Taking Time Out for a Bath

By Jim Hagarty
2012
I was in the small village of Wellesley today and saw a cat stroll across the main street, sit down in the middle of the road and have a bath. A car was coming, slowly, and a teenage girl walking along on the sidewalk tried to shoo the kitty off to the side. Finally, with absolutely no urgency, the cat got up and sauntered the rest of the way across the pavement, letting the car go by. That must be an example of how you know you are in a small town. I was driving down the main street in Killarney, Ireland, years ago when I spotted a dog having a sleep in a small area of the road where the sunlight was shining. Cars, bikes and even a tour bus all drove around the dog and left him to enjoy the sun which sometimes is a very welcome sight in the soggy environment of the Emerald Isle. I liked that. That the dog felt comfortable enough to do have a snooze in the middle of the road and that the villagers let him be. My advice, if you are in a hurry, is to not go to Wellesley or Killarney.

Doggie Too Young To Die

By Jim Hagarty
1994

The year is not even a third of the way through and already, I’ve cast my vote for Newsmaker of 1994.

Heck, I think this little guy should even be Newsmaker of the Decade. Maybe even the Century.

I’m referring not to Browning or Bouchard or Bobbitt but to Brownie, the spunky little dog in Artesia, New Mexico who was run over by his owner, left for dead and quickly buried in the backyard, only to dig his way back up to the surface hours later. When the family returned home from a trip away the following afternoon, he was sitting on the porch, covered in mud and waiting for his next assignment.

A few days later, after a trip to see a vet, Brownie was home again, minus one eye and limping from a broken shoulder, but happy to be back on the scene. He is a true American hero.

And in the two days I’ve had to think about this since I read the story, I’ve tried to put into words why I think this mutt with a cat’s attitude about his life deserves our respect. To me, he has reminded us of some pretty valuable lessons.

It’s not over till it’s over
The average Tom, Dick or Happy, if he woke up in a hole in the ground, covered over with dirt, might decide, “Aw, what the heck. I’m here now. May as well save myself the trouble of coming back later.” But not Brownie. He ain’t leavin’ till he’s done whatever he has left to do.

Don’t worry if people go around heapin’ dirt on you
“Hey! What’s a little shallow grave among friends?” thought Brownie. He didn’t believe any of those stories about his premature death.

People treat you the way you teach them to treat you
That’s the last time Mary Bratcher and her family will bury Brownie when he’s still alive. Next time he looks dead, they’ll wait till the vultures have had a few feeds on his carcass before they pack him off.

The first duty of a life is to live
When Brownie came out of his coma, covered up in the ground in his owner’s backyard, he probably didn’t lie around too long debating the meaning of his existence. He just started clawing his way to the surface.

It is important to learn to forgive and forget
Personally, I’d be offended if somebody ran over me, buried me in their backyard and took off without waiting around to see if I was, indeed, expired. But then, I don’t have the character displayed by a dog of Brownie’s stature. Apparently, he’s put the incident totally behind him and is romping around his owner’s house with nary a resentful, thought. It does make me wonder, however, what you’d have to do to make this guy mad.

You’ll go a long way before you find a better friend than your mother
Brownie’s human family actually isn’t sure whether the dog dug his way out of his predicament on his own or whether his mother, Pretty Girl, came along and set to work uncovering her son. Seems to me, the latter scenario makes the most sense, which is why I hope Brownie remembers to do something pretty special for his Mom on Mother’s Day.

When it seems like the weight of the world is on you, maybe it is
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get above your problems, like Brownie did.

If a rundown, left-for-dead, once-buried mutt with only one eye and a broken shoulder thinks there’s still enough good about this mixed-up world that he’d try that hard to remain a part of it, then what the heck are the rest of us moanin’ about?

My Undeserved Time Out

By Jim Hagarty
2015

I have been running this winter and trying to get my mile under the four minutes (just joking, the only thing of mine that runs is my nose), so I needed a timer. I dropped into my local surplus store and bought one. It doesn’t work. I opened it up to check the battery and a little piece of metal fell out.

Now this thing didn’t cost me much, so I threw the receipt in the recycling and was going to toss the timer in the e-waste bin next time I see one. But it kind of bugged me that it never worked even one time and never would.

The week went by and every day I thought about this. Would I dump out the recycling bins and search through the debris for the receipt? Or just let it go? I decided to let it go. Still …

This morning I hauled three large recycling bins (the ones on wheels with the lids) out to the curb and after the truck went by, I went out to bring them back in. The recycling guy had emptied all three and stacked them upside down, one on top of the other. I took them apart, set them back on their wheels, and prepared to pull them behind the house again. As always happens, a few stray recyclables were left behind on the ground. A couple of water bottle caps, a small advertising brochure and – a receipt. I turned over the little slip of paper and was shocked to see that it was the receipt for my crapped-out little timer. How in heck could this possibly be?

Things like this don’t happen to me often, but when they do, they drive me nuts. Those three bins were jam packed with recyclables of every description including fine paper by the fistful and so many receipts it was embarrassing. In our family, we apparently like to buy things. But in this instance, even the consumer gods were disturbed that I had been ripped off for the price of a timer and weren’t going to let me get away with not taking it back.

So tomorrow morning, timer and rumpled receipt in hand, I will be back in the store, righting the great wrong that has the Universe so upset it left me a giant clue showing how it felt about it.

By the way, the timer cost $1.99 plus tax. I don’t know why it was a piece of junk.

Keeping Up With Those Pay Hikes

By Jim Hagarty
2006

There has been a lot of griping these past few weeks about the 25 per cent raise (and increase in benefits, pension, etc.) that our members of the Ontario legislature voted themselves as an early Christmas present. I use the word “griping” because I simply don’t think it’s fair to hold a little pay hike against these hard-working folks who only want to keep up with their hard-working cousins – the MPs in Ottawa. I can’t remember who exactly it was that the MPs were only trying to keep up with when they voted themselves a tidy raise a couple of years ago but who cares? Well deserved, I say. Every penny (and $144,000) of it.

Objectors have said, as critics will always say, that these people knew what the pay levels were going into the job and shouldn’t have started complaining about them after they’d won a seat in the Legislature but to that, I say, “Pshaw!” and I do not throw around pshaws willy nilly. I think it’s just fortunate that we have elected people who had the intelligence to see that they were grossly underpaid and the fortitude to make things right.

With the municipal elections out of the way, and everyone settled into a nice, four-year mandate from the people, my prediction is there will be a raid on the cookie jar early into this new term. Phone me up and scold me heartily if Stratford’s new councillors don’t realize sometime within the next 12 months that they’re working way too hard for too little pay and set about to do something to rectify the injustice.

I say, “Go for it!” No, you won’t find me complaining about any of it. And I think those who are whining are looking at things through the wrong end of the telescope. The reason these raises annoy anyone at all is that they stick out like a sore thumb. They are way too obvious. What is needed is some sort of diversion that would keep politicians’ raises on the back pages of the papers, if they made the news at all.

I propose the following and I think it should go a long way towards quelling this and all future similar uproars. People complain that the reason this comes about every so often is because politicians have the ability to vote themselves pay hikes where the rest of us don’t. We are not likely to wrest the power to line their own pockets away from our governors so why waste time going down that road? Instead, a more profitable direction to head in would be, it seems to me, in giving all the rest of us the ability to determine our own compensation levels. According to our occupations, we could compare ourselves to some other group that is earning more than we are and take a vote in the office to raise our salaries accordingly. We’ll call it leap-frog pay hiking and make a game of it.

In the case of the newspaper I work for, we will simply phone around, find out what all the other journalists in Canada are making, draw up a big grid and chart showing us at number 72 out of 100 and vote ourselves a 35 per cent pay hike to bring us into line with the upper scales, where we belong. We will then forward the news on to our employer that as of such and such a date, our salaries will be increasing. Then, we will wait for the raises to kick in.

Sector by sector, job by job. This could be the way of the future.

And for those on social assistance who seem most distressed at having been thrown a three per cent bone while the throwers gave themselves 25 per cent, hang on. This system will work for you too. Just get together, vote yourself whatever it is you need, send a note to the government and voila! Problem solved. The only shame is that this idea didn’t occur to me sooner. It would have spared us all so much heartache.

In fact, I believe I will take the initiative and vote myself a bonus for dreaming up such a wildly promising plan.

In Mouse News

By Jim Hagarty
2014
This morning’s headline: Yogurt-eating mice found to have larger testicles. A few questions: Who left the yogurt out and then who first noticed a mouse run by and commented, “Look at the set on that guy. Holy mackerel!” To liven up the story, these are elderly mice. So these old guys are chowing down on yogurt and literally, growing a pair. Which begs one more query: When you see a mouse, can you tell its age immediately? Does an old one have grey hair, bald patches and a belly? Does it have trouble hearing the cat sneak up on it? This is all too much for me except for the uncomfortable feeling that my taxes are paying somebody to figure all this out. Oh well, back to my yogurt.

Down With February

By Jim Hagarty
1992

Don’t look now, but you may just be suffering from the February blahs.

This would explain why the dog runs behind the furnace and stays there when he hears you coming home from work and why your spouse asked you at supper last night if you know anything about separation agreements.

The remedies for this annual condition are many and varied but of course, nothing works so well in getting rid of the February blahs as getting rid of February. This will happen tomorrow at midnight so try to hang on until then, fellow sufferers.

Many people, of course, never get the mid-winter blahs. These are the ones with the perfect attitudes to life, the ones who are always thinking only of others, the ones who see the good in everything. You know – the saints. The first step in getting rid of the blahs is to stay away from the people who never get them. Also, stay away from the people who do get them. What I’m trying to say is, you’re going to have to work this out on your own.

But, the first step in getting rid of the blahs is recognizing that you do, in fact, have them. It isn’t easy, sometimes. But here are several ways of knowing if February has had you by the throat for the past 28 days and has been choking the happiness out of you.

If you answer “yes” to three or more of the following 10 statements, you have been Februaried. Apply remedial measures immediately.

  1. Every time I see a politician’s worried face on TV, I want to start crying.
    Yes. No.

  2. I don’t bother looking up from my magazine when The Making of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition comes on the TV.
    Yes. No.

  3. I buy some clothes hangers at the department store and I don’t even bother complaining about the tax to the cashier.
    Yes. No.

  4. I don’t bother with a second piece of lemon meringue pie because it would mean I’d have to get off my chair and go all they way over there to get it.
    Yes. No.

  5. Fellow workers ask me on Monday morning what I did on the weekend and I can’t even remember.
    Yes. No.

  6. I watch awards programs on TV and find the acceptance speeches interesting.
    Yes. No.

  7. Someone yells, “Look, Sinead O’Connor’s growing hair” and I don’t even bother glancing over at the TV to see what she looks like.
    Yes. No.

  8. I can’t wait for the sun to go down so I can go to bed.
    Yes. No.

  9. I read articles on life in Russia and find myself secretly thinking how great it would be to live there.
    Yes. No.

  10. Someone says, “It’ll be another month before Ice Cream King opens again” and I burst into tears.
    Yes. No.

Scoring: If you marked “yes” less than three times – redeem this form for a shiny new halo; between three and seven – stay away from me; more than seven – you’ll get used to the hospital food after awhile.