Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
2012

I went for my daily walk yesterday morning and had a few things on my mind. I can’t remember what things, exactly, but I know one thing that I wasn’t thinking about when I left the house. I had absolutely no plan to get more furniture for the rec room.

Along the streets I walked, turned a corner and there they were: Four, perfectly good, solid wooden TV tables, all standing in a wooden case. Interesting. As I was looking them over, Frank, the crossing guard, who was sitting in his car nearby, said, “If you want ’em you better take them ’cause I’m going to throw them in my trunk when my shift is over.”

“You can have them,” I said, nervously.

Then I continued my walk, and this thought began to obsess me. I had to have those tables. Had to. The thought that Frank was going to get them started driving me crazy. As I walked, I pictured two futures: one with the tables and one without and believe me, the one that included those tables was much preferable to the one without.

I picked up my pace and was practically running by the time I hit my driveway. I ran into the house, grabbed my keys, drove the van like crazy over to the street with the tables and raced down there. Frank’s car was still there, but he wasn’t inside. I couldn’t see, couldn’t see, are they, what is that?

YES!

No one anywhere on Earth at that moment was happier than I was as I loaded them into the van. Funny how something I didn’t even know existed 10 minutes before became the whole focus of my existence until they were safely tucked away in my garage.

Next year, they’ll be sitting out at our curb with a “free” sign on them.

I bet Frank comes by and gets them. I just bet he does.

By Jim Hagarty
2017

I have a problem with authority. And authority figures. Childhood thing, I think.

This character defect is behind the four times in my life that I have been fired from a job. My Dad always said every good man should be fired three times so I have done him one better. I must be a great man.

Unfortunately, the authority figures I fear the most wear white coats and are gainfully employed as medical specialists. And now that I am well into my seventh decade of wandering aimlessly around this planet, I find I am encountering medical specialists more often than seems desirable.

With most of the specialists I see from time to time, I am able to play it fairly cool and disguise my terror. I smile, use a little humour and am suitably deferential. But there is one guy who scares the pants off me.

Now some specialists order me to take my pants off and this man is not in that business. Nevertheless, I stand before him every time as though I was in line for approval by an admissions committee at a nudist colony.

I don’t know exactly what it is about this specialist that has me dreading appointments with him months in advance. But I think it has something to do with the fact that he was apparently born without a sense of humour. And he was endowed with an overabundance of ability to be sarcastic.

He is not the least bit shy about scolding me, as though I was a two-year-old, slumping in my high chair. In fact, he has actually, sternly and loudly ordered me to sit up straight in my chair.

“I told you to sit still,” he has remarked.

“Look straight ahead!” he has said. “I did not say look to your left.”

I went to see him on Monday and could hardly sleep Sunday night, waiting for the encounter which was scheduled for 10 a.m. I was up and showering at 8 a.m., fully two hours ahead of the appointment at an office a five-minute drive from my house. I showed up a half hour early.

Finally, he came to the waiting room and called my name, directing me to one of his examination rooms and ordering me to sit in the “chair on the right”, or at least that is what I thought he mumbled. I walked into the room and panicked. There were three chairs there. It was hard to tell which one was the one on the right. I chose the one in the middle and fortunately, I guess, chose the right one.

He came in and barked out a few questions which I tried to answer without fainting. Then, as he always does, he asked me to tell him what medications I am taking. He may as well have asked me to read out the alphabet to him backwards, skipping every second letter. Or to recite to him the table of minerals, if there is such a thing. I couldn’t remember the name of even one pill.

However, trying to be helpful, I said, “Actually, I did what you told me to do last time and went and got a wallet-sized printout showing my medications from the pharmacy.”

“Well, where is it?” he asked.

“It’s in my wallet. In the car.”

“So, when you show up at emergency some day, and they ask for this information, you’ll tell them it’s in the car?”

I slithered out of the chair in a puddle and oozed under his desk.

I would ask my family doctor for another specialist but I would have to drive 40 miles for appointments and for all his abruptness, I know that my guy is one of the best around.

Besides, I’d just be terrorized by a new specialist is all. Because it is not their problem; it’s mine.

I just hate anyone telling me what to do.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

I drove into a nice shady spot at my favourtie fast food restaurant and opened my coffee, prepared for a nice 15-minute break. A car pulled in beside me. Its driver got out and peeked inside my open passenger door window.

“Hey Bud. Mind looking after my car?” said the middle-aged man, who, without hearing my answer, then walked away and into a nearby store.

I looked at his car. It was not a car that anybody needed to look after. In fact, I am going to guess that nobody had looked after it for a long time. But now I was looking after it. I had no information to illuminate the task I had been assigned, a job given to me casually by a stranger who offered me no option but to accept the challenge. Were the keys in the ignition? Was there a baby in a car seat in the back? A thousand dollars in silver coins lying on the seat?

Immediately, I imagined a horde of car wreckers lurking in the parking lot, waiting to launch a car invasion on the vehicle I was suddenly guarding. I went from relaxed coffee drinker to nervous car-watching pile of human misery in about 15 seconds. I didn’t know if I had what it would take to fight off a bunch of nasty auto vandals.

And here’s the thing. The car owner who had enlisted me in the serious business of protecting his mode of transportation, seemed to be in no hurry to return from the store. For all I knew, he worked there and had just started an eight-hour shift.

I finished my coffee and sat there. The car owner had found the one guy in this town who feels responsible for everything around him, twenty-four hours a day. I would have sat there for three full days watching that bucket of bolts simply because I had been put in charge. Finally, after almost another complete half hour, I came to the logical conclusion that the car owner’s words to me must have been the last he ever spoke. He had obviously been either kidnapped or murdered upon entering the store. Now, I had to worry about his kidnappers/murderers emerging bloodthirsty from the store. Seeing me watching the guy’s car, they would probably toss a grenade, or at the very least a stinkbomb, through my open window.

Wisely, at last, I got the hell out of there.

I seem to attract these kinds of assignments. This morning, a neighbour came to my door. Nicest guy I know. He has done a lot for me and my family over the years. He had a request. A FedEx truck was delivering a package from Spain and he had to leave. He gave them my name and wondered if I would be home to accept the delivery. I did have plans to not be home accepting FedEx packages from Spain, but here I am. Locked inside my home, staring out the window.

My neighour drove away. I have no idea where he is. For all I know, he’s sitting in shorts and straw hat at a seaside outdoor cafe, sipping sasparillas or mint juleps, and contemplating how good life has been to him. Either that or he is at the fast food restaurant, ransacking the car I had left unguarded there. Seems like that would be out of character for him but it is a crazy world. And I would like to know what it is he has ordered from Spain.

And you wonder why I am a wreck. I feel almost like I am one of those marks in a Just For Laughs TV prank or a Candid Camera episode. Pretty soon I will be directed to look into the disguised camera that has been trained on me all along. I will laugh uproariously.

Meanwhile, would you mind looking after this website for me? Hackers and such. Thanks. Now back to my mint julep. Which should be interesting as I have no idea what the hell a mint julep is. Or a sasparilla, for that matter.

By Jim Hagarty
2012

I was sitting in the food court of a shopping mall many miles from home today, catching up on some people watching, when a married couple in their 60s wandered over to a nearby table, sat down and started chatting with some folks they knew. I have never met this couple but I know they are married and have been for a long time. I know this because this man and woman could have passed for twins. Not identical twins, but pretty close. Similar hair styles and colour. Interchangeable, almost unisex clothing. Many mannerisms in common and they talked and laughed in almost perfect symmetry.

A younger couple at another table also resembled each other closely. Both skinny with long black hair and lots of tattoos.

One night a while back I spent an hour waiting in a movie theatre lobby and was shocked at how closely the middle aged (and younger) couples resembled each other. One man and woman both came in with sweaters hanging over their backs, tied in front by the sleeves. Another walked by wearing the same bright colour of yellow except that she wore yellow pants and he wore a yellow shirt.

Numerous couples had almost identical eyeglasses. Some sported leather, others khaki.

I am not the first to notice this phenomenon. People have been pointing this out for generations. But it is amazing to see, nonetheless.

How can it possibly happen that over time, not only the clothing but the physical features of two distinct people can become so blended? Two souls becoming one, perhaps.

For me, somehow, it’s a comforting thing to see. No individuality has been sacrificed and yet, the sum of one and one is greater than two.

By Jim Hagarty
2017

I am going to come right out and say it. Enough with holding it in. I hate Fanta orange pop.

Somebody got the brilliant idea to combine the urine of a mongoose with the sweat from an elephant’s ass, add some colouring and presto chango, the worst pop in Creation was Created. The difficulty this has caused in my life stems from the fact that I love orange pop. But someone in my family made the tragic mistake of bringing home a whole case of Fanta this summer and I have been traumatized. If the ridiculous stuff would take the rust off my bicycle rims like Coke does, I might use it for that, but, of course, it doesn’t. I guess the only good thing about it is the employment it gives to the mongoose and elephant populations of the world.

In my sadness and frustration, I have been forced to hang around my favourite hotdog stand this summer and getting tired of Coke, one day I asked for a glass of orange fountain pop. From the first sip, I knew I had found the Holy Elixir.

I have returned several times, as much for the orange pops as the hotdogs, and have spent many pleasant evenings with what have become my two favourite things to ingest. (And no, I do not subscribe to Health Food Monthly, thanks for asking.)

With the family all away at suppertime again tonight, I turned my car towards Hot Dog Heaven and walked up to the order window.

“I would like a regular hotdog, ketchup and relish only, and a small orange pop,” I told the nice young man peering out of the hole in a concrete wall at me.

“So, a regular dog and a Fanta,” he said to me.

“What’s that now?” I asked.

“Regular dog and a Fanta?”

“I guess,” I said.

The hotdog was great. Better than ever.

Pop seemed a little flat.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I once had a gerbil named Tink
Who was smarter than you might think.
He could count up to ten
Then back down again
And go to the fridge for a drink.

By Jim Hagarty
2015

I hate it when I have a good idea and somebody else gets to the patent office with it first.

A Canadian company has just been granted a U.S. patent for a 20-kilometre-high space elevator. Thoth Technology of Pembroke, Ontario., says the freestanding structure would allow astronauts to launch from a platform high above the Earth. The elevator will be pneumatically pressurized and guided over its base to allow such a tall and slender structure to stand freely.

The space elevator could also be used for wind-energy generation, communications and tourism.

Well, that all sounds pretty fancy but I wanted to build it because I love heights and to be in an elevator that stretches from Stratford to Mitchell would be a blast.

Oh, well. On to my other plan which is to built a giant escalator up one side of the Rocky Mountains and another down the other side.

Rats. I just gave away another amazing idea.

By Jim Hagarty
2015

The keys to a successful marriage, I am here to tell you, are these: Balance and Priorities.

A few weeks ago, our Internet router sputtered. It had to be restarted once a day, sometimes more. It seemed to be slowing down. I rushed out the store and bought a new one for just under $200. Life is good again.

Last year, our vacuum cleaner powerhead quit. Without it, attempts to vacuum the carpets were very sad.

Months went by. I went into a second-hand store and there it was. A beautiful, bagless Hoover upright. Perfect. Even better was the price: $7.

Computer network: $200. Housecleaning: $7. A good marriage is also a matter of math.

Forward any further questions you might have to my lawyer.

(Update 2017: A few weeks ago, my wife sucked up a sock in the beaters of the Hoover, burning out the motor in the process. Total accident, of course, though it is odd that the match for the churned up sock has never been found. It is almost as though this one was especially selected. A brand new Hoover has now joined our arsenal. Cost: $200.)

By Jim Hagarty
2015

I am voting for the Rhinoceros party in the next Canadian federal election for various reasons.

First off, unlike the other parties, they have a 1,000-year plan and I admire people who look ahead. And they have history on their side. They have been around since 1963, almost 30 years longer than Stephen Harper’s so-called Conservatives (they are actually the Reform party).

Rhinoceronians have smart, sensible ideas. If elected, they will move Canada’s capital to Kapuskasing because it is the geographical centre point of the nation. They will privatize Canada’s armed forces and nationalize Tim Hortons. They lean Marxist-Lennonist in their approach (Groucho Marx and John Lennon).

Some members of the party favour the return of capital punishment with one leader saying, “If it was good enough for my grandfather, it’s good enough for me.”

One ambitious plan the party has had was to tow Antarctica to the Arctic Circle. This would give Canada a monopoly on cold and a big advantage if a Cold War ever breaks out again.

During an election campaign in 1984, the party planned to eliminate big businesses and allow only small businesses which employ less than one worker. Other smart ideas were to repeal the law of gravity, lower the boiling point of water, make Illiteracy the third official language of Canada and tear down the Rocky Mountains so Albertans could see the B.C. sunsets.

They would also abolish the environment because it takes up too much space and is too hard to keep clean. And they would end crime by abolishing all laws.

Other neat ideas include making the Trans Canada Highway a one-way road. And if elected, they would count the Thousand Islands to see if the Americans have stolen any.

These are my people.

Last night, at dusk, I saw this beautiful 1952 Buick at a service station in Stratford. I talked briefly with the owner. He took possession of the car two weeks ago and is only the second owner of the vehicle. It was owned since new by one person, from 1952 to 2017, or 65 years. It appears to be in great shape and was a “two-tone” car, red body, white roof, that were common in the fifties. JH