Month: June 2016

By Jim Hagarty

So I just got told off.

It’s a beautiful morning where I live, so I went outside for a while and sat in a lawnchair on the patio, not far from the bird feeder. Not far, from my vantage point, but too close according to the assessment of some potential customers of the feeder.

I watched as two birds landed on the lawn. A bigger one, which I will call Mom, and a little one trailing behind. Mom scoured the ground for grubs and such and every once in a while, turned around and deposited her finds in the open beak of Junior behind her.

But I could see that her real destination was the bird feeder and there I sat like a Brinks guard, gun at the ready.

This is where another bird joined the drama, a bird I will call Dad. I don’t know if that is fair to make that judgment, but this one was bigger and had a bad attitude. Typical Dad.

Dad flew onto a branch above my head and gave me a long and loud scolding the likes of which I have not had since I beat up a kid on the playground in elementary school.

The longer I sat, the louder was the protest. I finally came inside where I belong, I guess. Pretty cheeky of a man to erect a bird feeder and then go sit beside it when there are birds about.

I just checked out the window.

Guess who is in the bird feeder?

By Jim Hagarty

There is a “meme” that gets shared on Facebook too often. In fact, the first time it was posted, that was once too often.

It states: If I spoke to my parents the way some kids talk to their parents these days, I wouldn’t be around to share this.

Let’s put aside the idea that your parents missed a golden opportunity to improve the quality of a not-yet-invented Facebook by not taking you out, and concentrate on a vital part of this important message.

Were you aware, as you were growing up, according to your own post, that you were sharing a home with two potential murderers? Two people who were prepared to commit infanticide to avenge the crime of snarky talkback from one of their children? And to spend 25 years in prison for the satisfaction of having you shut up for good?

So Dad says, “Take out the garbage, Junior.” And you reply, “Suck it, old man.” This would have, according to your post, been enough to prompt Dad to take you out in the back yard and drown you headfirst in the rain barrel. And something tells me from your post that you think he would have been justified in doing that. You might have even been proud of him for showing some guts.

And maybe Mom could off your sister for telling the woman who gave her life, “Get off my back why don’t you, you loser.” Maybe she could plug in a hair dryer, turn it on and toss it into the tub while Sis is taking a bath.

Yes, those were quality parents you had there Junior, for sure.

But of course, that isn’t really what you meant, was it? What you meant to say was you were an angel when you were growing up so no triggers from you for your murder prone parents. And you also meant to say young people today are awful in comparison to you, and by extension, your generation.

Which begs this question from me: Do you actually know any young people? Have you ever actually heard the way young people talk to their parents today? I didn’t think so.

Here’s a bulletin from someone who has seen more than a few young people in action these past few years, as a college teacher and a dad of two kids whose friends hang around our place all the time: Today’s young people are better than their elders. Less bigoted. Less racist. Less violent. Less sexist. More respectful. More hard working. More wonderful in every way. I love being around them.

So, suck it, Junior. And I beg you. Please don’t sic your Dad on me. He scares me.

And change your damn meme. Try this: If I spoke to my parents the way some kids talk to their parents today, I would have been a lot better son.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was a wee gerbil named Frank
Who got tired of life in his tank.
There was nothing to do
And the build up of poo
Meant his cheap little habitat stank.

By Jim Hagarty

On the farm, a cat or dog would get hurt, sometimes badly, by getting into a vicious fight or being in the wrong place at the wrong time when some dangerous farm machine was bearing down on them.

If they didn’t die outright, they would sometimes crawl away to some hiding place to get themselves out of the range of predators (thus protecting the pack), and to lick their wounds. There is an agent in the tongues of animals, probably humans too, that has healing powers.

We use the term “licking our wounds” almost every day. I wonder how many people don’t know that it came from a real thing.

A person suffering depression often finds a place to hide away from everyone, including members of his own pack, to lick his wounds and try to heal. They are spiritual, mental, emotional wounds, but dangerous to the health of those who experience them.

The people around someone who is depressed and gone into hiding are alarmed. We believe the solution is to end the isolation, get the depressed one out around people again and he will be alright. I used to think that too.

Now I believe the isolation and withdrawal from the world is a necessary thing and trying to pull a person out of that self-imposed state prematurely is to interfere with the process of licking of the wounds.

The wounds will heal. The person will re-emerge. The best we can do is look on non-judgmentally and with kindness and be there when the isolation ends.

I have licked many a wound in my day.

I have spent my share of time in hiding.

I have had the good fortune to be surrounded by understanding people.

By Jim Hagarty

A few weeks ago, I kept an eye appointment I wasn’t sure I needed. I changed my mind after I drove right past the eye clinic and couldn’t find it, in spite of the fact that there were three big signs on the front of the building declaring “Eye Clinic.” Not sure how I missed them.

Today I had a follow-up appointment and it is pretty clear to me now that the medical specialists who work in that building are goofing me for some reason. I had trouble finding the place again (I’ve been going there for only 30 years) but this time, at least I had an excuse. The eye clinic owners had removed, for reasons unknown, the largest of three signs that pointed to their business. That sign was six feet long, two feet wide, and lighted. It said, quite clearly, “Eye Clinic.”

So the game plan appears to be to make it harder and harder for me to find the eye clinic each time I show up for an appointment. That seems to be part of my eye examination now. Each visit, they take away another sign and see if I can still find them. I wouldn’t be surprised to show up some day to find all the signs gone and just a little business card taped to the inside of the front door window announcing, in tiny lettering, “Eye Clinic.”

Seems a weird way to go about eye testing but I never attended Optometry School so what would I know? I probably wouldn’t have been able to find the darned school any way.

By Jim Hagarty

“I was beaten, as a child,
“But it was good for me.”
Said the mean old lonely senior,
Who lives down the street from me.

“My father never spared the rod
“And I knew where I stood.
“I’d go back and thank my Dad
“If there was some way that I could.”

“The kids today they don’t know how
“To work or show respect.
“My Dad would whup them good and hard
“If he saw them, I expect.”

My neighbour is a law-abiding man,
I have to say.
But he’s as nasty as a wolf.
What made him be this way?

He lives alone and never smiles
And complains day and night.
Maybe Daddy’s whackings
Have left him less than right.

By Jim Hagarty

I am a walking encyclopedia with an amazing ability to retain and retrieve facts.

A lot of people have benefited from this skill over the years. I hope that doesn’t sound like bragging. I don’t mean it to be. It’s just a fact, identical to the endless supply I have stored in my very active brain. People at parties, especially, are grateful I am there to enrich every conversation.

I was at such a party last winter and fulfilled my usual duty. Those in attendance were attentive and impressed. After supplying several low-level tidbits to the talk, I held forth when the subject of the movie White Christmas came up, appropriately so at a Christmas gathering. We had watched the movie the night before so I was primed and ready.

“It’s ironic,” I interjected to the 10 people listening carefully, “that the Danny Kaye character predicts the Bing Crosby character (I can’t remember which one was Davis and who was Wallace) will have nine children some day because in real life, Crosby ended up having nine kids.” That is remarkable when you think about it and those who heard me speak were enthralled at this unexpected enlightenment. I was glad to enlarge their tidbits storehouses.

My niece, a geologist and student at a California university who is actively doing research on the first manned mission to Mars (seriously) pulled out her smartphone and a few seconds later announced that Bing Crosby had seven children in real life.

I was surprised that my niece and Google would be wrong about that but I didn’t object. Instead I steered the conversation to other areas about which I am very knowlegeable. We discussed various historical figures and I mentioned being at the house in England where once lived Mary Arden, the mother of George Washington. My fellow partiers’ eyes widened at that morsel.

My niece, who had lived in England for three years when she was younger, narrowed her eyes to help her read from her smartphone.

“Mary Arden was William Shakespeare’s mother,” she said.

This was sad I concluded to myself. If someone like this is working on the Mars project, they’ll probably land the damn rocket on Venus instead. Is this the quality of education California universities are supplying?

My niece disputed several more of my facts with the help of her phone which had been surgically attached to her hand by NASA scientists. I grew quiet. It is important to withdraw your encyclopedic mind in certain low-information environments.

“So what’s new?” my uncle asked me. “It’s raining out,” I said, without having to look at my hand. I was going to talk about the record mild temperatures but my niece was looking right at me. So I decided to switch from holding forth to information gathering mode.

“So when are you going back to California?” I asked her.

By the way, did you know she is flying back to the States on the space shuttle Discovery?

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A mouse and a kitty were wed
But couldn’t get comfy in bed.
The mouse stole the covers
And they really weren’t lovers
So kitty ate mousey instead.