Is That the Best You Got?

You might get the feeling that you live in a small town when your aunt calls you up and asks if you don’t have a better picture of yourself you could put at the top of your weekly column in the newspaper.

“A woman I know asked me the other day if that’s what you really look like,” my aunt said to me, “and I told her, ‘No way, he looks a lot better than that.”’

That said, how it is you really know you live in a small town is when you take your relative’s word for it and get a new picture taken so she won’t have to apologize to the neighbours any more.

So, you can thank my aunt for the new mug shot of me at the top of this column today.

©1987 Jim Hagarty

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.