By Jim Hagarty
2017
This winter, I slipped on the ice on our driveway and fell, crushing my shoulder on impact. At least I think I crushed it. Somehow my car keeps driving by the doctor’s office without turning in. So, I am living with a fair amount of pain.
This doesn’t interfere with my life too badly, but I am having some trouble holding my guitar for any length of time, even sitting down. My fellow musicians noticed this at the weekly jam I go to on Saturdays and asked me why I wasn’t playing along very much.
Now, a normal person might have confessed to falling, but what fun is that?
Week One:
“My wife hit me with a baseball bat.” This caused some laughter among my friends for a couple of reasons. Number one, they seem to be of the collective notion that I deserve to be it with a baseball bat and two, they know my wife as the gentle soul she appears to be and cannot imagine her slugging me with a bat.
Week Two:
I get asked for an update on how my wife is behaving. “She hit me with another bat, this time an aluminum one. Those suckers are hard!” I conclude by explaining there must be something wrong with my wife as she is becoming nastier by the day.
Week Three:
More inquiries as to the situation at home. “She threw a brick at me,” I explain. “Not just any brick but one of those concrete paving stones. Hard as hell. Hit me right in the shoulder.”
Week Four:
“I am pretty sure she’s been putting arsenic in my soup. I didn’t like the taste at first but am getting used to it. It has slowed me down a bit but my hair seems to be growing back.”
Week Five:
By this time, the jam cannot begin without an update as to how badly I have been treated over the past seven days. “She hid behind the door to the basement and tripped me the other night. I fell all the way to the bottom of the steps, right on my sore shoulder, the one that first connected with the bat.”
Week Six:
The list of tormentations my spouse is inflicting on me is getting a little harder to fill out now, but I have a half hour drive to get to the jam so I have time to think. “She’s bought a taser,” I explain. “I didn’t even know it was legal to buy a personal taser in Canada but somehow she got one. She’s hit me a few times. It’s not as bad as you might expect. All that writhing around on the floor brings back memories of our honeymoon.”
Week Seven:
“She bought me an electric blanket and hooked it up to a high-voltage generator. It’s quite the experience but I find I am sleeping pretty deeply, somehow. We did lose one cat, unfortunately, who jumped on my blanket at bedtime.” I asked my fellow musicians if it is normal for an electric blanket to spark a lot. Not if it is dry, they replied. “It’s supposed to be dry?” I ask.
Finally, I offer the possibility that my wife could use an attitude adjustment.
My fellow music makers want to agree but seem stuck on the idea that she is is somehow in line for sainthood for having put up with me for 28 years.
I wonder if the Vatican will accept a letter of recommendation from me for her sainthood application.
