Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
1992

It is popular to think nowadays that our world is fresh out of pioneers and the pioneering spirit. We have all become so safe and so secure. It seems that, for the descendants of the people who braved the wide oceans in rickety ships to come to new lands in North America, to take a chance today means to try an Italian meal we haven’t yet tasted or to take in a concert of classical music when all we’ve ever liked is country.

Where are our great explorers and risk-takers in 1992? The Jacques Cartiers and the Sir Edmund Hillarys, the Amelia Earharts and the John Glenns? Where are our modern Marco Polos and Sir Francis Drakes?

Argue with me if you like, but I think I know where they are.
They’re down in the basements of their homes and in their kitchens, bathrooms and garages, taking on that biggest chance of all: the home-renovation project. They are known as do-it-yourselfers and they truly are the last people of that brave and fearless breed which will head out into the frontier without a clue as to where they’re going and very little idea of how to get there.

Where Christopher Columbus faced uncertainties both on the oceans and on the lands he discovered and conquered, it is sure he never tried to hook up a potlight or wire up an electrical outlet with absolutely no knowledge of how to go about it. Do-it-yourselfers might take 10 minutes to get the new potlight holder out of the box it came in, let alone install it, but this does not discourage them. In retrospect, can sailing around blindly in a ship looking for a New World compare to the difficulty and danger of wiring a home when you have never wired a home before?

That same spirit that guided Magellan and Frobisher dwells within the modern world’s do-it-yourselfers. They set out from their harbours (the building supplies stores) and fan out in all directions, heading for their destinations (their houses and garages) with all the hope and trepidation of those early voyageurs. They have no idea if they will succeed in their endeavours and in fact, have been told by the skeptics around them (their wives, their husbands, their doctors, their building supplies store owners, their life insurance salespersons) that they are certain to fail. And yet they press on, sure of the visions they hold within their heads.

Those visions include beautiful homes and cottages, well-groomed lawns and gardens and refurbished automobiles and boats. But like Columbus who failed to find a route to India by sailing West, today’s do-it-yourselfers fall short sometimes in accomplishing their goals. The true believers, however, will never admit to that failure. And that’s what sets them apart.

You see, professional home renovators are for the feint of heart. They’re those safe shores of the homeland that people with too little courage will never leave. Professional renovators will never, for example, wreck not one but two sheets of drywall trying to cut out the holes for electrical wall sockets and switches. They will never touch two wrong wires together and watch their lives – and electricity – flash in front of their eyes. They will never, while taking down a wall, saw halfway through a live electrical wire.

Sure, they may actually live to tell their grandchildren about the lives they spent doing complex home renovations. But compared to today’s intrepid do-it-yourselfers, what stories will those poor grandkids have to tell when they are grandpa’s age?

One day, museums will be built to honour the achievements of do-it-yourselfers everywhere. Those museums will be erected by do-it-yourselfers, appropriately enough. It might be worthwhile visiting them soon after they open and before they fall down.

By Jim Hagarty
2012

I have a good dentist. He’s kept most of my pearly whites firmly lodged in my mouth for almost 25 years and he’s done it pleasantly if not cheaply.

But dentists can have off days I guess, why can’t they? Trouble is, when mine has a shoulda-stood-in-bed day but shows up anyway, that usually translates into a universe of hurt for me.

Not long ago, I went in for a ho-hum filling of a rather cavernous cavity of the Grand Canyon variety. Should have been easier than flossing a dead bear (which I have done many times). The problem started when the injection into my jaw line to freeze the necessary parts didn’t take. No numbness other than the usual deadness in my head where my brain used to be.

Let’s try that again. Sorry. Bright as a begonia. One more time for the Queen’s Jubilee. Nothing.

So he went ahead with the operation anyway. Holy crap, mind my English. My gums apparently have a lot of feeling in them. The only up side is I didn’t have to wait for the freezing to come out. But I played guitar and sang shortly after for a group of people and believe me, every tune I did was a real hurtin’ song.

Hank Williams would have felt proud of me and sorry for me at the same time, but not sorrier than I did for myself. I had a bad, bad case of the Dentist Chair Blues.

By Jim Hagarty
2004

I have a few questions to which I would dearly like some answers because I fall asleep every night troubled by these things.

To begin with, why is everyone always bringing something to the table nowadays? And why do we care so much about what the other guy brings to the table? Why do we toss him overboard if he doesn’t bring much to the table? Where is this table, anyway? Oh, for the simple life on the farm. Mom brought it all to the table; we pulled up our chairs and ate it.

And further to that theme, why are we all taunting each other to “Bring it on!”? Are we nuts? Most of the time, I wish people would “Take it away!” and usually have no desire for them to bring it on. There are too many people bringing too many things on, as far as I’m concerned.

Why is it, today, that when someone has no intention of doing something, that person will say, “Ya, I’ll get right on that?” What they mean is, they will not be getting right on that any time soon. Actually, never. Not to sound like I grew up down the road from Abraham Lincoln and walked with him 20 miles through the bush to school every day, but when I was a kid, if I didn’t get right on that, somebody usually got right on me. Then, my reaction was to get right on that.

When will we ever stop taking everything to the next level or a whole new level? Is the level we’re on never enough? And don’t we realize that when we get to the next level, there will simply be another new level to take things to after that? I thought being on the level was a good thing. It meant you weren’t rolling downhill. Character-wise, it meant you were one honest hombre. But now, life is just a series of new levels to be taken to. I wish we were level-headed enough to simply stay on the level we’re on, once things have levelled out.

When Abe and I were young, if we said to each other, “Good luck with that,” we honestly meant we hoped the other guy succeeded at whatever challenge he was up against. Now, the person who utters this expression is not wishing you luck at all, but telling you that you haven’t a hope in Hades of accomplishing your goal, and they’re kind of glad you won’t. So why don’t they say, “Bad luck with that!?” In the same vein is, “Yeh, like that’s going to happen!” (Clue: It’s not going to happen.)

Here’s a few other puzzlers. “Bang, done!” What? “Done and done!” If something is done, can it be done again? “Not a problem.” What happened to, “No problem?”

And why, oh why, is everyone trying so hard to “get ‘er done?” I remember when teams used to lose hockey games. Now, they just don’t get ’er done. Maybe they forgot to say, before the game, “We can do this.” Or the captain failed to tell them, “We’re good to go.”

But I have got to be honest with you. I miss the days when things were “great”, “terrific”, “good”, “wonderful”. Now everything’s just “sweeeet!!!” and the sound of that word is making me sour.

All I can say is, “Enough!”

“Already.”

By Jim Hagarty
2014

What kind of day did you have yesterday? Better or worse than this guy’s?

Walter “Snowball” Williams, 78, woke up in a body bag at a funeral home in Mississippi. He had been pronounced dead the night before but when they went to embalm him, he started kicking like crazy in the bag. So much for not having a snowball’s chance in hell.

The coroner had an explanation. His pacemaker likely stopped working and after he was bagged, it started working again at some point.

I am not a doctor, coroner or embalmer, but if this actually happens, might it not be a good idea to check a guy’s pacemaker before you plant him? Good old Snowball. I hope he outlives the coroner and all the employees at the funeral home.

Give ‘er hell, Snowball. You’ve gotten a second chance!

By Jim Hagarty
1993

This week’s continuing feature, You’ll Never Get Sick Of Being Healthy, looks at ways to identify when it’s time to slow yourself down. Although much is written on the subject of hurry nowadays, many people, when confronted, do not believe they’re rushing about too quickly. They are often surprised to learn impatience is playing any part in their lives at all.

Here then, at 10 sure signs you are out of control and need to ease back on the throttle a bit to lower your RPMs by a thousand or two. If you have experienced three or more of the following situations, it’s time to throw the brakes on.

You’re in too big a hurry when:

1. You find yourself pushing open an automatic exit door at the supermarket;

2. You can’t wait for the toast to pop up on its own, but grab the little plunger and force it up, half toasted;

3. You pull your pants out of the dryer and though they’re still half wet, slide them on anyway;

4. You call in the Mounties to investigate if someone who arrived in the restaurant after you, gets his coffee first;

5. You count the number of items the people in front of you at the supermarket express lane have in their baskets and suffer mental meltdown if some of them are cheating;

6. You sound the emergency alarm if the car ahead of you hesitates for three milliseconds after the light has turned green;

7. You pop a left ventricle, swear at the cat and ram your fist in your ear if the receptionist on the phone puts you on hold;

8. You play dodge ’em with a couple of 18-wheelers in an attempt to save a few seconds running across the four lanes so you can stand in line at the bank;

9. You work up an aneurysm while in a bank lineup when you see a teller or two discussing the weather and weekend plans with other customers after their transactions have been made;

10. You sob like an actor on General Hospital when you come across an accident on the highway and are forced to slow your car down to a crawl.

Now, if you identified with three or four of the situations listed above, you are in the beginning stages of Nervous Wreckitis and need hot baths, long walks and more sleep. If you agreed with between five and seven of the examples, you’re a Heart looking for a place to Attack and are advised to check out May Is Discount Month at the local cemetery.

If you could identify with eight or more of the above items, it’s T-minus-10 and counting. All that’s needed now is a clear day for liftoff.

By Jim Hagarty
2015

As if the world wasn’t dangerous enough, now cops are being attacked by women’s breasts and this just isn’t right. (Actually, in the case here described, it was the left one.)

Leave it to women to find a way to employ those vital life-giving glands to beat up male officers of the law. In Hong Kong, a female protester has been found guilty of assaulting a police officer with that well-known weapon: her breast. The woman was convicted of using her chest to bump the right arm of a chief inspector as the officer tried to control a protest in March. She claimed that what had actually happened was the officer took the opportunity in the midst of the chaos to reach over and grab her breast but fortunately, a wise deputy magistrate saw through that feeble lie and told her that what she had done was a malicious act.

Now, I am not a police officer and any place that hired me to be one would be very poorly protected from wrongdoers, but I think even I would have a little trouble going back to the police station and telling the other officers that I had just been attacked by a breast. The others would be getting treated after being hit by rocks, bricks and wooden objects. Some would be trying to recover from awful kicks to the groin by young people in steel-toed boots. Others would have been slashed by sharp objects of various descriptions. Some would be rushed to hospital. But a hush would come over the room when someone asked Chief Inspector Jim Hagarty what had happened to him, since I was displaying no visible wounds.

“Well,” I would say between tears. “A young woman smacked my arm with her breast.” The room would break out in groans of dismay and calls for revenge, but I would have none of it.

“Don’t worry,” I would say. “I have charged her and she will pay for her crime.” As obviously she should. Nothing can restore the chief inspector’s peace of mind, but at least this conviction in court is a start.

In time, it is hoped, that boob boo on his arm will heal enough to let him get on with his life.

By Jim Hagarty
1995

When I bought my television 10 years ago, I went all out and got one of those super-duper models that had a built-in “converter” which could receive 52 channels. I think, at the time, the local cable company was broadcasting 18 or 19 channels so it looked pretty good that this magnificent box in the corner with just slightly fewer dials and buttons than your average space shuttle would be a long time going out of date.

How was I to know that in January 1995 all of my 52 channels would be used up and there’d be three or four more that this marvel of modern technology wouldn’t be able to receive? Today’s cheapest TVs are made to accept as many as 181 channels and even they might become obsolete if the 500-channel future unfolds as we’re told it will.

So, I have 52 channels to surf through with my remote control now and still there’s hardly ever anything on. At least now it’s hardly ever on a lot more channels. And at 52, I feel cheated because I can’t receive the three or four more channels I’m entitled to.

Not to sound like Ben Franklin or Abe Lincoln, but I remember a time not so long ago growing up on our farm when you could count on two black-and-white channels – 10 and 13 – and on bright nights, you might catch the CKNX Barn Dance on Channel 8. But even with that pitiful selection of channels that quit broadcasting before 1 a.m., I was able to catch the Leafs and Canadiens battle it out on Saturday night hockey broadcasts, see The Beatles knock them out on The Ed Sullivan Show and Hoss and Little Joe argue it out on Bonanza on Sunday nights. I saw Kennedy get shot, Armstrong step on the moon and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker fall from his throne and didn’t know I was being deprived.

So now, the 500-channel universe awaits and some technonuts who are in the know, are suggesting that someday soon, people will be able to send out their own broadcasts from their basement rec rooms. In effect, there’ll be millions of channels and every individual who wants one, will be able to have his or her own. I await with great anticipation the Jim Channel on which I’ll broadcast Easy Home Renovation Tips with Jim, during which I demonstrate the wonders of loosening oil and home acetylene torch kits followed by Treating Skin Burns with Jim. On Today’s Chef with Jim, I’ll feature the beauty of tuna fish sandwiches – For Two or Twenty – followed by Treating Ptomaine Poisoning with Jim. And if I forget to shut off the camera at night you might be able to tune in my all-night show, Sound A Sleep with Jim.

Of course, the downside of this new world may be the possibility that I’ll have to zip by the shows you’re broadcasting on my way to the news. I may be forced to catch a glimpse of Fred’s Fish with Fred, How To Make Your Bathtowels Fluffier with Wilma or Our Trip to Nevada with Herbie and Marsha.

And to those who will wonder where the good old days ever went, relax. They’ll be on channel 1864, right between the all-night Ben Franklin Channel and 24-hour-a-day Abe Lincoln Channel.

(Update 2018: The above prediction came to pass but we do not all have our own TV channels. Instead, we broadcast our own shows on the Internet.)