Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I have a cat named Joe.
The stupidest kitty I know.
He misses the litter
And drinks from the shitter.
I’ve asked him to leave, he won’t go.

By Jim Hagarty
1994

Now that the world has dealt successfully with the easier problems of racism, crime, addiction, poverty, war and pollution, it’s time for us to move onto the more serious troubles facing modern man and woman.

I am talking here of serious woes such as the shame of bad breath.
How many times have you found yourself wondering, after a particularly frightening encounter with someone whose breath, as the expression goes, would scare a buzzard off a shit wagon, why someone hasn’t done something about this? Forty years of mouthwash companies experimenting with chlorophyll and retsin and toothpaste companies trying green stripes and red gel and a lot of us still have days when even our pets won’t come near us.

Well, the good news is, someone has done something about it. In October, the Fresh Breath Clinic opened up in Toronto, one of two in North America now treating stubborn mouth odours.

“It’s like a load’s been lifted off me,” one happy clinic patient told a reporter this week. “It was just unbelievable.” My guess is a bigger load’s been lifted off his family and fellow workers.

Of course, we aren’t hearing from the unsuccessful clinic attendees, presumably because no reporter can get close enough for an interview, but who are we to disbelieve someone who has had such a transforming experience? He has been to the mountain and the answer is a special prescription mouth rinse that makes his kisser as sweet as a freshly picked daisy. The rinse apparently also works well for stripping down old tractor bodies for repainting and for opening up those nasty drain clogs. Do not use around open flames.

And now for the world’s other nastiest problem.

Out of London, England comes the news that a new course has been designed to help people stop being excessively nice. Called The Nice Factor, the weekend course is being run by an actor who wants people to stop worrying about what others think.

“We are not against being nice itself, but we try to help people who are always nice – even to people who do not deserve it – and whose lips always say yes when their minds say no,” says course founder Raymond Chandler. “The disease of niceness cripples more lives than alcoholism.”

Now, aside from the fact that it’s been a while since I heard about anyone being run over by someone driving under the influence of niceness, I have no problems agreeing with Chandler’s view. As a chronically “nice” guy of long standing, I have been left standing for long periods in line while others not burdened with such a character defect, cut in front of me at the coffee shop. My response is to reason with myself: “Why cause a scene? What does it matter? Maybe he’s a nut with a loaded handgun in his jacket. Maybe he just didn’t see me. Don’t be petty.” The bottom line is, however, that he has his coffee and is a half hour down the road before I’ve even finished deciding between honey cruller and fancy plain.

So, as you can see, this is a crisis worth attending to. And it has an unexpected side benefit that sort of shows how life works in cycles that almost have an intelligence to them. The people who graduate from treatment for being too nice, it would seem, would have no problem from then on going up to people with barnyard breath and informing them of the fact.

“You smell like a fish factory on a hot day in August,” the no-longer-nice person would hopefully have the decency to say which, if the world were perfect, would result in another enrollee at the Fresh Breath Clinic. (Or, the Open Gunshot Wound Clinic.)

So the answer it seems, is for more us to stop being so nice and send the not-so-sweet-smelling among us for treatment.

Next dilemma, please!

By Jim Hagarty
2014

When I was a boy, I sat transfixed on Sunday mornings in a front pew at the Catholic Church in the country my family and I attended, watching the spectacle unfolding on the grand altar where the priest and his helpers performed their ancient rituals.

Slowly and methodically, they carried golden chalices, poured holy water from glass canisters, rang tiny handbells and put incense into a small holder which the priest then waved toward the congregation as he walked slowly up and down the aisles.

This was spectacle, and for a farm boy growing up in a modest home and spending his days around cattle, tractors and mows of hay, it was all very mystical and magical.

But I think now that the thing that impressed me most about all this was the deliberateness that the priest and the altar boys brought to everything they did on that stage in the big old church. Every motion, every step, every turning of a Bible page or raising of a cup, was done with great reverence and peace. Nothing was done hastily or impulsively.

All was part of a rhythm, like breathing.

In those days, except for the sermon, almost every word spoken during the Mass was in Latin. That simply added to the mystique.

There was much I didn’t understand in the world around me as I grew up. Church was one of the greatest mysteries.

Now, six decades later, it is the mysteries in life that intrigue me, often more than the observable realities of it.

At night, I am sometimes outside, looking up at the moon. The same moon the dinosaurs and the cavemen saw before me.

Much has changed. Much has not.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

We once had the sweetest old sow.
I smile when I think of her now.
She had many litters.
Used no babysitters.
But was helped by a friendly young cow.

There comes a time in a father’s life
When he suddenly doesn’t belong.
For so many years he is Daddy, then Dad,
Then one day, his children are gone.

No more bedtime routines or horsey back rides,
No more pushes on swings in the park.
No more TV cartoons and short story books.
No more holding their hands in the dark.

Yes, this is the fate of a daddy in love,
To let go of his children some day.
He knew from the start that the time would arrive.
But it always seemed so far away.

The only thing that a father can do
When his children are no longer there.
Is cry like his heart has been broken for good,
Till it seems almost too much to bear.

It’s the way of the world and everyone says
You’ll get used to it all someday soon.
And maybe they’re right, they seem so convinced.
But my heart strings are all out of tune.

• Jim Hagarty