Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
2013

I was a bit late and frazzled. I had a meeting downtown that I expected might last two or three hours so I needed a parking meter that allowed lots of time. Meter reading is done privately in our town now so the meter hawks are swarming everywhere, waiting to pounce on any prey, and I am determined to never again get another silly $15 ticket.

I drove around and there it was – a meter that allowed three hours and not far from my meeting spot. Perfect. Before I left the house, I reached into the change jar and filled one of my pockets with nickels, dimes and quarters. When I finished parking, I rejoiced when I saw 40 minutes left on my meter. Fantastic. So, I started stuffing in the coins and the time started adding up – one hour, two, then three. Yay.

One last check before I left revealed a problem, however. I had filled the wrong meter, for the car parked behind mine. Crap. I quickly searched my suddenly lighter pocket for my remaining coins and started dropping them in the right side of the stupid machine. Success. Three hours.

To the coin collectors: You’re welcome (you thieving bandits).

By Jim Hagarty
2006

I’m not one to hand out advice and, to my everlasting grief certainly not one to take any. But I just have to pass this little suggestion along, for what it’s worth. If any of you can benefit from it, then all my suffering will not have been in vain.

Here goes:

If you haven’t played hockey in 25 years or more, you might not want to make a habit of practising with a team of rambunctious 10-year-olds. Just a thought. My proper place in the arena is watching from the warmth of the heated spectators’ area, sitting on the wooden bleachers and gobbling down chocolate bars. But with his season only two games away from being over, the boy whose goalie equipment I lug back and forth from home to rink twice a week suggested I come back out on the ice like I did when he was younger. My excuse all season had been that there were already enough dads out there.

But this week, the team was short. So, after the boys had left the dressing room, I dragged out my 30-year-old skates and strapped them on as best I could. I pulled my Toronto Maple Leafs jersey over my head, squeezed my poor head into a helmet three sizes too small, picked up the new hockey stick I got for Christmas, and wobbled out onto the ice.

At first, all seemed well, as I skated aimlessly up and down the ice, trying to avoid any actual responsibilities for training. I was there just for show, nothing more. To fulfill a request from a son for whom the words “public humiliation” do not yet carry any meaning. In fact, all was going quite nicely, as I studiously avoided any involvement in the actual practice while appearing, nevertheless, more than ready for anything.

One time I was asked by the head coach to play defence for a drill but I begged off and stayed on the sidelines, looking good. Asked a second time, I could no longer escape.

The job laid out for the two coaches and I was to try to score on the whole team without letting them shoot the puck out over the blue line. The three of us against the 10 of them. Besides not knowing where to go or what to do, I was surrounded by crafty young players who looked a lot more skilled up close than they sometimes do from the stands. In fact, they seemed downright good.

I stood in front of the net, and missed the passes. Managed to be in the wrong places at the wrong times. And making a heroic attempt to keep the puck from exiting the zone, my skates caught as I skated backwards and I landed flat on my back. When I landed on my back as a kid on the ponds, it was not such a big deal. But a few too many of those chocolate bars in the bleachers has strengthened the pull of gravity and made landing on the ice a much more painful event.

After checking to see if I was alive, everyone resumed playing. A few moments later, I was looking up at the lights again as I lay flat out for a second time. Again I had been backing up when it happened. I think I fell a third time, but my brains have been a bit jangled since Monday, so it’s hard to remember.

Back in the dressing room, I explained to the young players that my old skates had only three forward gears and no reverse, which is why I always fell when I was trying to skate backwards. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing that a few of them fell for that.

As I type, my left hand is throbbing, my arm is aching. My back is coming around. With any luck, my pride will follow.

By Jim Hagarty
2011
It is only natural for us to sometimes wonder why we are the way we are. Nature or nurture? Were we born this way as Lady Gaga likes to say or did our Moms and Pops shape our personalities? The Hagarty cats have me convinced that nature plays the biggest part. Mario and Luigi, though brothers, couldn’t be more different if one was a cat and the other a kangaroo. As previously reported, Mario is an unrepentant stalker and slayer of various wildlife while as far as we know, Luigi has never killed anything in his life if you don’t count upholstery and carpet. Mario is skittish and insecure. Luigi is as relaxed and calm as a Tony Bennett song. However, there is no doubt Luigi is the boss of the house as even the dog defers to him. I have boxing matches with Mario and he never brings out the claws. To try the same with Luigi would result in pain and stitches. But cats of all stripes have one big advantage over us – they never get down on themselves! Unless they have been abused, they are the very image of self-acceptance. Humans would do well to reflect on our natures and give in to them.

By Jim Hagarty
2006

The long Victoria Day weekend (in May in Canada, honouring Queen Victoria) is over and it’s back to work to get some rest. From working. Raking, sweeping, shovelling, bagging, trimming, cutting lawn, cleaning eavestroughs. Beating back nature in all its forms to maintain our carved-out little space in what used to be dense forest (which it will probably be again some day).

Fun, fun, fun.

Back to work just to read a Toronto Star story entitled, Do we work too much? Asking almost any Canadian that question is like asking whether or not a 12-pound robin is fat. Of course we work too much. A Readers Digest story this month says many of today’s employers, far from having to deal with absenteeism, are having to cope with the rising levels of “presenteeism” in their workforces. They can’t keep us away from our jobs.

The same story reported shocking statistics about how many of us don’t even take all the holidays that are allowed us by law and by our employers. Why is that?

The Star story compared us to European countries where people have a much different, maybe a healthier, attitude to work and vacations. Apparently the average Canadian worked 1,751 hours in 2004, about 300 hours – or 43 seven-hour days – more than the Dutch, Germans, French or Danes. We worked almost nine weeks more that year than they did. Sweden apparently has the highest ratio of industrial robots in the world and a very high productivity rate as well, which allows for more leisure time. Leisure time spent leisurely.

Europeans have a much more relaxed attitude towards nudity in spas and at beaches and about alcohol and food. In Heidelberg, Germany, men and women relax in a bathhouse (where clothing is not allowed) built a hundred years ago on the ruins of a Roman bath. In Rome itself, at outdoor restaurants, people spend several hours in the evening enjoying seven-course meals and watching the world go by, especially tourists who can’t even slow down on holidays and who eat mainly to survive.

In rural parts of Ireland, whole families including the dog, wander down to the pub almost every night to enjoy the company of their friends, neighbours and relatives. Over here, someone who goes to the pub every night has a drinking problem, we believe. Those who sit in their basement drinking beer and watching hockey, even alone, don’t. The exact opposite is true over there. The ones who drink alone at home are the ones with the problem.

A large German industrial firm in Munich offers new employees six weeks of vacation in their first year. Over here, we can legally expect to get two and would have to stay with a firm almost a lifetime to work our way up to six and if we do deserve six weeks off a year, the company begins to look at us as a liability.

The irony is, all this hard labour, according to economists, doesn’t seem to be making our country any more productive than European states. And certainly doesn’t make us any happier, assuming it ever could, though I recently read a piece by a guy who stuck up for his workaholism and said he’s most alive when he’s working. True, maybe, till he falls over dead from working too hard.

The sad part is, we don’t switch from labour mode to relaxation gear as we pull into our driveways. In fact, that’s often when our hardest work begins. We spend summers yanking out every weed and fixing up the cottage.

The Toronto Star article asks: “Will Canadians or Americans ever start working less? The past 25 years suggest not. Between 1980 and 2000, European countries added, on average, six vacation days or statutory holidays, totalling 36 per year. Meanwhile … Canada actually dropped a day, to 24, while the United States lost two days, to 20 days off.”

Why are we moving in the opposite direction to the Europeans? Is all this tension helping to create the aggressiveness that is leading us into wars around the world? And before the letters start pouring in, yes, Europe is not perfect. That’s why there are so many former Europeans living in North America.

This column, by the way, was written after everyone had left the newspaper office and gone home. (To cut their lawns.)

By Jim Hagarty
2011
Our two cats came pre-named Mario and Luigi when we got them from the shelter as kittens. You can’t change names like that so we didn’t, even though I was holding out for Fred and Barney. After awhile, however, in our house full of creative writers, we felt the need to bestow more formal names on them so they became Archie and Stretchy McFlynnihan – The McFlynnihan Brothers. Archie, cause he always arches his back, and Stretchy, well, you know. Those names surprisingly never caught on so we took it up a notch. They were finally given the lofty titles Shredrick F. Wigglebottom III and Squirmford F. Wigglebottom III. (The “F” stands for “Fartingham”.) Shredrick (Mario) is always shredding paper, books, magazines, school projects, etc. with teeth a shark could be proud of. And holding Squirmford (Luigi) in your arms is like cuddling a cobra except a cobra would be less dangerous. Someday I’ll tell you the many other, less important monikers these two troublemakers have picked up along the way. Names such as Grayson Grayboy and Fatty McFattfat.

By Jim Hagarty
1987

We’re all familiar with the most common age-old slogans of wisdom. Sayings like a stitch in time saves nine, an apple a day keeps the doctor away and once bitten, twice shy.

But as years go by, other phrases and lessons, perhaps not so widely known, get learned as well from people you run into and they become part of a person’s arsenal in the tricky fight for survival.

They say, for example, that people who haggle over the price of a purchase or over the terms of payment, do so because they intend to pay for the thing. Those who agree to any price under any terms, aren’t going to pay. That is why the details of the sale mean nothing to them.

A good business deal occurs when both seller and buyer are happy with it.

The only revenge a person can take on a business man or woman who has pulled a fast one on him or who has been obnoxious, is to never do business with that person again. No need to retaliate. Just padlock your wallet.

A fundamental rule for doing business in the farming community used to be that a showy display of how well you were doing was an invitation to disaster. My father dealt for many years with a very successful businessman who had two cars – an older, down-to-earth one he drove when he was out seeing farmers, and a flashier luxury car he used when he was back home in the city. The principle was that if farmers thought the businessman was doing too well, they might start believing he was charging them too much.

In the newspaper business, there’s a saying, “When in doubt, leave it out.”

If you want to get the last laugh on your critics, be successful because success is the best revenge. If you want to succeed, get up in the morning. To be a success, find a need and fill it.

Your capital is like a cow. The interest it earns is like the milk the cow gives. Sell the milk and spend the money, but never sell the cow.

Sometimes these days when I read bizarre stories in the paper about the awful things being done around the globe in the name of God, I’m reminded of the dictum that religion is the last refuge of the scoundrel. And that there is no more unreachable person than the fanatic who lives in a world of his own.

What Dick says about Jane says more about Dick.

A person with one true, close friend is blessed. Some people have too many. If you want to count up how many friends you have, get in trouble.

More answers can be found in a person’s intuition than in any books he might read.

Sometimes, a man who is doing poorly in one area will become a success if he moves a hundred miles away. On the other hand, it’s the same face you’re shaving in Calgary as it is in Stratford.

Parents should live at least 40 miles away from their adult children.

Never discuss your financial status with a stranger. If you want to know what your young wife will look like some day, look at her mother. A husband or wife who will leave you once, will leave you twice. Trying to patch things up after you’ve lost your temper is like trying to stuff the feathers back into a torn pillow.

The average man will change careers three times in his life. A good man should be fired three times.

If you think there’s no God, try to make a leaf. You can tell what a person is like by the way he treats animals. Also a woman might get a glimpse of how her fiance will be by observing the way he treats his mother.

Many years ago, my father read me this poem which I’ve always liked and remembered. The poet is unknown.

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool. Shun him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a child. Teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep. Wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man. Follow him.

And I heard this the other day, when I told a fellow I know that next time out, I’m going to get myself a more practical car. He said: “It’s not always sensible to be practical.”

I always wanted to make up a saying. I can’t use, “Bloom where you’re planted.” That’s taken. So is, “Do what you do.”

This is the best I can think of: “Don’t answer questions that haven’t been asked.”

That sounds like it might mean something. Doesn’t it?