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.
Is Donald Trump an ignorant, immature, cruel, egotistical, narcissistic, bully?
Or is he an evil genius?
I don’t think anyone knows for sure.
And as long as that question is unanswered with any certainty, efforts to change him or slow him down may remain ineffective.
Is he simply buffoonish or incredibly brilliant?
He is a fraud who conned his way into becoming the world’s most powerful man. Whatever his critics think of him, that took some skill.
No one has been able to stop him.
But they say a great conman is easy prey for an even greater conman. A thief is easily victimized by a better thief.
It might not take the most brilliant, heroic, honest person in the U.S. to bring him down.
An even more fraudulent shyster, however, might get the job done.
Trump 2.0, where are you?
(I wrote this piece eight years ago. Long before Trump’s second term. And at a time when I knew next to nothing about Elon Musk. Mr. 2.0 is now on board.)
This is a tale I am not proud of, but neither am I ashamed of it. You’ve heard it before from various people in similar situations with similar results.
There was a bully my age in our tiny village in Canada. He was built like a bulldozer and was gifted with the mouth of a pirate. He could let out a string of obscenities that would scare a buzzard off a shitwagon. I had to walk by him on the way to the ball park. He took a particular dislike to me and stayed up nights I guess to think up the most vile assembly of words the English language had on offer to put me down. He scared the hell out of me, though he never touched me physically. He didn’t have to. He had an aura about him that screamed danger.
If he had been a tiger and not a boy, I don’t know if I would have been any more frightened. There was always the prospect of imminent and crippling physical harm.
One night, however, the tables turned. As I walked past his place he began following me, and came right up to me screaming his invectives in my ear. I kept walking on my way to the ballpark. Then, I saw several of my older cousins coming up behind me, also heading to watch the game. They heard the commotion. What could I do?
Suddenly, the fear of being seen to be weak in front of my older cousins weighed more than the fear of having a few of my limbs torn off. I grabbed my tormentor and threw him to the ground. I jumped on top of him and started pounding like a hammermill grinding grain. He started crying, eventually, so I got up and carried on to the game.
I didn’t feel good about beating him up and his crying haunted me for a long time, but I did feel good when I realized he was never going to bother me again. And he never did. We might have even exchanged a friendly word or two over the years, I don’t remember.
What the bully had done, by instinct and following the example he had witnessed at home, was to create a grand illusion of strength and an overwhelming cloak of danger and fear that he wore with an evil grin. But when confronted, his impenetrable wall of terror fell as though made of paper.
Donald Trump has bullied people all his life. He admitted in a biography that his parents didn’t know what to do with him. They thought military school might straighten him out. As a kid he once punched a teacher in the face because he believed he was a terrible teacher. He tells that story with relish, not regret.
I am walking to my ballpark, but standing in my way is my choice of two men – Barack Obama or Donald Trump. I know which one I would choose. Obama is a man; Trump is a child. Obama would take one look at me and say, “Okay, Hagarty,. Let’s do this thing.” Trump would yell out for a posse of his bootlickers to take me out.
Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. And there was nobody there.
I went to the grocery store last night and filled my cart with a lot of stuff that looks like food but really isn’t. What can I say? I like junk and always have.
However, just my luck, as I was wheeling down one aisle, I ran into my doctor who looked into my cart, pointed to one of my items and said, “That stuff will kill ya.”
All I could think to reply was, “I know.”
I’m not going to tell you any specifics about the stuff that is going to kill me in case you leave a comment telling me that stuff is going to kill me. All I will say is it is legal and I like it.
I have a long history of ingesting things that are going to kill me and I am certain they someday will but as I just turned 72 last week, I can only conclude that these things seem to be taking their time.
In any case, after pronouncing my death sentence, my doctor quickly wandered off leaving me with one big question.
“That’s odd,” I thought. Although the person who judged my purchases spoke with authority and medical knowledge like my doctor might, I realized that it wasn’t her at all. For one thing, she is shorter than the man who commented on my groceries and her hair is a lot darker than his.
And not to put down other doctors I have had over my lifetime, but she is by far my favourite one. She is crackerjack smart and has guided me through a few steps that have increased my general health remarkably over the past couple of years.
But mostly, I like her because she never scolds me. I am not sure where I picked up this aversion to being scolded, but I don’t react well to it at all. One doctor I used to see spent every one of our short visits detailing all the things I was doing wrong till I felt like diving headfirst off the roof of the medical centre when my appointments ended.
This experience in the grocery store has left me a bit shaken. A complete stranger looks into my shopping cart and says in no uncertain terms that I am a fool for buying a certain deadly item that I apparently intend to allow into my body when I get home. I am not a saint, but it wouldn’t occur to me to check out a stranger’s cart and say, “You know, that soup will give you the runs” even if I know from experience that it will. Or, “Oh my God. Eat that hard candy and say goodbye to your teeth.”
I am worried about the guy who gave me the thumbs down on the stuff I was buying. I wish I had had the good sense to tell him that commenting like that on a man’s groceries, especially if he did it to the wrong man, could lead to his early death.
I don’t know if he’ll make it to 72, carrying on like that.
I had an interview with my dietitian on Monday. The consultation was very useful but I became confused with the various mixed messages she kept sending me. I should have taken a notebook and pen with me and written a few things down because since I’ve arrived back home, I have been unclear about a few details regarding my way ahead food-wise.
I could be wrong but I believe she advised me to drink at least eight glasses of pop a day and consume two family-size bags of potato chips weekly (not daily). I am also to eat one pound of bacon every two days, nothing but white bread, and if possible, a medium-sized (not large) slice of chocolate cake with every meal.
It is also important that I eat at least one cherry pie every week and to treat myself, a cherry cheesecake once a month. (If you get too serious about your diet, you won’t keep it up.) A bag of chocolate chips cookies should round out my weekly menu and between meals, I should aim to eat a chocolate bar, but not worry if I miss once in a while.
It is also apparently vital that I have a bagful of caramel popcorn (all to myself) while I am watching TV three or maybe four times a week (she was not very clear on this point). Pancakes and sausages for breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays but I am to use real maple syrup only, none of the fake stuff. This is important.
Oh, and I believe she said I was to eat as much pizza as possible every week, maybe three or four times, but no more than seven toppings on any one pizza. Also, I should work in three or four visits to hamburger joints every seven days for the protein.
I hope I haven’t forgotten anything. Oh yes, I did. I am supposed to have one carrot a week – no more.
At our next meeting, I am going to ask her to clarify some of these items to make sure I have them right. We will be talking about exercise at that session but when the subject came up on Monday, she frowned. I have a feeling she is going to advise me against it. I am willing to do whatever she tells me to.
Our kitty Mario doesn’t like going to the vet. A chip off the old blockhead as I’m not fond of doctors’ appointments either.
But Mario goes to the “pet hospital” when he is required to do so, not that he has a lot of choice once caged up in one of our plastic cat carriers. Typically, he cries all the way there. No dummy is he and he is silent on the way home. How does he know he’s going home and not to an even more frightening facility somewhere?
In any case, all our pets have always preferred “Mom” take them to the vet. I am not sure why. She has a special way with people so maybe that carries over to non-people too.
And when I use the word “prefer”, I mean there is someone else in our home with whom they would rather not share a car ride to anywhere, including the vet’s. That someone, of course, is me.
Today, poor Mario was stuck with his second-choice for vet-visit companion but he hid his disdain pretty well. I have no idea why I have come in last in the pet popularity poll of people best placed to transport animals to the vet. I try hard. I talk to them pleasantly and reassuringly from the front seat as they cry in their carrier in the back. And even though he does not ride in a carrier, our doggie Toby bawls like a calf all the way there too.
Today, Mario and I hauled our portly bodies to the vet for a weigh-in. He likes being weighed as much as I do but at least nobody shoved a sharp needle into him or a thermometer up his thermometer receptacle.
Unusually for him, however, he cried for most of the way home today. Maybe his sixth sense was kicking in.
When I carried him into the garage in his carrier, I set the whole affair on the landing while I kicked off my boots. I knew the carrier was precariously situated there, but I also knew it would only be there a little while. As it happened, it was there less than a little while as Mario shifted his weight and the whole affair tumbled down the three steps, ending up upside down with Mario aboard. He cried like a Dad at his daughter’s wedding.
Mom will be doing the cat carrying from now on. I have been retired.
In this rough and ready world, there are still a few things that cheer people up.
I am still surprised, when I walk down the street, to see people looking at me with big smiles. I don’t know them and am always temporarily bewildered as to why these strangers appear happy to see me. Then I remember that I am wearing a big, bulky blue sweatshirt with the word DAD emblazoned across the front. It seems as though the concept of DAD makes some people feel good.
In smaller letters above that word is written the name of the university where my daughter is in her final year of a four-year dramatic arts program.
I was given the sweatshirt by my daughter a few years ago and have worn it day and night and sometimes even overnight if I couldn’t find any other suitable shirt to keep me warm in bed.
I also have worn it to all the university plays my daughter has appeared in and even one or two where she didn’t have a role. And I became a fixture in the audience. Her classmates, friends and fellow actors would look out from the stage and relax when they saw DAD in the audience, smiling away. I became a bit of an omen, a good one, apparently.
Those involved in theatre productions are known for their reliance on omens, mostly bad ones. It took me a while to get used to never wishing anyone good luck, for example, and advise them instead to “break a leg!”
I have even been informed that I have apparently become DAD to not only my daughter, but all her fellow students as well. How, I wonder, will I remember all their birthdays and am I expected now to start doling out weekly allowances?
But it is the positive attention from total strangers that intrigues me most. I have even had people yell out, “DAD!” at me, smiling all the while. I am glad they find those three little letters uplifting. It seems to be a happier word than the message on a T-shirt I once saw on a young man at a college where I was teaching. In large letters were the words: MURDER, DEATH, KILL. That left me scratching my head (and running for cover).
I waited 45 years to become a dad.
My daughter may be the actor but I’m the one really hamming it up.
Shameless, as I have always been, I am milking the part for all it’s worth.
And if you see me, go ahead and wish me good luck. At my age, I have no interest in breaking a leg.
It is a common perception that Americans are tough on crime. I never gave that notion very much thought. I just accepted that the people of the U.S. do not have a high tolerance for bad guys.
But now I have some proof that our southern neighbours aren’t foolin’ around when it comes to scofflaws and mischief makers. A news story this week convinces me just how seriously some of the 50 states of the Union (not all) take their administration of justice. It is the fact that apparently, in at least one place in the U.S., a man can be charged for farting.
Yes, it’s true. A guy in West Virginia was charged with battery on a police officer after passing gas last week and fanning it towards the cop who was booking him for driving offences.
As Patrolman T.E. Parsons prepared the breathalyzer machine back at the police station, suspect José A. Cruz, 34, scooted his chair toward Parsons, lifted his leg and “passed gas loudly”, the complaint taken out against him said. According to the complaint, Cruz then fanned the gas toward the officer.
“The gas was very odorous and created contact of an insulting or provoking nature with Patrolman Parsons,” the complaint alleged.
For his part, Cruz says he didn’t aim his nasty missile at the patrolman at all. He said he had an upset stomach at the time, but police denied his request to go to the bathroom when he first arrived at the station.
“I couldn’t hold it no more,” he is quoted as saying in a newspaper story this week.
Cruz said the officers at the station thought the gas incident was funny when it happened and laughed about it with him but things turned serious later.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “I could be facing time.”
This situation raises several curious observations. Is crime in West Virginia so well eradicated that they are now going after people who pass gas inappropriately? And sent to jail on such a charge, how would the culprit answer the other prisoners when they asked you why he was being locked up?
Now, I don’t think what José did would look very good on his résumé and surely this was not his finest moment. But should the gaseous ones among the population really be incarcerated?
And if so, what are the various penalties that should accompany such an offence? And are other bodily functions potential lawbreakers too? Does belching border on the criminal? What about sneezing too loudly, spraying in seven directions in the process?
I’m afraid my grandmother, rest her soul, would not have done well in a West Virginian society that charges aggressive flatulence producers. Because on that subject, she had two favourite expressions.
“Wherever ye be, let your wind blow free,” she would say.
And hearing one of her six children express themselves in such a way, she would remark, “Well, that’s better out than an eye!”
She also would tell members of her brood: “Go outside and let the wind blow the stink off you.”
When Cruz is done serving his time, I think he should consider trying to sneak into Canada. In this country, we don’t believe in capital – or rectal – punishment.
He needs a vacation. He could come up here and bum around for a while.
My Dad was fond of fruit cocktail from a can. So much so, he often worried we might run out. In our small town, there were no 24-hour grocery stores.
One day, as he often did, he asked me how our supply of fruit cocktail was doing. I said I thought we had lots but I could tell he wasn’t convinced. So I went to the cupboard to check and I pulled out each can I found and set it on the counter. When I was done, there were nine cans sitting there. We had a good laugh over that one but I don’t know whether the evidence had much effect on his worrying.
Thirty-six years later, I was informed by a member of my family today that one of our local stores is having a sale on soup. It might be a good idea to pick some up, I was told.
“Do we need more soup?” I asked. “I think we have quite a bit.”
Nothing left do in situations such as these except to launch a soup investigation. To the cupboards I went and gathered all the evidence and prepared to submit my soup report.
The Hagarty kitchen cupboards, as of Jan. 27, 2020, contain the following cans of soup:
– 21 cans of tomato; – 10 cans of cream of mushroom; – 6 cans of chicken noodle; – 2 cans of cream of chicken; – 1 can of vegetable; – 1 can of pea.
In our home are 41 cans of soup. The total number of occupants of the house is two, sometimes swelling to four. There are four large grocery stores within walking distance of our home. In a blizzard or a tsunami, we could still replenish our soup stocks if they were running low and a soup emergency developed. We do not want to be one of those families brought down by a soup emergency.
If we were managing a cruise ship, instead of a three-bedroom bungalow, I believe we would be ready to launch.
Still, the soup is on sale. Tomorrow morning, I will be found wandering the soup aisle, stocking up once again.
I took 19 pills today. I take 19 pills every day. Six of them are to keep me from getting too good looking, and another six help keep my soaring intelligence quotient in check. The other seven treat a variety of other small issues such my tendency to be over hilarious, my relentless push to be too romantic, my desire to be the most generous person on the planet and my apparently unstoppable necessity to bullshit people.
I am pretty sure you know none of the pills are for any of that, with the possible exception of the medication to prevent bullshittery. What they are designed for is for me to keep seeing through my eyeballs, to keep all my limbs attached to my body, to keep my bones from turning into sponge toffee and to deal with all the fat I insist on stuffing into my gob each day.
The reason I tell you all this is to draw a contrast between my grandfather and me. I never met the man. He left this world six months before I arrived. But he lived to be 84 years old and I know for a fact that he did not swallow 19 pills every day. In fact, in his later years, when he was feeling a bit out of sorts, he would go to the doctor and Dr. Pridham would check him out thoroughly then go to his cupboard and fetch him a bottle of pills.
“Now John, I want you to take one of these pills every day and make sure you don’t miss any days,” the doctor would say.
My grandfather did as he was told and immediately started feeling better. One pill a day was all it took. And the funny thing is, it wasn’t even a real chemical. It was candy. A placebo, I guess they call it. I don’t know if a doctor would get away with that today. Mind over matter.
So, I am 67, choking down 19 pills a day, and hoping some day to see 84 but not at all sure I will. My Grandpa popped a piece of candy into his mouth every day and was on his way to 90 when Father Time intervened.
Of course, in his lifetime, 1866-1950, John Hagarty did a lot of hard work as a farmer. Most of it outside in the fresh air, a lot it walking behind a team of horses who pulled his farm implements through the fields. The rest in his barn or shed. There was not much automation to ease the chores and the chores were hard and plenty. Cutting wood for the winter’s heating supply, for example.
And farmers of his generation knew a few other tricks a lot of us have forgotten. They went to bed early, took noon-time naps, ate well and hearty and protected themselves from the sun, by wearing straw hats and white shirts with the long sleeves rolled down and the collar buttoned. I am sure my grandfather never wore a pair of “short pants” in his long life.
Most importantly, when they did feel a bit punky, they ate their candy as prescribed.
Here’s the situation. A family member walked in the door this afternoon with a big coffee shop donut box and set it down on the coffee table. He then proceeded to eat quite a number of the sweet treats and left. I wandered over, opened the box, and saw that two very tasty looking baked delights remained in the box. A boston cream and a lovely looking cruller of some description. Actually, I don’t know what the second donut was as I was bedazzled by the boston cream.
Now here was my dilemma. Because only two donuts remained, one would definitely be missed if I took it. Had there been six or seven in the box, I might have gotten away with it. I was very tempted but decided against it and carefully closed the box. As an intelligent and caring human being, I could not bring myself to plunder a family member’s sweet treasure. So, I left the living room, with much regret.
A while later, apparently, another individual approached the donut box and also had a look inside. But scruples played no part whatsoever in this family member’s decision making. As quickly as he could, he ate up both donuts. I know this because at supper, the person who bought the donuts asked everyone seated around the table if we knew what had happened to the last two donuts.
No one admitted to pilfering them and as we normally all tell the truth, our stories were believable.
The only possible culprit left was the dog. We all looked at him and he looked at us, and we knew he was as guilty as Jack the Ripper.
This was by far the best day of Toby’s young life and one of the worst of mine. But I learned a good lesson out of all this. It is a dog eat donut world out there and if a guy’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough. He who hesitates is lost.
I really hate being outsmarted by a gobbilly creature that weighs 13 pounds.
