $25 on the counter, renewed his licence, climbed back in his car and drove off.

For the Dumbest Person on the Planet, the Hagarty goes to the woman in Nashville who was having an affair and decided a good idea would be to have her boyfriend live in a closet of her home, where she and her husband still dwelled. The husband, however, disqualified himself for this award by discovering his wife’s secret lover when he heard the sneaky gal pal snoring his head off in the closet. The boyfriend placed a close second in the competition. The husband had been in the running for the prize as he lived for quite some time with his rival in the closet.

The award for the Only Sane People Left in the World goes to the 50 souls in Madison, Wisconsin – male and female – who donned matrimonial regalia recently and ran through town in the first Running of the Brides. Billing themselves as a “drinking group with a running problem”, these folks also hold other themed runs, one where they dress up as pirates and an annual run where everyone sports red dresses.

The Hagarty for Those With Not Enough To Do goes to the people in Shanghai, China who turn out in big numbers to watch the Pig Olympics. The perky porkers, trained from shortly after birth, run over hurdles, jump through hoops, dive, and swim in shows twice a day. Canadian pork producers looking for help with their litters would be well advised to advertise in the Shanghai Times.

The My Kind of Guys Awards go to a baggage handler in Sydney, Australia, who was caught on tape opening a suitcase, donning the head of a camel’s costume he found inside, and walking around the airport with it on, and to the Harvard University professor in Rockport, Mass., who has been accused of trying to steal a farmer’s horse manure.

The Hagarty for the Unluckiest Guy Around goes to the British motorist who was driving home from work near London with his car window wound down when a frozen sausage flew in and broke his nose.

The Cleanest Person Award goes to a woman named Fromal in Hampton, Virginia, who was trapped in her bathtub for five days, unable to lift herself out, raising the question of whether or not there was full Fromal nudity involved. When she was finally rescued, she didn’t ask for food but wanted a cigarette and a soda instead. Who wouldn’t? I ask for exactly that when the firefighters finally get me out of my tub. Unfortunately, this is the second time this has happened to her, begging the question of whether or not she just enjoys the attention. I know I do.

And the Hagarty Award for Heroics goes not to a human this time, but to the dog in Wales which, after seeing its mate fall over a cliff, ran until it found some humans and directed them to his buddy, which was rescued and not too badly hurt.

Personally, I hope the dog wins the hundred thousand. I will give him a bag of milkbones. He is darned smart, but I’m betting it will look to him like a hundred thousand in that bag.

©2005 Jim Hagarty