Lifetime Sentences

There are several levels of lazy. I am sure you are acquainted with some of them, if only because you have watched the slackers around you tweedle deeing when they should be tweedle doing.

You, of course, don’t have this problem, and I am proud of you. So proud. But please, in the name of every Sloth currently hanging by its toes from a tropical tree somewhere, uninterested in any activity involving movement, I beg of you not to be too smug. Because all the Laziness Levels sometimes touch most people’s lives and even if you are strong enough to escape them, you might not be able to evade the Hall of Fame level – The Laziness of the Retired. And while you may think right now that you will have will devised strategies ahead of time to combat the temptation to sit like a frog in a pond all day and wait for insects to fly too close to your tongue, you might find yourself drawn to Total Idleness on only your second day after retiring.

I just don’t have the energy to go into all the ins and outs of Retirement Lazy, but maybe this example will do.

Leaving the bathroom after your premiere morning visit, you feel an old familiar nether region cooling wind and realize your fly is open. Now, closing your fly is something you were always pretty good at attending to, but retired, zipping up the he-man hardware is just one of those things that can be attended to later. After all, you rightfully reason, The Queen and Prince Philip don’t arrive at your home till Sunday and this is only Thursday. No panic.

You drive all other family members to their non-retirement destinations such as school and work, then hit the coffee shop. There is a breeze, somehow, under your table, and once again, the fly trouble calls for a solution. But you are wearing a long winter coat, no risk of sudden exposure. However, two hours later, upon exiting a grocery store, a blast of Arctic air works its way up into the unadjusted apparel and suddenly, the wages of your sin seem much too high to pay.

So, four hours after first identifying the issue, the matter is dealt with. Tomorrow, you will brush your teeth. The day after that, there will be a meeting of clippers and fingernails but only those nails in dire need of trimming shall be attended to. The Queen would not be amused but just watch her decadent decline once she, too, retires. Which, and there is a lesson in this somewhere, she just hasn’t gotten around to doing.

What a Procrastinating Princess!

©2015 Jim Hagarty

Nothing’s simple any more. You hear it said. So do I. You might, in fact, have heard it from me. I’m usually saying it. People of the jury, I present as my evidence, well, just about every aspect of modern life.

You don’t want to know about my underwear buying habits, I’m sure, but I just recently spent almost half an hour in a men’s clothing section trying to decide among the many options available today for the simple job performed by underwear, whatever job that might be. Colours galore, patterns aplenty, boxers, briefs. Value “paks” of six pairs, or three pairs. Special occasion briefs.

In the good old days, there was one kind of men’s and boy’s underwear and one kind only. However, you had a wide variety of colours to choose from – as long as it was white.

It doesn’t matter what you go to buy, or to eat, or to watch in a theatre. Saturday, at one of these big movieplexes, a friend and I stood gawking for 15 minutes before the popcorn stand, weighing all the various options and packages priced for value. Bargain hunters from way back, we took our time and came up with what we think, but still aren’t sure, was the best buy.

Has anyone’s life improved as a result of having all this variety pumped into it? I don’t know. I do know that simplicity is as quaint a notion as table manners, modesty and diplomacy.

Witness my main piece of evidence. When I was a kid on the farm in the 1830s, our black and white TV got three channels – London, Wingham and Kitchener. We picked up the broadcast signals from these stations by way of a space-station-looking aerial on the roof of the house which we controlled by an electric “rotor” in our living room. Amazing science.

Today, in the city, of course, my TV-watching options are much more varied although my family and I have not opted for all the channels money can buy. For 22 years, I have had a pretty good arrangement with my cable company. They’ve run a wire into my house, I’ve plugged it into my TV, they send me a bill for this luxury every month, and I pay it. Every year they send me a letter saying, sorry, but we have to charge you more for your service. I pay it. I don’t see any other cable companies banging on my door, so I have no choice.

Now, in my feeble mind, the simplicity of the relationship between me and my cable company goes like this: If I don’t pay, they take the wire away. Not hard to understand. I don’t get to have that bag of potato chips if I won’t give the cashier the money for them.

But this week, I received in the mail an “Important Notice of Changes” to my cable service. “As part of our ongoing effort to improve customer service, we have simplified the terms applicable to our various services.” I opened the document and it fell out before me like a scroll Julius Caesar might have read from. On that parchment are typed 5,493 words (I did a computer word count) defining the new relationship between my cable company and me.

Somewhere, a lawyer is basking in the south sea sun at a beautiful resort paid for with the money he or she charged my cable company to write to me with all these simplified terms.

There are 52 sections in the document and most of them seem to more or less define what awful things will happen to me if I don’t live up to the agreement.

OK, here’s a little nugget: “We may assign or transfer the Service Agreement or any of our rights or obligations hereunder without your consent. The provisions of Sections 8, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 and any other provisions of these terms which by their meaning are intended to survive termination. These Terms have been drawn up in the English language at the express request of the parties.”

I am baffled as I believe I am a party and I don’t remember expressly requesting this, or anything else, with the possible exception of being left alone.

Here is the most I can put together from all I’ve read so far. If I don’t pay them, they’ll take the wire away.

If I was writing the Simplified Terms, I’d reduce the 5,493 words to about 12: If you don’t pay your bill, you will lose your cable signal.

Words a TV-addicted couch potato like me can understand.

Expressly.

©2007 Jim Hagarty

I often get asked how I made my fortune. It is an honest question non-wealthy people pose, and it doesn’t bother me at all to explain the path I took from rags to riches.

I left home at eighteen with seven cents in my pocket and the clothes on my back. And over the next five decades, through hard work and guile, I managed to amass more money than I can count. Some day I will write a book detailing how I did it but for now, I will share one little secret.

You might think a man of my elevated status would never need to go to a grocery store but Warren Buffett still steers his own car through the drivethrough at McDonald’s so it’s important not to lose the common touch. Another thing about the elites I run with is, far from being tightwads, we like to spend, sometimes with wild abandon.

In the store today, I saw a sign advertising three bags of potato chips for four dollars. That seemed like a bargain, judging by the size of the sign announcing the deal, but here’s your first wealth tip: It is no bargain at all if all you want is one bag of chips, which is all I wanted (and one more than my doctor wants me to have). So, I ignored the bargain and bought only one bag. It cost me $1.34. If I had taken advantage of the special sale, each of the three bags would have cost me $1.333333333 (to infinity).

So, yeah, call me reckless, but my plan is to spend every red cent – literally, in this case, one cent at a time – before I die. As you can see, with my sometimes wild abandon ways, I am well on my way to achieving my goal.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

Our cat Mario is 18 years old and getting kind of creaky. He has trouble going up and down stairs. So another family member regularly picks him up and carries him up the steps from the basement to the main floor to ease his journey.

Sometimes, I see him sitting at the bottom of the steps, meowing, telling me to pick him up and carry him upstairs. I don’t do that as I am not 18 and I’ve become a little wobbly on the steps myself. I imagine the disaster if I was carrying him squirming under my arm and trying to get upstairs, the two of us inevitably ending up in a horrible mess on the basement floor.

This morning, as I started to climb the steps, I could see he wanted a lift. Reluctantly, I had to reject his plea again and I started my journey upwards. I am not going to admit that I’m moving a bit slowly these days but as I reached the landing before three more steps to the kitchen, I saw Mario zooming past me like an Olympics speed demon.

I don’t know what to conclude. Either the cat is pretending he can’t climb the steps anymore or I am pretending I can.

©2024 Jim Hagarty

Our little dog Toby is 13 pounds of fun and fury. He’s a poodle and smart as, well, a poodle, which, next to the border collie, is the second smartest dog of all the breeds. So I have heard. And after 10 years of living with this little dynamo, I believe it.

Every time I take him to the groomer, she finishes off his bath and haircut by tying a fresh new neckerchief on him. He looks cute as a button when I bring him home, all freshly trimmed, and with his new scarf around his neck. His latest one is bright green with white polka dots.

The other night, the poor little fella suffered a wardrobe malfunction. I was sitting on the couch watching TV when he jumped up beside me with his kerchief in his mouth. He laid it down carefully beside my leg, and looked with great concern directly at me. It was his “do something” look I am accustomed to seeing several times a day, but this time was different. He has a whole mess of toys and plays with all of them on a regular basis but he never plays with a scarf that has fallen off, which they tend to do now and then.

This seemed to be the scenario. His neckerchief fell off which apparently upset him. He then put it together that if he brought it to me, I would probably put it back on him again. He got his wish.

The other thing that intrigues me is how well, after the past decade, he and I communicate with each other now. He has a variety of barks that all mean different things. And a whole repertoire of looks that he gives me depending on whatever need he has at the moment.

One look Toby has never given me is one of anger.

What I have learned over the years is that he has certain needs and he has become very good at letting me know what they are. And those needs do not just involve food, water, exercise, play, fresh air and sleep. There are other things that also require attention. Such as love. Several times a day he sticks his nose and then his whole head under my left hand (never my right, I am left-handed) because he wants to be petted. He also brings me his toys, hoping I will play with him.

And when I dress him in his sweater to take him for his walk in winter, he sticks his nose through the hole just like a toddler would and his legs through the legholes. During a thunderstorm, he follows me around vibrating and frightened, wanting me to pick him up and comfort him. He crawls into bed with me and dives under the covers.

We talk about godsends, without remembering what that word means. Toby was meant to come live with us, that I know. One Monday morning, I found myself with an unexpected $400 in my wallet. That night, we went to a breeder to size up her latest litter of puppies. Our son and daughter fell in love with the smallest one. I asked the woman how much it would cost us to take him home. She said $400, of course.

When we returned to pick him up two days later, she asked us what we had named our puppy. My daughter had chosen the name, Toby.

“That’s funny,” said the breeder. “That was his grandfather’s name.”

Ten years ago, not long after Toby arrived in our home, I retired. With my wife at work and the kids in school, I was alone at home all day. I needed, and found, a buddy in our funny wee dog. The Universe had come to the rescue yet once again.

My God I love that little guy.

(Update: Five years later, Toby is now totally blind and deaf. He has diabetes and a heart condition. But his sniffer still works, his tail wags as fast as ever and he plays with his toys. He gets excited when people he knows come to visit. I stretched out flat on the floor last night and he gave me as good a headbath as I had ever gotten from him. Every part got a good slobbering. After all this time, the poor little fella still can’t hold his licker.)

©2018 Jim Hagarty

When Gordon Lightfoot was eight years old, he walked into the kitchen where his mother was working. The radio was playing a Tony Bennett song.

“You know Gordie, that man makes his living singing,” she said to her son, who would go on to make a very good living giving the world a lot of amazing music, all of it while staying in Canada, refusing to head south to “make it.”

When he was about the same age, Hank Williams was singing while he shined a man’s shoes on a sidewalk in Montgomery, Alabama. “Where did you get those words, son?” the man asked him. “I made them up,” said Hank. “They’re pretty good,” said the man.

Hank Williams would go on to write and sing a lot of pretty good words. Good enough to become known as the Shakespeare of Country Music.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to inspire a person at any age, but especially the young who are looking for direction.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

©2016 Jim Hagarty

Every August for the past 30 years, my family and I have vacationed at a camp in northern Canada, a collection of cottages by a beautiful lake, where we enjoy a few days with our friends who own the place. It is idyllic in every way except one.

The cottages have no indoor plumbing so everyone has to make use of a two-holer outhouse when nature calls. It really isn’t much of an inconvenience and I used to troop out there in the middle of the night a couple of times, guided by a pretty effective yard light.

But one summer years ago, a bear was spotted behind the outhouse in broad daylight and ever since then, my nighttime visits have ended and I am a nervous wreck during my daytime sitdowns.

My fear of bears at the outhouse has been the subject of much merriment from our friends and other cottagers. What kind of city boy would be afraid of a 500-pound animal that has been known to kill humans?

Every summer they laugh and every summer I tremble.

But this summer, if we can make it there, I will arrive with some scary facts in tow. Last week, a woman in Alaska visited an outdoor john in the bush only to be bitten or scratched on the “bottom”, as the English like to say, by a great big bear that was hibernating in the depths of the outhouse.

“I got out there and sat down on the toilet and immediately something bit my butt right as I sat down,” Shannon Stevens told reporters.

“I jumped up and I screamed when it happened,” my soulmate said.

The woman’s brother Erik, who had joined her on the snowmobile run, at first thought she had been bitten by a squirrel or a mink, or something small. He picked up his flashlight and ventured to the outhouse to do an inspection.

“I opened the toilet seat and there’s just a bear face just right there at the level of the toilet seat, just looking right back up through the hole, right at me,” he said, emphasizing the word “just.”

“I just shut the lid as fast as I could. I said, ‘There’s a bear down there, we got to get out of here now.”

The next morning, they found bear tracks all over the property, but the bear had left the area. “You could see them across the snow, coming up to the side of the outhouse,” she said. They figure (being the kind of people who “figure”) the bear got inside the outhouse through an opening at the bottom of the back door.

“I expect it’s probably not that bad of a little den in the winter,” Shannon said.

A wildlife expert believes Shannon’s wound was caused by the bear swatting at her with a paw rather than being bitten. Either way, the incident might be a first.

“As far as getting swatted on the butt when you’re sitting down in winter, she could be the only person on Earth that this has ever happened to, for all I know,” the expert said.

Erik says he’ll carry bear spray with him all the time when going into the backcountry, and Shannon plans to change one behavior as well.

“I’m just going to be better about looking inside the toilet before sitting down, for sure,” she said.

Next time?

Backcountry?

Before sitting down?

These are not my people.

I figure.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

As I crawl under the electric blanket on my bed every night, I am grateful that such a thing exists. I am a cold-blooded animal, constantly at risk of freezing stiff as a two-by-four, so a warm blanket doesn’t seem to be a frivolous possession.

Still, the word “decadence” runs through my warm mind now and then and while I have not consulted the University of Google to find out the exact meaning of the term, my own definition would probably lay out that a decadent thing is a thing a person doesn’t need.

For many thousands of years, people have been covering themselves up at night when they sleep to stay warm. Cavemen and women probably used some form of wildebeest hide to keep the frost away. But it took some genius in the last century to think, “If I ran electric wires inside a blanket and plugged it into the wall, I bet I could sell millions” and here we are.

In effect, I go to sleep every night inside a low-grade toaster oven.

I would have to do an exhaustive survey of all my possessions to decide which of them I don’t need, but right off the bat, the plastic ice cubes I got for Christmas spring to mind. I know why the family member gave them to me. She has suffered through many years of the tantrums I have thrown as I have tried to get frozen water cubes out of their trays.

I could list may other devices like the plastic ice cubes to convict myself of the charge of decadence, but something I bought last fall I think would have any impartial jury yelling, “Guilty!”

I am referring to the butt warmer I bought for our car. I think of the many generations of my family which got from one place to another without even a car, let alone a butt warmer to put on the seat. Did they think, as they were sailing across the Atlantic after leaving Ireland in the 1840s, “I wish I had something warm to sit on”? I am going to go ahead and guess they didn’t say that.

In fact, I myself managed to live 70 years without a butt warmer and hardly ever mentioned to anyone, “Gosh my butt is freezing” but when you run out of things to buy, I guess you buy a butt warmer.

And, of course, as is the case with every decadent thing, once you have experienced the value of the new device, you can never go back.

If I ever emigrate back to Ireland, and it isn’t impossible that I won’t, I am taking my butt warmer with me.

And my plastic ice cubes.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

Sad news. The Jim Hagarty Hockey School has been forced to suspend activities again.

This morning at 3 a.m., the founder/president/CEO and chairman of the Committee for Recovering the Lost Puck and Stick, walked out on the ice he had made on his backyard lawn for the final watering before today’s warm spell when his feet went skyward and he landed on his back, his head bouncing like a basketball on the ice before finally coming to rest.

The pain that shot through him was equivalent to the shock that would be inflicted if five strong men swinging 20-pound hammers flailed away at his shoulders and neck for three minutes straight.

However, Hagarty did not lose consciousness and, in fact, his first response post crash was to sing the national anthem of Portugal in a seldom used ancient dialect of Portugese, which was surprising as he does not speak Portugese.

A hockey school student rushed out to help him up and when he asked Hagarty if he was okay, the noted hockey expert recited the American Pledge of Allegiance. Finally settled in his house, Hagarty groaned in pain but found some relief in sitting in front of the TV in the basement for a hilarious episode of a popular sitcom. This was remarkable as that TV was not plugged in.

After a restless night in bed, Hagarty asked his wife to remove the straightjacket from him so he could get out of bed. This was also odd as there was no straightjacket. The one she often wraps him in when he is sound asleep was sent to the cleaners.

When he finally made it to the kitchen, he tossed his car keys in the direction of the dog and asked him to drive him to the coffee shop as he wasn’t feeling well enough. So, in other words, there were no unusual side effects from the terrible fall.

School will resume next week if and when Hagarty agrees to get off the shed roof.

©2016 Jim Hagarty

I am no sociologist or historian or behaviourist or constitutional lawyer or any other kind of expert, for that matter. But, I have never let that stop me from expounding at length on any subject which might come up for discussion. The fact that I might know absolutely nothing about a thing will not slow me down for a second in explaining it to you.

I have always noticed this aspect about myself and about other men with whom I have had discussions over the past four decades. Lack of knowledge has never been considered a barrier to an analysis of a topic which might have come up, out of the blue.

For example, I might learn of the existence of a country – let’s call it, Percytovia – on a Thursday. On Friday, I might chance to read a short article about my newly discovered nation in a newspaper. Saturday night, I’ll be telling some guy at a party somewhere that the problem with the people of Percytovia is this: They have no appreciation of the democratic process. The average Percytovian thinks of his government as the natural provider of all he needs. Until this unfortunate attitude can be changed …

Now, I am soon, obviously, challenged by some other man who read the same article in the paper and who tells me it is not attitude, but geography which is defeating the good people of Percytovia.

After a minute or two of the discussion, we are about to start smacking each other just above the ears over this when another man approaches to claim he knows someone who studied last year at the University of Percytovia and we are both out to lunch. Faced with someone with actual knowledge about the subject, my debater and I promptly drop the topic altogether and go back to criticizing politicians, taxes and greedy hockey players.

For years, I have wondered why I must immediately know something about everything even when I know I don’t know everything about anything. And why are most of the men I know struggling with the same obsession?

Now, at last, I know.

I suffer from an affliction known as Male Answer Syndrome, or MAS. The term has been coined to explain why men must always appear as if they have just spent the past year locked in a library studying the very topic that has just been raised for discussion at the dinner party. And why we’ll still be talking about it long after everyone else has drifted off to other parts of the room out of earshot of our lecturing voices.

As a rule, women don’t suffer from MAS. If they don’t know something about something, they’ll admit it. “Percytovia?” will ask the hostess as she passes around the drinks. “Never heard of him. Who was he? A composer?”

I hesitate to say this, but I am convinced. Male Answer Syndrome most definitely does exist. Maybe all men don’t have it, but a lot of us do.

Now, it’s interesting that this subject should come up, because I was just reading an article on this not so very long ago. Male Answer Syndrome is a throwback to the prehistoric role of the male human as hunter and provider of the species, Homo Sapiens.

Take Early Percytovian Man, for example …

©1992 Jim Hagarty