Month: September 2016

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A nice young woman from France
Shoved a frying pan down her pants.
She left the store
But returned for more.
No one gave her even a glance.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

I hate to be pessimistic, but it is getting to be an awful world out there. Bombings, torture, arson, assassinations. Environmental crimes. Hate crimes.

Our fellow humans are losing their minds and it is downright scary.

What is all this mayhem leading to?

This is what we can look forward to. A woman in Maryland stole three french fries and, incredibly, ate them. She ate them right in front of the man she had stolen them from.

But take heart. The woman was not only hungry and lacked any moral compass, she was stupid enough to steal them in a restaurant from a plate which belonged to a police officer. Wow!

Thank God, however, that the law moves decisively and quickly in our modern society. The officer arrested her right away and carted her off to jail where she belongs.

She has been charged with second-degree theft. On the arrest sheet, the fast-acting cop listed the items stolen as “French Fried Potato…quantity 3.”

Some might say this is too trivial an event for jail and a subsequent court appearance. Are you kidding me? Across the world, french fry theft is on the increase and out of control. Do you not read the news?

And if you think this is over the top, ask yourself this: Will french fry thieves stop at potatoes? Will they? No they won’t. Left unchecked, they’ll go on to nab onion rings, salad fixin’s, gravy containers. I hope this doesn’t sound like fear mongering, but sooner or later, they will drink your pop!

Good work Maryland police officer. In your honour, I am coining this new slogan:

“French Fries Matter.”

By Jim Hagarty
2016

I was raised on a farm and I love driving in the country on the back roads, listening to music and checking out the scenery.

I live in a small city and I am glad for that in so many ways. I can be in the country in less than five minutes.

But country boy or not, I could never live there again. I loved the farm, but I often found it to be a lonely place, in spite of the fact I had six brothers and sisters.

I much prefer town life to country life. I was just outside now in my backyard at 2 a.m. I could hear clanging and banging sounds coming from a factory somewhere. Some people might hate that; I like it. Although I am a loner, I like watching and hearing life going on all around me. Not the frantic life of a Toronto or Chicago, just the mostly peaceful sounds of a smaller built up area.

Those sounds are a source of comfort to me, telling me I am not alone.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

I drove into a nice shady spot at my favourtie fast food restaurant and opened my coffee, prepared for a nice 15-minute break.

A car pulled in beside me. Its driver got out and peeked inside my open passenger door window.

“Hey Bud. Mind looking after my car?” said the middle-age man, who, without hearing my answer, then walked away and into a nearby store.

I looked at his car. It was not a car that anybody needed to look after. In fact, I am going to guess that nobody had looked after it for a long time.

But now I was looking after it.

I had no information to illuminate the task I had been assigned, a job given to me casually by a stranger who offered me no option but to accept the challenge. Were the keys in the ignition? Was there a baby in a car seat in the back? A thousand dollars in gold coins lying on the seat?

Immediately, I imagined a horde of car wreckers lurking in the parking lot, waiting to launch a car invasion on the vehicle I was suddenly guarding. I went from relaxed coffee drinker to nervous car-watching pile of human misery in about 15 seconds. I didn’t know if I had what it would take to fight off a bunch of nasty auto vandals.

And here’s the thing. The car owner who had enlisted me in the serious business of protecting his mode of transportation, seemed to be in no hurry to return from the store. For all I knew, he worked there and had just started an eight-hour shift.

I finished my coffee and sat there. The car owner had found the one guy in this town who feels responsible for everything around him, 24 hours a day. I would have sat there for three full days watching that bucket of bolts simply because I had been put in charge.

Finally, after almost another complete half hour, I came to the logical conclusion that the car owner’s words to me must have been the last he ever spoke. He had obviously been either kidnapped or murdered upon entering the store. Now, I had to worry about his kidnappers/murderers emerging bloodthirsty from the store. Seeing me watching the guy’s car, they would probably toss a grenade, or at the very least a stinkbomb, through my open window.

Wisely, at last, I got the hell out of there.

I seem to attract these kinds of assignments. This morning, a neighbour came to my door. Nicest guy I know. He has done a lot for me and my family over the years. He had a request. A FedEx truck was delivering a package from Spain and he had to leave. He gave them my name and wondered if I would be home to accept the delivery.

I did have plans to not be home accepting FedEx packages from Spain, but here I am. Locked inside my home, staring out the window. My neighour drove away. I have no idea where he is. For all I know, he’s sitting in shorts and straw hat at a seaside outdoor cafe, sipping sasparillas or mint juleps, and contemplating how good life has been to him.

Either that or he is at the fast food restaurant, ransacking the car I had left unguarded there. Seems like that would be out of character for him but it is a crazy world. And I would like to know what it is he has ordered from Spain.

And you wonder why I am a wreck.

I feel almost like I am one of those marks in a Just For Laughs TV prank or a Candid Camera episode. Pretty soon I will be directed to look into the disguised camera that has been trained on me all along.

I will laugh uproariously.

Meanwhile, would you mind looking after this website for me? Hackers and such.

Thanks.

Now back to my mint julep.

By Jim Hagarty
1987

“Well, would you look at that!” I said in surprise to the woman behind the candy counter. “I didn’t know they still made creamy toffee bars.”

“Yes,” she said. “We sell quite a few of them.”

“Well, isn’t that something? You know, I haven’t had one of those in years,” I continued, reminiscently. “I was hooked on them in high school. Used to spend most of my lunch money on them.”

But, that was a long time ago and the taste of creamy toffee was only a pleasant memory now. I don’t know why I ever quit eating the smooth, sweet, caramel candy but I guess I just outgrew it. Kids will eat sweets morning, noon and night if they get the chance. But the bad habits of childhood fall away from the adult like leaves from a tree in autumn. Maturity brings balance, moderation and wisdom. Aging dogs walk around big puddles instead of splashing right through them and then shivering wet in the cold till they dry.

As fall approaches, however, it’s sometimes nice to go for one last swim at the lake so I put down 64 cents on the counter top and bought a creamy toffee bar. For old time’s sake.

It tasted as good as the first one I ever ate. I would be willing to argue with anyone on any day that creamy toffee contains the finest flavour of any food produced by any method from any substance.

Anywhere.

The next day, I was back at the store, laying another 64 cents on the counter. What the heck. Two last visits to the lake wouldn’t hurt. Might be a long, cold winter.

Little did I know I’d spend so much of my time from then on at the lake. Before long, I was up to two toffee bars a day. Every day.
Store clerks started commenting on the regularity of my toffee-bar purchases. I shrugged them off with a little joke or two. “Doctor says I’m suffering from a severe caramel deficiency,” I’d quip, with a weak laugh.

“Just buying this for a friend who’s hooked,” I’d say another time with a slight, oddly pathetic chuckle.

Twice a day, I was back at the store – once around noon and once after supper. For a while, I tried buying two at a time so I wouldn’t have to go to the store so often but I had to give that up when I started eating them two at a time.

One day, my store ran of toffee. I raced outside, jumped in my car and headed for another store. They don’t sell them. Back in the car, I speeded off to a third store. They sell them but they cost 70 cents. Lucky for me they don’t cost $70. I’d be a very poor man today.

Vowing I’d never suffer through a letdown like that again, I found suppliers in every part of the city – two in the east end, two in the west, and three downtown.

My main source downtown has been out of toffee for two weeks now. And my patience is wearing thin.

“They’ll be in next Thursday,” the woman behind the counter said. That was two Thursdays ago. The first week, I offered to drive down to the factory and pick them up. No need for that, I was told. Last Thursday, she and I went through the order sheet together just to make sure they were actually on their way.

Yesterday, the shelf still had a bare spot where the toffee used to be.

“Should have been here this morning,” she said. “I don’t know where the driver is.”

“Well shouldn’t you call the police, or something?” I asked. “Maybe his truck ran off the road.”

As with most addictions, the night becomes darkest before dawn. One night I skipped supper entirely and ate a toffee bar instead. Another night, I took one to bed with me and ate it there. I’ve also eaten them while taking a bath. Sometimes I eat them while I’m driving and I’m getting more and more sensitive when any one suggests I’m eating too many.

But I knew things were getting out of hand the day a fellow worker asked for some of my toffee.

“Get your own!” I told him, remorselessly. But then I relented, cut off half an atom and gave it to him.

Someday, I know, I’m going to have to quit. Meanwhile, I keep scanning the headlines, hoping some researcher doesn’t discover that too much toffee causes lapses of memory or dehydration, or something.
Which reminds me. I could use a drink awfully bad and I’d get one too if I could remember where I put that bottle of pop I bought.

(Update: Somehow, the toffee passion just ended one day. I don’t remember the circumstances now. But almost 20 years passed with no toffee bars. I moved on. Last summer, my daughter got a job at a local candy store. They make the best toffee bars ever. She started bringing them home to me. As I write, I am in need of an intervention. A good stern toffee talk with my loved ones.)

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was an old man from Boston
Who drove a broken down old Austin.
He had room for some gas
And his Disneyland pass
But his teeth fell out and he lost ’em.

By Jim Hagarty
1988

Current popular wisdom says the world would be a better place if men would just learn how to cry. We bottle up too much inside and that’s why we’re so nuts.

Women cry, so they’re okay, but fathers still teach their sons to hold back the tears and so on we go, starting wars and screwing up the planet.

Society allows a man a tearful moment or two at the funerals of close relatives but that’s pretty well it for the public weeping a male can get away with. We can get choked up all we like and be unable to talk for a few seconds when called on to speak at weddings, retirements and going away parties but then we’re expected to pull ourselves together and carry on, bravely. Everybody, women included, gets nervous at the sight of a sobbing man.

Under the old system of raising children, men often taught boys not to cry when someone hurt them but to return the hurt double to whomever did the hurting. If any male was going to cry, it was always best to make sure the other guy was the one who did it. It was the law of the playground. Cry, and you became known as a crybaby, about the worst reputation a male kid could pick up in those days.

In the ’60s, we needed peace and love, in the ’70s, self-knowledge and small cars and now in the ’80s, what the world apparently could really use are more sensitive men. A glance through the daily stories in the newspaper soon shows what louts we’ve become and the situation is crying out, so to speak, for a tearful reaction from us all.

Some might say teaching men to cry could be as difficult as getting horses to moo, that it’s just not in our nature, but modern males are more adaptable than most people think. With training, we could move from whimpering and whining, to snivelling and sniffing and finally, to out-and-out bawling. Before long, a smiling, laughing man would be a rare sight.

Personally, I welcome the opportunity to start letting my real feelings show. However, being new at this crying thing, it may take me a while to know when it is appropriate to set the bottom lip to quivering, the eyelids to blinking and the boo to start hooing.

For example, would it be right for a man to cry at the following emotion-stirring situations?

1. When Tweetie Bird drops an anvil on Sylvester The Cat’s head.

2. When the banker starts laughing while reading your application for a loan.

3. When you hit the funny bone in your elbow on the kitchen table.

4. When you find an earwig in your hairbrush and two in your running shoe.

5. When you visit a newborn baby in the hospital and realize his hair is already thicker than yours.

6. When the country singer on the radio mourns, You Broke My Heart So Badly Darlin’ It’ll Take Ten Pacemakers To Get It Runnin’ Right Again.

7. When you find your lost sunglasses one week after you bought a pair to replace them.

8. When you hear on the morning news that the prescription drug you took for four months may be dangerous and will likely be banned.

9. When three kids carrying skateboards walk across your newly-seeded lawn right after a rain.

10. When you realize that with the ’60s music back on the radio, you’re going to have to listen all over again to the songs you hated from back then as well as the ones you liked.

(Note: I was going to add a line about, send your suggestions to blubberingidiot.com but then realized, no Internet in 1988 when this was written, at least not in my part of the world.)