Month: June 2016

By Jim Hagarty

Hiding a bad intention behind a good intention. It is a story as old as man. But the apparent truth of the statement – that we hide a bad intention from others behind a good intention – doesn’t tell the whole story. Most of the time, with most people, the deception is born in the deceiver’s own heart, long before he takes it out for a drive. In other words, the person that it is most necessary to deceive, first and foremost, is ourselves. Most of us can’t enter into a relationship with another human being knowing our intention for them is bad. So we first must convince ourselves that what we propose to do, we are doing with only good intentions, when we know deep down that what we are about to do is for only bad intentions. That is why the successful deceiver is so convincing; he has practised and perfected the deception on himself already. In fact, it is almost necessary to the success of the proposed bad act that the bad actor be convinced it is a good act. Most people can sense a blatantly bad act and actor. There’s just something about them. With these people, we are less likely to be taken in.

Despite all the talk in Western societies that people suffer from low self esteem, the truth might be somewhat different. Someone once wrote that we like to ascribe bad motives to the people we deal with and only the best of motives for ourselves. We almost always give ourselves the benefit of the doubt while often suspecting others of being less trustworthy. Far from suffering from doubt regarding our own self worth, we have too much confidence in our own goodness. Except in those occasional times of honest self-reflection, when the mask comes down and are sometimes horrified to find what we find.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was an old man who delayed
Beginning his duties each day.
He hummed and he hawwed
Then prayed hard to God
To take all his odd jobs away.

By Jim Hagarty

You can go ahead and ban the use of cellphones by the drivers of motor vehicles if you like. You’ll get no argument from me.

However, when it comes to this issue, it may be that there are also other driver distractions that need to be tackled.

I’ll admit I’ve spoken on my “cell” while speeding along down the highway, but I’ve never once, when doing so, had a sudden urge to hurl myself out the driver’s door into the path of other vehicles. And yet, that’s what I almost did the day my baseball cap started to move on its own on top of my head while I was guiding my old bucket of bolts in and out of downtown traffic. This was very unnerving because when I first became aware of this unexpected super-cranial activity taking place under my cap, I didn’t know if it was a hamster, a hummingbird or a hermit crab that was causing all this commotion. It’s hard to drive carefully when the member of some other species is rollerskating across the patch of skin holding in your frontal lobe. A frantic struggle ensued as cap was hoisted and search begun for the head-dancing hitchhiker. Before long, an earwig showed up, but not before my car did a few weird tricks on the road and scared the life and other things out of a couple of pedestrians.

The one irony is that, hair-challenged as I am, I had always vowed never to sport a wig on my head, not knowing that one day a wig of the ear variety would take up temporary residence up there. (NEWS BULLETIN: The Worst Pun Of The Year Award Committee has named a winner.)

And while the bylaw restricting the presence of tapdancing earwigs on drivers is being prepared, perhaps we need to go all the way and ban the bumblebee and the mosquito from the inside of cars and trucks too.

Back in my cigarette smoking days, a lit one, from time to time, would tumble from my lips and fall between my legs, disappearing under my backside as I was driving down the road. This too used to result in my doing a fairly agitated version of the Highland fling while trying to keep my rear end from being scorched. Parked in a driveway, this might not have seemed so serious; roaring down the road was always a poor time to pick to do a modern-day re-staging of the cow jumping over the moon. Or the moon jumping over the … (ah, forget it!).

The authorities are getting some statistics together, now, on the numbers of accidents being caused by drivers on cellphones. But my guess is we have no idea how many are brought about by people with critters in their caps, butts under their bums (huh?) or overturned bags of french fries at their feet.

A hermetically sealed driver’s cabin or special suit patterned after an astronaut’s gear are our only rational solutions to this considerable problem.

No Phone! No Food! No Fun!

Let that be our new safety motto.

And may I add a fourth:

No Fanny Furnaces!

And a fifth:

No Furtive Follicle Freeloaders!

By Jim Hagarty

A man plays many roles in his life.

I once roamed the halls of businesses and institutions as a man of some worth. I hired people. I fired people. I stood before rooms full of people and delivered lectures.

But that is all behind me now.

These days, as best I can figure, my position in the scheme of things is Doorman to the Cats. I open doors they cannot open, close doors behind them. Then reopen the doors I just closed once they realize I just closed the doors behind them.

It doesn’t pay much. I don’t get any applause. No one has handed me an award lately.

But somebody’s gotta open those goddamned doors. Seems like that someone is me.

I am very good at it. Except for those rare occasions when the tail is not yet quite through the doorway before I close the door. Those occurrence are always merely accidental, you understand.

We have two cats. They are brothers. Mario and Luigi. Mario can let himself out the back door screen door, leading to calls from the human inhabitants, when we hear the door slam behind him, “Mario has left the building.” Luigi can’t let himself out that door. But he can somehow let himself in, an art Mario has yet to master.

As long as we have them, I guess, there will always be work for The Doorman.

By Jim Hagarty

At the end of an average day
A man thinks, as he settles in bed,
“What did I accomplish today?
“What things could I have done instead?”

Some days, he achieved quite a bit
And other days, not very much.
Some days he did little but sit.
And some days he had Midas’ Touch.

But whether he did much or not
Reflection at bedtime will show
He probably took his best shot
And needs to let all the rest go.

Cause whether or not he achieved
Anything either great or too small
At bedtime, he is finally relieved,
To remember that he tried at all.

Each day has a rhythm, it seems,
That is set by some otherworld fate.
Today we were denied our dreams,
Tomorrow we’ll do something great.

By Jim Hagarty

A hat trick in hockey occurs when a player scores three goals in one game.

For the feat to qualify as a true hat trick, those three goals need to be back to back to back, with no goals scored by the players’ teammates in between. True hat tricks are so hard to come by, modern hockey recognizes three goals in a game, in whatever order and uninterrupted or not, as the real deal.

The term hat trick started in hockey’s early days when a team owner started presenting a hat to any player who could score those elusive three goals.

Gordie Howe had a few hat tricks in his day. But he was an all-round, aggressive player, and eventually, he inspired what became known at the “Gordie Howe Hat Trick.”

A Gordie Howe Hat Trick occurred when a player got a goal, an assist and a penalty for fighting.

When you went into a corner to get the puck and looked up to see Gordie Howe about to join you, you started saying your prayers. He became known for being super efficient with his elbows.

Gordie Howe left it all on the ice, every game. Sometimes, the result was a player rolling on his back, clutching a broken nose.

Yet somehow, he was never known as a goon. Or particularly dirty.

Just very, very tough. He never needed to look around him for a team enforcer to finish off his fights for him.

By Jim Hagarty

A friend of mine was a longtime committed member of our local Rotary Club.

Once a year, the club hosted a “sportsman’s” dinner to honour local athletes. A noted national athlete and often more than one were brought in each year to address the lavish banquet. It often fell to my friend to drive to Toronto to pick up the star athlete at the airport. He met many interesting people this way.

One year, one of the stars he picked up was Gordie Howe. Like me, my friend had always idolized the hockey star, a man who many still believe was the greatest hockey player ever. But my friend had another friend who was probably even more of a Howe fan than either one of us. She worshipped the ice he skated on.

On their way back to Stratford from the airport, my friend asked Mr. Hockey if he would mind playing a prank on his friend, the woman who idolized him. Howe immediately agreed.

My friend drove to the woman’s house and he and Gordie Howe walked up to her front door. Kevin tried the doorknob; it was unlocked. So he and Howe walked in and stood in the entranceway. (I realize, as I write this now, how badly this could have gone.)

“Hey, would you like to meet Gordie Howe?” Kevin yelled to the seemingly empty house. “I have him right here.”

From upstairs, the woman yelled down with a bunch of derisive comments directed in fun at Kevin. He called back that Howe was, in fact, standing in her house at that moment.

Finally, to end the farce and get rid of Kevin, the woman came bounding down her steps only to find her hero standing at the bottom of them.

I forget the outcome of the encounter but the woman had just been given a family story for her grandkids and beyond.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I once owned an old beat up car
That went fast, but not very far.
It was ugly as sin
For the shape it was in
But nicer than some new cars are.