Lifetime Sentences

My back is bothering me a bit today. A little stab of pain here and there depending on how I twist and turn. It will be gone in a day or two.

I used to chalk up my back pains to the famous “Hagarty back” that plagued even the generation that preceded me, my Dad resorting to wearing a brace in his mid life. I also blamed my problems on all the hard work I did on farms and in factories over the years. And on bridge construction. Two days on a jackhammer will rearrange your skeleton in ways never thought to be possible.

But the real source of my problems, I see now, were the years I spent in a local rodeo. I didn’t rope calves or try to stay on bucking broncos as long as I could. Instead, I was the animal on which two lively rodeo riders spent a lot of time, trying not to be bucked off.

My name was “Horsey” and I would be mounted when I would make the mistake of getting down on all fours to fish out a remote control from under a couch. The only warning I would get in advance of another gruelling ride would be the yell, “Horseeeee!!!!” after which I would feel the weight of a rider leaping from a couch onto my back.

My job then was to race across the livingroom, neighing loudly as I galloped and now and then, rearing up on my hind hooves in an attempt to dislodge the rider.

Eventually, I would return to the couch onto which I would buck the laughing rider, using the soft landing of the cushions to prevent any broken bones. Successfully riderless, I would then hear “Horseeeee!!!!!” from the other rider waiting there just before that one hurled herself onto my saddleless and nearly broken back.

Across the room Horsey would go again, rearing up now and then, and returning to the couch to buck off the new rider.

If I recall correctly, there would often be accusations from one of the riders that the other rider had been given a more thrilling romp, so the exercise would be repeated until the rodeoers were satisfied or their favourite cartoon came on TV.

I wonder on what specific day our final rodeo was held. I am sure Horsey and his riders didn’t know that would be our last big appearance before our one cheering fan known as Mom, who, curiously, was never called on to participate as a horse in the rodeo.

To this day, she never complains about an aching back.

On the bright side, even now, I still have knees of steel. Horsey’s hooves have gone a little soft, however.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

When I was seven years old, I was in Grade 1, was good at tying my shoes, knew 200 words and already had my first pair of ugly eyeglasses, which, as I was to sadly discover, were extremely efficient bully bait. It was only later I found out our one-room country school had hired a designated bully and I am not sure how he was paid but he kept himself busy and if he earned a fee for every kid he left lying on the school grounds sobbing, my guess is he did OK.

But I am pretty sure Bully For Hire didn’t do as well as a kid named Ryan, and strangely, neither did I. The highest-earning YouTube star in the world, Ryan is a seven-year-old elementary-school kid in the United States who does alright reviewing toys. The host of Ryan ToysReview earned about $22 million last year. The year before that, he made $11 million.

Ryan’s channel started in 2015 when he was four years old after he asked his parents why he couldn’t review toys on YouTube. Today, Ryan ToysReview has 17 million followers and has gotten a combined 26 billion views. And recently he struck a big licensing deal with Wal-Mart.

Now, I hate to be one to make excuses, but darn it all, that could have been me when I was seven, except for a few minor things. Our home didn’t even have its first TV at that time and it would be another 47 years before YouTube started up. And even if there had been an Internet for me to review toys on, as one of a family of nine, I don’t remember having all that many toys. A plastic rifle, a truck or two, maybe some cowboy action figures, a rubber ball. Reviews of those would have gotten old pretty fast.

At seven, I didn’t have much of an income, aside from the occasional deposit money I would collect for finding pop bottles in the ditches between school and our farm. So, yeah, I’m a little jealous. It would take me many years before I was able to begin earning an annual income of $22 million as a small town journalist. Many years.

Also, Ryan didn’t go to my school. If he had, he would have been too busy hiding behind trees to stay out of the path of our school’s official bully to think up toy reviews. I am guessing that Ryan has been privileged in his life. Not having your head beat on daily by a small army tank outfitted with arms and fists leaves your mind available for many profitable thoughts, I would imagine. As for my brain, it was sort of obsessed with the bully and not with economics.

However, if conditions had been right, I suppose, I could have done a video series about the Hundred Best Ways to Get Away from a Bully, except that I hardly ever got away. And didn’t know any ways.

Hiding behind trees was pretty much a useless strategy.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

Although I reside in a country where countless beavers live and gnaw away at trees, building their dams, I have never seen one in the wild. How could I go 68 years without encountering a beaver when they are apparently all around us? Especially since I was raised on a farm in Canada where there are trees and a waterway that could use a dam or two.

I could understand if I lived in Italy where, until recently, a beaver had not been seen since 1471, but in Canada? So last year an Italian spotted the first beaver in his country in 547 years in a land where they were hunted for food till they disappeared, but I should be able to trip over one every time I go outside but I never have.

I know I am looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope, but I’m afraid I am a bit of a beaver skeptic when it comes to this Italian story. So, I am to believe that a fella named Luigi or Mario or whatever, draws his arrow and lays low a beaver in 1471 and having done so, announces that that is the very last beaver in his country. How did he know there wasn’t another one hiding behind a tree, waiting for the big dumb cluck to leave so he could chop it down?

Did the authorities in 1471 send out investigators across Italy to see if anyone had seen any more beavers? Well, did they? And did they all report back that not a one had been spotted? I just have a hard time believing that there wasn’t even one wily beaver rippin’ around the forests and waterways in 1472 or even as late as 1572, for that matter.

I really think what happened is they stumbled upon the 15th century equivalent of a Jim Hagarty who had never seen an actual beaver in his entire life and when they asked him if he’d seen one, he answered, honestly, “No.” The investigators decided that was good enough for them after which they sat down under an ungnawed tree and polished off a flask of wine while an undetected beaver kept an eye on them from behind whatever kind of tree grew in Italy in 1471.

I am sure that’s how it went down and I am glad that’s settled.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

As I see it, here is the dilemma.

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.)

©2017 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2023 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2014 Jim Hagarty

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.

The cat will be pleased.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

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.

©2008 Jim Hagarty