Author: Jim Hagarty

A friend sent me a bit of a nasty email. He has a bad habit of doing this. Almost every time he hits “send”, his list of real-life friends gets a little shorter. But many of us take this quirk of a character flaw into account and stack it up against his many better qualities.

I hang in there, but it isn’t easy. I replied to this latest email very carefully, as I always try to do, in order to avoid the mountain-molehill phenomenon. I kept writing, then backing up and erasing and starting again, to choose better wording.

At one point, a part of one of my sentences read, “…if you want to…” I erased that line and wrote something else. But maybe I didn’t get rid of it all.

Just before I hit send on my reply, I notice some stray letters at the very start of the message, right at the top. They were: “f you.” They were left over from “if you want to.” A Freudian slip? My true feelings?

I don’t know, but I broke out in a sweat, deleted the f you and sent the message. Maybe I should have left those four tiny letters in. Or maybe I’ll use them in my reply to the next nasty message which I know will be coming soon.

The worst thing that ever happened to my friend was the invention of email. Seriously. Worst thing. Ever. And I am not effin’ kidding.

The distance between the brain and the computer screen is simply not far enough for some opinionated souls. In the old days, we were told to write the letter but wait one day before sending it. Most of the time, we would end up ripping it up.

Emails, it seems, are not so easy to shred. Common sense is a wonderful commodity but sometimes it just can’t keep up with the pace of change.

©2012 Jim Hagarty

It’s a well-known fact of life that sometimes a person’s best intentions go up in smoke and lead to the worst circumstances.

This has happened to me a time or two in my long life and now it has happened again.

My family and I no longer had any use for a very nice workbench a carpenter had built for our shed. The shed had been repurposed and now there isn’t much work goes on in there, hence the surplus workbench.

So, we moved it against one wall of the back of our house, right under the kitchen window, and it has seen a lot more use there than it ever did or ever would have when it was in the shed.

As I had befriended the wild rabbits in our backyard and as winter was coming on, I worried over how they would survive. So, I (cleverly) filled in the bottom third of the workbench with boards after raking a pile of leaves underneath it to make it more attractive for the bunnies. Lots of soft bedding for them, I calculated. I left a rabbit-sized opening at each end so they could make a hasty retreat if a predator joined them under the bench.

It didn’t take long for My Bunny (practically a pet now) to discover her new digs and to wander in there for a look. I happened to be standing next to one of the openings when she came bouncing out one day, hopping right across my feet.

“What a great guy I am,” I remarked to myself, as I reached to pat myself on the back.

But the bunnies gave a terrible review of their new winter home and abandoned it right away. I am not sure what I did wrong but there must have been a design flaw somewhere.

So tonight came the good intentions gone bad.

We have had a skunk lurking around our yard very late at night and early morning for the past month or so. It feasts on the birdseed I spread on the ground.

I am not a big fan of skunks and I wondered where the smelly creature was hanging out when not dining under the bird feeders.

Tonight I got my answer.

Standing outside well after dark, I saw a telltale fluffy black and white tail disappear under our workbench. It then turned around and stuck its nose out the doorway, fleeing back inside once it saw me standing there.

This annoying wild animal has taken up residence in the wonderful hutch I made for the bunnies that seem to prefer to freeze half to death in a bush in winter than take advantage of my generosity and workmanship.

Later today, I’ll be busy evicting our newest tenant and boarding up its apartment.

If it gets upset and take revenge on me, I’ll be eating my meals in the shed for a while. At least there is no workbench in there now to stumble over.

©2023 Jim Hagarty

The first thing I am going to do when I get to be 86 is sue my daughter for $520 million. That is what Frank Stronach has done to his daughter Belinda and I think it’s a heck of an idea.

Frank says his darling Belinda has mishandled their company called Magna International since she took over and he wants to see things put right and $520 million in his bank account. All those times he tucked her in at night when she was a toddler, I wonder if he whispered to himself, “Some day, Belinda, you are going to pay!”

I have many years to go before I turn 86 in 2037 and that also gives my daughter almost two decades to save up $520 million for when I come a’callin’ for my money. I think that is fair notice.

If she sets aside $27 million a year, and with the interest added on, she will have more than enough to settle my claim. Then, as these things go, I will promptly die the next day and give it all back to her in my will.

Without my lawsuit threat hanging over her head for 19 years, I am more than certain she would fritter away that $520 million and wonder where it had all gone.

Best savings program ever.

Dads have to look out for their daughters.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

I just came from my latest checkup by my doctor and he was really pleased. Apparently, I am going to live forever. He didn’t exactly use those words but I am a very perceptive person, always have been, and I am sure that is what he meant to say.

I don’t mind the prospect of living forever – my family will be spared the funeral costs – but I can see my would-be heirs getting a little cranky when they can’t get their hands on Dad’s fortune. I feel badly for them but I will defer to my buddy Warren Buffett who says he wants his kids to have enough that they can do something, but not so much that they can do nothing.

At least by living forever, I will probably get a mention in any number of record books as the centuries go by and that has always been my dream. I want to be unforgettable and living forever will probably help that goal come about.

The other piece of good news, as if living forever wasn’t enough, is, by all estimations, I keep getting better looking each year.

Yay for me!

All those unfortunate young women who threw me overboard for some other more-promising adonis, must be weeping big tears now!

©2019 Jim Hagarty

I sat down at the computer this morning to discover that about 60,000 emails were missing. I had them all neatly divided into about 20 folders according to category, from business, to banking, to family history and friends. The proper response to something like this, of course, is to go stark raving nuts and so that is what I did.

I tore apart my filing cabinet looking for the name of a person at my Internet company and her email finally in hand, I sent off a sharply worded message which contained only about three Canadian “sorry to bother you’s” as opposed to my usual number. I think she got the message because I also used the words “nasty surprise.” That will tune her in, I surmised.

Then I found her phone number and called but had to leave a message. My barely contained rage properly seeped into my message which started off with an apology, of course, and I might have also repeated “nasty surprise”. The woman did not immediately call me back, as she probably rushed into her boss’s office to resign as soon as she heard my enraged voice on her message machine.

So, I called another woman who I spoke to before she forwarded me to a third woman for whom I left what was by now a familiar anger-tinged and panicky message.

Finally, the first woman called me back, after apparently having reconsidered her decision to quit her job, and she listened patiently as I raved on about my important emails and then she put me through to technical support. A very nice man then tried to walk me through the whole mess and he could honestly not figure out why my email folders were gone.

But, he told me not to worry, they would be somewhere on my computer. And right about then, and his mentioning “my computer”, a little light went on. Sometimes, it is very dark in my brain but now and then, there is a dim illumination. Low wattage, kind of like a night light. And this light told me I was not at MY COMPUTER but instead had sat down at my wife’s machine where, of course, my email folders would never be.

I thanked the young fella, ran downstairs to my computer and presto changeo, there were my emails. Almost twice as many as Hillary Clinton deleted so long ago.

So, three poor women and an unfortunate man, suffered the barely contained Wrath of Jim. Which, on reflection, does not surprise me. Two days ago, my cat died.

I won’t speak for other men, but that’s often how this one reacts to this sort of loss. I would gladly lose two million emails if I could have my little buddy back again.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

I recently wrote about the first personal computer I bought in 1994 and how the one I have now has 500 times the amount of RAM that my first one had and how its hard drive is 2,000 times bigger.

My first computer cost $4,000; my newest one cost $400. If my newest one was priced the same as the first one but the price was based on the amount of RAM, it would have cost me two million dollars.

If the price was based on the size of the hard drive, it would have cost eight million dollars.

Now, let’s go the other way. My newest computer which I bought in 2011 cost me only 10 per cent of what I paid for my first one. If that trend continues, a computer I buy in 2028, should cost me between 20 cents and 80 cents and, of course, be between 500 and 2,000 times more powerful than my newest one.

But here’s the sad thing. I might not be able to afford a new one, even at those low prices, by then.

©2011 Jim Hagarty

My admiration for Stephen Hawking just keeps going up and up. Today, a headline says Hawking may have just unlocked one of science’s biggest mysteries.

Appearing at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm on Tuesday, the acclaimed physicist presented his theory before a packed house of scientists.

Here is his discovery: When particles enter a black hole they leave traces of their information on the event horizon. When the particles leave, they carry some of that information back out. This phenomenon has been called “Hawking Radiation.”

I don’t want to puff myself up but I had a similar theory a long time ago. However, nobody took me seriously when I told them.

“I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but in its boundary, the event horizon,” Hawking said. “The event horizon is the sort of shell around a black hole, past which all matter will be drawn into the dense object’s powerful embrace.”

He continued: “The information is stored in a super translation of the horizon that the ingoing particles [from the source star] cause. The information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form. For all practical purposes the info is lost.”

Is there nothing this man can’t figure out?

I will be totally with him once I find out how all that music gets inside my transistor radio and comes back out again. Sometimes it feels like my brain is a black hole, where information goes in but can never get out again. It would not surprise me to learn that Hawking had something to do with that.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

I grew up in Canada on what was called a “mixed farm” although almost all of the varied things that were raised and grown were gone by the time I came along.

But even though they were gone, we would play in the empty henhouse where the chickens had been. There were unused beehives sitting beside the garage. I know we used to have geese as my Dad was attacked by a gander when he was five years old. He grabbed the big bird by its neck and hung on till the vicious pecking was over.

We had pigs, cows, beef cattle and horses along with the geese and the chickens. And in a 10-acre field west of the house there was a large orchard, all the trees in neat rows, though the fruit was never taken care of in my day and was often scabby. There were lots of apple trees of many varieties from red apples (maybe macs?) to yellow harvest apples and these huge “cooking” apples that were terrible to eat – very pulpy – but good for making pies and cider. The darned things were half way between a very large apple and a small pumpkin.

There were also some plum and pear trees in the orchard though the season was usually too short for the fruit on those trees to ripen. The branches of the trees hung low and when a friend brought his pony around one day and I got on it to ride a horse for the first time, the little dickens headed straight for the fruit trees at a fair clip knowing the branches would scrape me off its back, which they did.

My favourite fruit tree of all was a cherry tree located near the road. I remember the red cherries would be ripe by the last day of school in June and I would climb up there and fight the birds – and sometimes my siblings – for them. The birds were easier to chase away than the siblings. Even when the cherries were gone I would sit up in the tree and watch people come and go on the road. I always thought they couldn’t see me so that was kind of thrilling and mysterious.

All of these things were features of the way my grandparents farmed and they gradually went out of use when their day passed along with the mixed farm. One thing that did remain was a massive vegetable garden. That was a great place to go with a salt shaker. I’d pick tomatoes, wet them with my tongue, cover them with salt and eat them. Heaven.

The mixed farm is long gone almost everywhere now but can still be found in Mennonite Country north of where I grew up. It isn’t just their clothing and horses and buggies that harken back to a much earlier, simpler, quieter time. Most of them have no hydro, though some of their “modern” neighbours and relatives do. Their yards are impeccable and their fences are built with wooden posts and woven wire. And most of them have all the creatures my ancestors had including pigs, geese, chickens, cows and horses. Lots of horses.

Some may even “keep” bees. The only sweetener in the old days was honey. Even in my grandparents’ time, white sugar was not allowed on the table during our meals.

©2014 Jim Hagarty

©2014 Jim Hagarty

For years, I have been driving to the city every six months for treatment and examination by a medical specialist. She is a marvelous doctor and a wonderful person. She always asks about my family and from one visit to the next, she somehow remembers details of what we talked about, no small challenge given the number of patients she sees every day.

I really enjoy our encounters but they are always too brief. Suddenly, in mid-sentence, she disappears from the room. I expect her to come back, but she doesn’t. She never says goodbye. I suppose if she ever does say goodbye, it might be because she expects to never see me again. For some awful reason I don’t want to think about.

Finally, a nurse comes in and shoos me away. This doctor, besides being very interested in my life and the lives of my wife, son and daughter, has a great sense of humour and is also very wise. I always have food for thought on my one-hour journey home after each appointment.

Last week, she was a bit concerned about something she saw and did a biopsy on me. Her nurse would call me with the results she told me just before she bolted from the room.

The nurse called this week with the all clear. I am going to live to be at least 125. While I took in that good news and breathed a sigh of relief, I was crestfallen at the rest of her message to me.

“The doctor would like to see you in a year’s time,” she said, before setting a date for the visit.

In the last 15 years, this will be the first time I will go a full year without seeing the doctor. Normally, I would assume, a person would be over the moon at the news they don’t have to see their specialist for another year. And with most specialists, I guess, I would be too.

But darn it, this is going to be a long 12 months.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

When I look out my kitchen window in the evening, or even in the middle of the night when I sometimes get out of bed for a snack, I can see a light in the upstairs window of a neighbour’s house behind us and a few doors down. I don’t know why, but that light gives me comfort.

The light shines through a green curtain, so it isn’t vivid; it’s nice and soft. I think it might be coming from a kitchen, maybe a light over a stove (this is an upstairs apartment in a house, the first floor is a business office.) I don’t know who lives there. I’ve never seen anyone in the window and don’t expect I ever will.

Still, just knowing that light is there makes me feel good. All is right with the world.

In the winter, when I am watering our backyard skating rink at 2 a.m., I glance up at the light and feel warm, despite the cold.

Once in a while, sometimes on weekends, I look out my window to see the light is not on and strangely enough, I feel slightly ill at ease. I assume whoever lives there has gone away for the weekend.

I don’t know where this comes from, this need for this kind of comfort. Maybe it’s a leftover thing from my early days on the farm when houses seemed so far apart and a yard light or light from a window was nice to see. Or maybe it’s a caveman thing – the light from the fire would keep the predators away at night.

I just hope my neighbour doesn’t move out some day and is replaced by an energy-saving tenant who prefers to live in the dark.

©2011 Jim Hagarty