Month: August 2016

By Jim Hagarty

I am not sure what the appropriate timeframe is for retrieving two pairs of short pants from the garbage can after you have thrown them out.

I waited just over 24 hours, so hopefully I am within the safe zone. These are 10-year-old shorts that I have worn daily from May till October for a decade and these days, it is a very generous description of them to even call them shorts. The one remaining qualifying factor is they have no legs below the knees.

I bought new shorts, you see, which seemed to necessitate the discarding of the old ripped and torn ones. Getting rid of them offered an important benefit: It would stop me from wearing them into stores and restaurants and attracting disapproving stares from shoppers, diners and establishment managers.

But there I was, shooing away the flies and tossing aside filled doggie poop bags to get to my shorts at the bottom of the garbage can. I shook them out, put one pair on and cut the lawn.

An hour later, I wore them into a large department store.

The boys are back in town!

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A significant number of fleas
Leave my dog when he lets out a sneeze.
They run for the hills.
I should give him his pills.
Stuffing meds in a dog is no breeze.

By Jim Hagarty

I was tired when I woke up Tuesday. I had spent all day Monday digging my own grave. A friend has the key to the cemetery, so he let me in. Even lent me a shovel.

All this activity was in preparation for a medical appointment yesterday at 10 a.m. I have known about this visit for some time now, a couple of months at least. And each day, as I thought about it, the prognosis from the medical professional sitting before me seemed to get worse and worse.

“Routine checkup”, I came to believe, is a medical term for “pull the plug.”

Each day I sat in my backyard, awaiting the end. At first, the likely outcome of the appointment seemed to be a bunch of unpleasant changes in my lifestyle. Then, day by day, sitting in my lawnchair under the maple tree the kids gave me a long time ago, things somehow went from unpleasant to downright horrifying. I looked around the yard with a mixture of fondness and sadness, tearing up at times, thinking about how much I would miss this place. So many memories. The swing set, the plastic swimming pool, dragging the kids around on a plastic tarp, the skating rinks.

Yesterday I was up early. I showered and stuffed myself into what in my world can be considered my “good clothes.” I drove myself casually to the medical office, wondering if I would be driving myself home. But I was relatively calm. Sort of resigned to my fate.

I sat in the waiting room. Didn’t even crack open a magazine. What would be the point of reading about the first manned mission to Mars if I will not be around to see it. Dieting tips? Too late. Relationship advice. Hah!

“Mr. Hagarty?” came the call from the man in the white coat. “Come this way.”

I would have liked to have hugged the receptionist goodbye but there was no time.

“Have a seat,” said the medic sternly. He started shuffling through my records, looking concerned. Let’s just get this over with, I thought.

“Well, your tests are fine,” said the medical professional seated before me. “Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.

“I’d like to see you again in six months.”

I floated my way out of the medical centre, as though on a cushion of air. Hardly said goodbye to the receptionist. Didn’t need her any more.

I went home and sat in my lawnchair under the tree the kids gave me and looked around.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

So I did a little of both.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A word about my new pet gnat.
He’s friendly but way too fat.
I gave him less food,
Which soured his mood.
He’s a charmer but also a brat.

By Jim Hagarty

I just returned from my nightly walk around the block.

Tonight was a little unusual in that I stopped to talk to a neighbour, out giving her doggie his bedtime pee. Feeling the need to explain why I was out walking so late at night, I told her my doctor says I need to walk.

Well, she grabbed onto that, one thing led to another and the conversation took a horrible turn when she began rattling off the evils of processed peanut butter. I was commanded to quit that shit as it is full of sugar and salt. In her fridge, is a nice big jar of natural, organic peanut butter, no additives. We have a jar of that stuff in our fridge too and now and then, if I am desperate, I will scoop out a spoonful. To call it peanut “butter” would be to call a round hunk of asphalt a cherry pie. The worst thing about natural peanut butter is it tastes, well, like peanuts.

I like the peanut butter that has eliminated any association with the peanut, while keeping the brown colour.

I made my neighbour no promises to quit that shit but maybe some day I will.

I will do it, in fact, on the day I cut myself up a nice big slice of asphalt pie.

By Jim Hagarty
I saw this beautiful 1979 Chevy Corvette in a parking lot yesterday so had to jump out of my car and photograph it. The car is in excellent shape and the paint job is stunning. As I was admiring it, the owner came along and told me the man who repainted the car used the original colour and removed the entire body piece by piece to paint it. The roof panels are removable for storage in the trunk. I was reading yesterday that the Corvette has been one of the biggest success stories for General Motors over the years, with almost two million sold.