Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
2014

I really like my neighbourhood grocery store. Everyone is very friendly there and they take special care to let you know they appreciate your business by adding little touches like having the cashier bag the groceries for elderly people. I think that is so neat.

The other day, I was in line behind one such senior citizen, a very old woman who seemed to be struggling to keep it all together. I thought the cashier would give the woman a hand to bag her groceries but she didn’t. She just tossed a few bags her way and turned to me.

I can’t say I was annoyed, just a little surprised.

However, I am able to report that I was filled with instant furiousness when, after ringing my items through, the young woman grabbed two bags and filled them up with MY groceries.

OK, that does it.

I want people to have to start showing their birth certificates before they become eligible for free bagging as choosing me over the woman ahead of me was a colossal error.

I went home and had an afternoon nap to try to recover.

Then got up and took my pills. Put on a sweater. And slippers.

I hate my neighbourhood grocery store.

By Jim Hagarty
2014

A neighbour rang the doorbell this morning.

“Could I borrow the key to my house?” he asked.

“Of course,” I replied and went and got it. “I’ll bring it right back,” he said.

“No hurry,” I answered. He has our key at his place.

I want always to live on a street where I have the key to my neighbour’s house and he comes and asks to borrow it when he misplaces his copy.

Next on the agenda: The keys to his beautiful truck and car. (He can’t drive both of them at the same time.)

By Jim Hagarty
2014

We need George Carlin in these troubled times.

However, seeing that my favourite funny man has gone missing, I will have to take on this curious expression for him.

Knock Yourself Out.

Who was the first person who, wanting to show someone just how little he or she cared for the outcome of what that person was about to do, said, “Ya, go ahead. Knock yourself out.”

I cannot wrap head around this. Why would a person want to knock himself out, if it is even possible to do that, on purpose? So there is one piece of cherry pie on the plate and you ask permission to eat it. Someone steps up, speaks for everyone in the room, and says, “It’s all yours. Knock yourself out.” (You know, for a really good piece of cherry pie, I might actually be willing to knock myself out.)

I just can’t figure out how advising someone to violently assault himself to the point of losing consciousness can be considered anything but a hostile commentary on a situation.

Wouldn’t it be better for someone to say, “Yes Jim, those last four pieces of cherry pie are all yours. I sure hope you enjoy them as you did the first four.”

If we could learn to adopt more pleasant expressions such as that one, that would really knock me out.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A donkey in our neighbourhood
Behaved not the way that he should.
In fact, since you ask,
He was a jackass.
I’d get him to move if I could.

From an article today about the U.S. presidential election and how upside down everything appears to be:

Many people believe today that it is worse to call someone a racist than it is to actually be a racist.

By Jim Hagarty
1986

Monday night about 10:30 I set out from the home of the Bornholm relatives I was visiting, after waiting a while for a break in the torrential rainstorm that struck this area that evening. I turned my car east onto Perth County Road 11, heading for Highway 19, Stratford and home. Though the rain had subsided, the fierce lightning continued and many times over the next 20 minutes the countryside all around me was suddenly blanketed with blue light and the pitch-black sky was stabbed by powerful forks of brightly charged energy.

All in all, as cartoon dog Snoopy likes to write, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Dark, stormy and – scary. I had little doubt my car and I would make it all the way home but the disturbing thought that we might not, that an accident or some mechanical breakdown would leave us stranded by the side of the road, crept into my consciousness and stayed there. It would not have been a nice night to be wandering up and down the roads in search of help. Suddenly my home, my cats, my TV and my bed never seemed so appealing as they did just then. It appeared to be a good time to tell God if he got me home safely, I’d never go out in a storm again.

I was not the only one fleeing the tumult – a big frog bounded across the pavement at one point and a ground hog scurried from north ditch to south. But few other vehicles were out and it was lonely. The radio was no comfort so I shut it off. It was just me, the storm and 18 miles of road to travel.

It never storms in the city. The winds get up and the rain beats down and there’s thunder and a bit of lightning. But there are also street lights to lead the way and coffee shops to duck into and somehow, except, I guess, in cases where a tornado or a hurricane sweeps through an urban area, any terror associated with a real blaster is minimal.

But among my memories of growing up on a farm in the country are dozens of frightening encounters with winds so strong they bent tall trees over like blades of grass, with thunder cracks so loud they shook you from inside out, with lightning so powerful you could hear it sizzle and spark and skies so dark they seemed evil. Those storms were naturally frightening for a child – any child – but they were made even more fearsome by the knowledge that even the adults in the family were afraid of these out-of-control elements. Grownups could shoo away bogeymen, monsters and belligerent dogs but they couldn’t chase away the thunder and it was disturbing to realize there were things out there more powerful than parents.

Nevertheless, that same fear that made it seem like a real good idea to grab the covers and pull them up tight over your head or to find another bed already occupied by someone bigger than yourself and crawl in under their blankets, gave summer storms an aura that translated into excitement for rural folk of all ages. Reminisce with a businessman and he’ll remember booms and busts, recessions and depressions. Old newspapermen recall disasters, elections and famous people who came to town. Teachers think back to brilliant students and troublemakers.

But people from the country remember storms.

There used to be no better evening’s entertainment than a mid-summer cloudburst, an electrical storm or a blizzard in winter. They required numerous trips to the window to survey the scene and all eyes were glued to the drama outside. Candles appeared on the table in the event the hydro went off and everyone huddled together in one room as these were not good times to be off somewhere by yourself.

Providing everyone was home and in the house, a terrible storm could be a pretty good time, especially if a friend, neighbour or relative got “stormstayed” overnight. It was usually a big letdown when a storm began blowing itself out and someone who would know these things remarked, “Well, it looks like it’s dying down.” It would be hard to get back to routine, especially if that meant school wouldn’t be cancelled.

I felt a bit of that excitement Monday night when the skies opened up before me as I drove through the storm. But nature, too often, for a city dweller is, well, just downright inconvenient and it was nice to get home.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

I am not a big fan of lightning. I think I live in a safe little world, then look up the sky to see a terrifying electrical storm. Perhaps my fear of it is a leftover from my farm days, when weather was a lot more real to a young guy. There were no big buildings around and row and after row of streetlights to put a damper on the light show. On the farm, it was right there for us to see. And it was not in our imaginations. Our barns and other outbuildings were all equipped with lightning rods, devices that would capture and diffuse the energy without setting the structure on fire. I never saw a lighting rod struck by my younger brother did one day.

Anyway, the reason I have gathered you all here today is to tell you that I heard on the radio the other day that the biggest lightning bolt ever recorded was 200 miles long. That is one long bolt, holy mackerel.

That’s it. I need to crawl back under my covers now.