Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
2018

My Hagarty ancestors lived on a farm in the 1800s near a small village in County Cork, Ireland, known as Conna. Dozens of the descendants of John Hegarty and Abigail O’Keefe have visited that farm and the stone cottage where they lived as well as Conna since the 1990s. We have often been entertained by the wonderful, friendly local people, many of them descendants of people our ancestors knew. They have held events for us in a lovely community hall at one end of the village. That hall was built on the same site of a Catholic church that became redundant when a new church was built in the centre of Conna around 1830. The new church, St. Catherine’s, still stands and is in use today. Some of our Hegarty relatives were baptized there and others were baptized in the church that was demolished.

The community centre is a busy place and hosts numerous activities, including local theatre productions. I got up and sang a song from the stage there in 2013. In 2002, the community put on meals there for the 107 Hegarty descendants who were holding a reunion there.

But the hall is also the sometime home of a friendly ghost, apparently seen by many in the community. A priest has been seen there and eyewitnesses have described the apparition as being very short, about half the height of a normal human being. No one seems to know, at least, not that I have heard, which priest this might be but he seems to have perhaps been left behind when the church was moved to a new location. The good reverend seems benign as you might expect a priest to be, even after death, and no one I have talked to seems fearful to be in the hall alone with him.

On the other hand, a woman who lived on the nearby Hegarty farm once pointed to some hills in the distance outside her farmhouse window and said that that is where some “wee people” live.

“No one believes that,” I said to her.

“Oh heavens no,” she laughed. “No one believes it. And no one goes up there!”

Happy Halloween.

By Jim Hagarty
lifetimesentences.com
I got up the nerve tonight to check on the readership stats for my blog and I was blown away. When I restarted this venture after four months hiding in the woods somewhere, I was afraid to look at what the absence had done to my readership. As it turns out, the first two days back were my second best and third best ones I have ever had. The numbers have fallen a bit since then, but it is obvious I need to take four-month breaks more often. Or maybe not. My best-ever one-day response came in only the second week I published the blog in 2016 when I wrote about being born in the same hospital as Justin Bieber and raised in the same community. That story, combined with whatever else I published that day, generated over 800 views. My first two days back last week, I racked up 300 views each day. Before that, I was used to seeing results of between 100 and 200 per day. I know it’s not supposed to be about the numbers but it is gratifying to notice the response. I really want to thank you all for coming back. It means a lot to me. I know I have a talent for writing humourous and slightly twisted stuff and I feel compelled to use that gift to brighten the days of those who choose to come here. If you are like me, I don’t laugh because I can’t take anything seriously. I laugh because I take everything TOO seriously. Laughter is my medicine and only hope.

By Jim Hagarty
2018

Five minutes.

That is all it took.

Sitting in the leather recliner, dog in lap, phone in hand, reading the news about the Idiot for the Ages, when the dog launches off the lap and takes off after the cat, for apparently no reason at all. Except this time there was a reason.

“Oh no,” comes the alarm. “There is a dead mole on the carpet.”

Swear words escape lips at this news and, naturally, the left lens pops out of the new eyeglasses, disappearing down the side fold of the chair. Many things have gone down that fold over the years, only some have been retrieved. Luckily, the lens hadn’t hit rock bottom but it was heading that way.

Unable to see ahead more than three inches, the hunt begins for the handy eyeglass kit with its screws and tiny screwdrivers. Blindness requires the head to be plunged into the junk drawer in search of the kit. Remarkably, it appears quickly.

The rodent, meanwhile, remains deceased on the living room carpet. The need to dispose of it outweighs the restoration of eyesight so double plastic grocery haulers are pressed into use to form a body bag for the poor creature. The cat will dine on mice all day long but he draws the line at moles. He is not to be blamed as moles do not appear to be eatable things. At least a lifeless, bloodless body is not too terrifying to deal with.

Back at the kitchen table to put a screw into the eyeglasses. The original one is long gone so a replacement from the kit is pressed into use. It is too long and too thick but with the application of elbow grease, a half hour of time and twenty well-chosen swear words, the larger screw has managed to force its way into the too-small hole and the lookers are once again able to see.

All of this activity has produced a blistering headache. A new bottle of painkillers are fetched. The manufacturer, just for fun, sealed the bottle so well it cannot be opened. As in never, ever. A sharp-bladed knife is needed to release the tiny pills.

A semblance of calm has been restored. The dog is hiding behind the couch, spooked by all the drama. The murderous cat is down behind the water heater.

And the Idiot for the Ages is still an idiot.

By Jim Hagarty
2018

It amazes me what the tee shirt industry has managed to get away with these past few decades. While virtually no one (except me) was watching, the makers of these classic garments have been steadily shrinking the material they put into them while expanding the designations they assign to their clothing.

I remember my earliest tees being sized “small” and even at that, they fit pretty loosely. Then came the mediums, and same thing – hardly snug, just right. But the devious manufacturers began pulling the wool (cotton? polyester?) over our eyes when they began churning out “large” tee shirts. I swear these shirts, in an earlier time, were actually mediums or even smalls, but there I was walking around in large tee shirts which, eventually, somehow, didn’t seem large to me at all. In fact, they felt more like mediums and on hot, humid days, even smalls. And there were times when I actually needed help to pull these larges up over my head and off my sweaty torso.

The day I put on my first extra large tee shirt was as close as I have ever come to writing a hostile letter to a clothing maker or taking even more drastic action but I was too depressed to do it. The fact is, the extra large shirt fit just fine, which obviously meant that in reality, it was a large or even a medium size. How, I wonder, are these greedy capitalists able to get away with such a swindle?

Finally, on Saturday, I put on a new “two times extra large” tee shirt and I was crestfallen to realize that the Great Tee Shirt Scandal was now tipping in a new direction. Rather than being too small, this darned thing was way too big. I wore it to a family reunion anyway, having nothing else that was clean. Since then, I have seen photos of myself from the event and am shocked to realize that I was wearing, not a tee shirt at all, but a moo moo.

So now, the tee shirt makers are passing off moo moos as tee shirts. And I refuse even to discuss the size designation of “three times extra large”. That one is big enough to do double duty as a barbecue cover.

Whenever Ontario Premier Doug Ford (a possible three times extra large candidate if I ever saw one) gets done with his buck a beer crusade, he might want to take on the tee shirt industry. He could at least get them to come up with new designations after large such as “beach size”, “tent”, “blanket”, “moo moo”. At the very least, get rid of that ridiculous “extra” specification. The connotation of that awful descriptive suggests that the wearer of such a garment is walking around in an “extra large” body, for example.

I have been looking for a cause to champion and realize all the really good ones are gone. With the advent of the tee shirt/moo moo, I think I might have just found it.

By Jim Hagarty
2018
I hate it when things such as this happen and there is no one around to study them. For the past 10 years, my face has endured twice-daily (and more often) applications of copious quantities of dog slobber. I wonder if anyone has examined this sort of phenomenon with an eye to predicting when the effect on the human face is so severe with the slobber build-up that one day the face just slides right off the skull. There must be some way in which this could be tested. At the same time, I am getting no help from the specialist my doctor sent me to. I was told by that doctor, after thorough testing, that I was suffering from a severe case of dog slobber deficiency, the worst case she had ever seen. She recommended I continue the twice daily applications and went so far as to advise me to encourage my dog to ramp up his schedule. Another scientific test I would like to see done is an examination of how much slobber one 13-pound dog is able to generate in a day because I am pretty sure my dog’s glands are overproducing. Lest you think a simple face-washing might solve the problem, I am here to declare that slobber is very much like the goo that oozes out of evergreen trees from time to time. That stuff is some serious sticky.

By Jim Hagarty
2018
I threw out a loaf of bread the other day. It had grown lots of mold while sitting on top of the fridge. Regrettably, I do the same with cheese now and then, although I delay the inevitable as long as I can by cutting off the green parts. I think modern society has grown soft. They have found bread in Jordan that is 14,400 years old and recently, cheese was discovered in some pottery in Croatia that is 7,200 years old. Will they be throwing that stuff out? I don’t think so. And yet, into my garbage goes perfectly good bread and cheese that has passed its best-before date by only a week. I rest my case.

By Jim Hagarty
2015

Near the end of my life, as I am reviewing my credits and demerits and sizing up my chances of being admitted through the Pearly Gates, there is one deed I will thankfully not have to include on the list of sins I have committed. I am not sure how I avoided doing it. Maybe it was more luck than good management. But I never shot my mother during a wedding ceremony. And she was ever grateful to me for that.

But Cory Golightly of Kentucky is going to have to somehow explain to St. Peter just how and why he did that to his Mom recently. St. Peter might be inclined to give old Cory a break, however, because he is a detective with the McCracken County Sheriff’s Department. And a finer grouping of law enforcement personnel you would be hard pressed to find.

Cory went to the wedding wearing a gun in a holster under his suit jacket because a lot of hardened criminals can be found attending weddings these days and you never know when you just might need a good guy with a gun. But as Cory was adjusting his jacket, the gun fell out, went off and shot his Mother. So you see, when you get the details and if you can be honest in your interpretation of them, it wasn’t really Cory who shot Mom of Cory but the gun itself that did it.

Charges are being considered against the gun. As well they should be. You see, when the matter of gun control comes up, it is worthwhile remembering that it is called “gun control” and not “gun owner control”, because people don’t shoot people, guns do.

As for the bride and groom, at least their big day started off with a bang. And by the way, Mom Golightly is okay.