Over the Cliff

By Jim Hagarty
2012

I saw a clip on TV from Thelma and Louise where the wild and crazy women are driving their car off a cliff. So, of course, that is what I did in a dream I had last night. I was driving down a mountain road (like I am on them every day here in flat old southern Ontario) and my whole family was in the car with me.

For some reason, our friends’ golden retriever Kirby was sitting on my lap. Kirby weighs about a hundred pounds so you can imagine how difficult it was to try to see around him while I was driving. Sure enough, off the road we went into a forest of evergreens hundreds of feet below. (Thirty years ago I was riding in a pickup truck along an actual mountain road in Western Canada used mostly by logging trucks and I looked over the edge at the evergreens below so that is where that came from.)

Anyway, the good news about dreams is the story lines don’t usually follow reality so in this case, we were all fine including the dog and there was hardly a scratch on the car which might be the strangest part of the whole adventure because there are lot of scratches on it now in real life.

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.