Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
2015

I have done the occasional stupid thing in my life. Dating two sisters in university and somehow thinking they wouldn’t compare notes and discover I took Anne out on Friday night and Jane on Saturday comes to mind. To make matters worse, they were both in some of my classes. That was a long semester after the inevitable discovery happened.

To this day, I take the long way around their hometown Thessalon when I am up in northern Canada, just to be safe.

But I will forever take comfort in knowing that so far, I have nothing to match the goofy decision a Brtish Columbia man made when he stole an unmarked police cruiser. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But do you know what was even dumber? There were two cops in the police car he stole.

So I will continue to stumble along, screw up now and then, but I will always check from now on, when stealing my next cruiser, that I ascertain the identities of the people seated inside before I drive away. If they happen to be sisters, I will hit the eject button.

By Jim Hagarty
2007

A pretty darned decent thing it was of me to build a vegetable garden box in the back yard for my family to cultivate. At eight feet by 12 feet and 10 inches high, it is a great start: Filled to the brim with nice, loamy soil, just itching to start churning out the tomatoes, peas and carrots.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the job accomplished till July, long after the ideal garden planting season. So, a brilliant idea occurred to me. Stuffed into bags and boxes in the shed are flower seeds dating back two decades. They accumulate, but never get planted. The new garden was calling to them and as I sorted through them, I plucked out a dozen small packets of marigold seeds. Enough, I assumed, to nicely fill a garden box of the dimensions already described. The seeds are tiny but I spread them as evenly as I could over the soil and then cultivated them in with a rake. All that was left to do was to water them and wait for the glory.

I was soon rewarded. Little green shoots started appearing in all the same spots where seeds had landed. A nice, Ireland-type shade of green. I realized (after I was told) that having planted them this late in the season, it might take some time for them to flower. But I was prepared to be patient.

Summer wore on and the water and heat did their jobs. My marigolds thrived and sprang from the ground so quickly, I could almost hear them growing. Every day, they were another inch taller, sometimes two. Remarkable. And I hadn’t even fertilized them.

Not really knowing what marigolds look like, I eagerly awaited my surprise – the day I awoke to see the first few flowers brightening the yard. What colour would they be? Orange? Yellow? Purple? I had no clue but was ready for anything.

Frankenstein-like, the plants kept shooting up until one day, they were waist high. In another few weeks, they were even with my head. I didn’t know whether or not marigolds would grow to over five feet tall, but if they did, I had a feeling I was witnessing a record-breaking crop. Every square inch of the garden box was filled with them now.

The other day, I remarked to a family member that my flowers would soon be blooming. They might, I was told, but if they did, it would be hard to see them, covered, as they were, by the five-foot-high weeds that had overtaken the box. Why this vital information was not delivered sooner, I am still wondering.

My “marigolds” filled three yard-waste bags on Monday night. My application for Master Gardener status has been rejected.

By Jim Hagarty
2013

This has to be a definition of irony.

I called up the website for a hearing centre this morning and a woman appeared on the screen explaining the company’s services. The video was fine but there was no sound.

At first I suspected it was a technical error. Then the conspiracy theorist in me took over and I wondered if they were trying to trick me into thinking I was stone cold deaf and needed to rush down to We Hear You and give them a cool $5,000.

Thankfully, my paranoia served me well. I still can’t hear and they still don’t have my $5,000.

By Jim Hagarty
1993

As I rush around at 6:30 a.m. every day, getting ready for work, I sometimes look over at my cat sitting like the Sphinx on a hot-air register under the kitchen window, warming up for her day’s activities too, and I envy her her life. Not that I wish my favourite sport was chasing down mice and chewing their heads off as she does from time to time. Nor do I wish I belonged to someone who stands seven times taller than me or weighs 20 times more. And I can’t say I’m ever struck by a desire to bust my teeth eating kibble out of a clay bowl on the floor every half hour, day after day, although it must be nice not to have to set the table or wash dishes. I also wouldn’t give much for the ability to run up and down a tree whenever I want.

No, the reason I sometimes wish I could trade places with Grumbles has nothing to do with wanting to do the things she can do. I just, now and then, envy the simplicity of her life. She has no bills to pay, no licences to renew and no eavestroughs to clean out and doesn’t have to be anywhere on time. As far as I can see, she has no regrets, no fears (except of dogs) and no enemies (except dogs) and couldn’t care less that she too, like the rest of us, is growing older day by day. Her days are carefree but structured and she is a true creature of habit that does what she needs to do and lets the rest go.

Grumbles lives by a few basic principles that guide her days and keep her more or less content. Somewhere along the line, she declared war on running shoe laces and attacks them whenever they venture into her territory. She can wrestle with a lace for half an hour every day and never lose interest.

Though no laces I’ve ever seen have gotten up and chased her through the house, she creeps up on them from behind chairs as if they were somehow possessed with the power and desire to kill cats.

My cat also believes she must lay claim to every small space that presents itself such as an open suitcase, dresser door or closet. She finds cardboard boxes especially irresistible and must hop into every one. Once inside, she assumes a meditative pose, not unlike one of those transcendental yogi guys. She sits in her box like Cleopatra on her throne and looks as if she is receiving communications from some cat god in the sky.

Also of vital importance to this 10-pound lump of fur with the pointy ears and the chainsaw-sharp claws are slippers. Leather preferred but cloth will do. If she thinks she has a purpose in life, other to maim and kill all the wildlife not of her species, I’m sure it’s to destroy slippers. At this, she is a true artist. It is breathtaking to watch her work.

So, from shoe laces to shoe boxes to shoe leather, my cat’s days are full. She has other diversions, ranging from lying on every horizontal torso she can find, knocking the whiskers off the other cat which lives at my place and shredding paper towels into a hundred pieces. She also has this love-hate thing with upholstery which I’d like to discuss if the subject wasn’t still too emotional for me.

But at the end of each day, she’s dog tired (or whatever) and falls asleep on a blanket on the couch with a look on her puss (or whatever) which is a picture of perfect peace. After all, she knows tomorrow there’ll be all the old shoe laces to pursue and with any luck, someone will drop in and there’ll be a new set. There’ll be a cardboard box or even a paper bag someone will bring home from the store. And then, those ever-present slippers will still be ever-present.

And on the really good days, a mouse with a chewable head will wander by when she’s on her rounds outside.

Except for the part about the decapitated rodent, it all sounds pretty good to me.

A college class was told they had to write a short story in as few words as possible. The instructions were: The short story had to contain the following three things. 1. Religion; 2. Sexuality; 3. Mystery.

Here is the only A+ answer in the entire class, written by a woman:

“Good God, I’m pregnant; I wonder who did it.”