Month: January 2018

By Jim Hagarty
2006

Words have been a big part of my life, as they are with everybody’s. The majority of people, however, don’t count on them to make their living. I do, and I enjoy working with them as a carpenter might revel in the smell of newly sawn lumber.

Lately, for some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about words and their place in my life. I have no idea what my first ones were, maybe something along the lines of, “Can I have a cookie?” I also have no clue what my last words will be, but they could very well be the same as my first. In fact, an interesting endeavour is to look up (easy on the Internet) the final words of famous people throughout history. Some are sad and touching, some rather funny. An opera singer once sang a long and loud “Goodbye!” just before he collapsed and died on stage.

All through my growing up years, words became useful tools, put to work in a variety of ways to avoid responsibility, to enact revenge, to ask questions and learn about the world. The same mouth that could produce words of such beauty they were the linguistic equivalent of a string of pearls, could let loose a garbage bin volley meant to cut down and destroy.

In fact, though I had pretty much heard all the profane words available to me by the time I was 16, it wasn’t until I worked for a summer building a bridge in Kitchener that I learned from two recently immigrated Scottish carpenters how to put them together into very effective sentences. If there was any sort of awards handed out for cussing, the walls of these two feisty guys’ homes would be lined with plaques. Even today, under great pressure, charged with anger or filled with fear, the teachings of the Scotsmen can still bring themselves forward to my lips.

Other, gentler words, made their appearance in high school, as the interest in girls grew. Of special importance became the phrase: “Can I kiss you?” sometimes followed by the question, “Why not?” Even more awkward: “Would you like to go out with me again?” Other useful phrases at the time: “Can I bum a cigarette?” “Here’s the money I owe you.” “Can I have an extension on the assignment?”

Words you hear spoken to you in your life are also highly important. In your working years, “Can you start work on Monday?” is a pleasant thing to hear. Not so welcome is, “We expect you to be out of your office by noon tomorrow.” Still later: “You’ve bought yourself a car.” “They’ve accepted your offer on the house.” “Your loan has been approved.”

Of course, being no different from the rest of humanity, “I’m sorry” are two of the hardest words for me to say, though usually the most valuable if I can find the guts to get them out. And “I love you” is still a stickler. Not so hard to say to your kids. Not so easy for your parents. Sometimes very difficult for your wife.

Why are the most valuable words often the hardest to use? And why, in a crisis, do the words “God help me!” just come flying out?

I remember years ago reading somewhere that we have about 400,000 different English words available for our use. I’m sure I don’t know a fraction of those, but I know quite a few, I think. Of all those thousands, what is my favourite one? “Chocolate” might rank right up there. “Beatles” is a big one for me.

What is the favourite word I have ever had spoken to me? “Yes” was right up there, after I said, “Will you marry me?” But never have I heard, in my 55 years, a word that even came close to the beauty of this one, especially the first time I heard it: “Daddy”. I will never get tired of hearing it, no matter what future form of it is used to address me. To hear the word “Dadda” spoken to you by a child just before he or she drifts off to sleep in their bed at night, is to know joy.

Another favourite word.

By Jim Hagarty
2015

I just breezed past a website that offered tips to improve my writing. I didn’t read the tips. Not because my writing can’t be improved, but because I have no interest in improving it.

Words and all the structures we employ in our use of them are just tools, nothing more. They are to be used to share the contents of a heart and a soul with those who read them.

I play guitar by ear and am no virtuoso. I don’t care to be. I also don’t want to look at a list of 10 writing tips when I sit down at the computer. My guitar expresses me and so does my keyboard.

My approach is simple. First, I observe. Then I think about what I have observed. Finally, I translate those thoughts into words.

I had a great English teacher when I was a kid. She laid the best writing tools at my feet and I picked them up. I am forever grateful to her. And to my father who showed me the beauty of argument and logic as well as irony. Also to my mother, my favourite storyteller.

Just as a woodworker revels in his latest, well-crafted table, I am thrilled when I know that something I have written is good. How readers react to it doesn’t matter much. Applause and acclaim are never the goal. The purpose is communication.

I spent my life searching for my passion, not realizing it was in my possession almost from the time I could walk. I love words. Written, spoken, sung. And when a skillful writer moves me, I am knocking on Heaven’s door.

Coca Cola owes $3.3 billion in unpaid taxes to the United States government so it informed the IRS it won’t be paying. Glad that’s all cleared up. – JH

By Jim Hagarty
2007

I can hardly believe the state to which teaching has fallen. Having once been a teacher who gave copious amounts of misdirection to dozens of high school and college students, I fear for the state of the profession.

It has come to this. It is no longer permissible for a teacher to bite the thigh of a student who is trying to give him a wedgie. I joke not. A high school wrestling coach in Oregon has been disciplined for chomping down on a student’s leg after a half dozen huge wrestlers pounced on him and tried to wedgie him. (For the uninitiated, to administer a wedgie is to grab a person’s underwear at the back and hoist it up around his ears, a painful and embarrassing exercise.)

A state commission blasted Peter Porath for leaving “distinct teeth marks” on the inside of the student’s leg when he tried to get the wrestlers off him. In its wisdom, the commission called that “gross neglect of duty” and put him on probation for two years. As well, Porath must complete a class on appropriate behaviour and write a public apology to the student he bit.

Where oh where have the good old days gone when a teacher could gnaw away at a student’s limbs and not hear a thing about it? In fact, if a student thus bitten made the mistake of reporting it to his parents he would be apt to receive another bite or two from his father for his troubles. Now, apparently, it is wrong to do such a thing. However, it is OK, apparently, for a half dozen wrestling students to jump on a coach and try to strangle him with his own undershorts.

This is my dilemma. I am trying to think back to my days as a high school student to imagine what might have been the result of my joining a group of students to yank on the undergarments of one of our teachers. These were teachers not far removed from the days of unbridled corporal punishment in the schools. A vice-principal at my school once backhanded a girl across the face and heard not a word about it. I don’t think she had her hand anywhere near his underapparel at the time of what today, of course, would be called assault.

But this is Oregon, I guess I should remember, and maybe things are a bit different south of the border where, it appears, a not-unheard-of job hazard for teachers is the occasional beating by gangs and a wound or two from a gunblast. I hope they’re paid well to endure the abuse.

Beatings and bullets aside, however, wedgies at the hands of your students have to rank right up there as some sort of last straw and I’ve got to say I can’t blame poor old Peter Porath for putting his chompers to work. I am sure his arms and legs were rendered of no use to him by the wrestlers and so his pearly whites were about all he had left to bring about a bit of payback and hopefully a reprieve from the the thrashing. I have to say if I was in his position, I would hope I would have had the presence of mind to do the same thing – state commission reprimand or not.

If I had had to write a public apology to that student, this is what I would have written: “I am sorry that I was silly enough to turn my backs on the students that I am trying to guide into adulthood and for whom I am giving up time to teach them the sport of wrestling, without taking into account the notion that I might one day be jumped by them and have my underwear tugged at and stretched till it looked like a flowery rubber band. I am sorry that in my desperation to be free of six out-of-control young athletes, I took it upon myself to administer a bit of pain of my own.

“Most of all, I’m sorry I didn’t bite down a bit harder.”

By Jim Hagarty
2012

A friend send me a bit of a nasty email. He has a bad habit of doing this. Almost every time he hits “send”, his list of real-life friends gets a little shorter. I hang in there, but it isn’t easy.

I replied to this latest email very carefully, as I always try to do, in order to avoid the mountain-molehill phenomenon. I kept writing, then backing up and erasing and starting again, to choose better wording. At one point, a part of one of my sentences read, “…if you want to…” I erased that line and wrote something else. But maybe I didn’t get rid of it all. Just before I hit send on my reply, I notice some stray letters at the very start of the message, right at the top. They were: “f you”. They were left over from “if you want to.”

A Freudian slip? My true feelings? I don’t know, but I broke out in a sweat, deleted the f you and sent the message.

Maybe I should have left those four tiny letters in. Or maybe I’ll use them in my reply to the next nasty message which I know will be coming soon. The worst thing that ever happened to my friend was the invention of email. Seriously. Worst thing. Ever. And I am not effin’ kidding.

By Jim Hagarty
1987
A fellow I know used to say happiness is wanting to go to work in the morning and wanting to go home at night. I think that is one of the truest things I ever heard. If either one of those things are out of whack, it is hard to be happy. I have had times when I would wake up in the morning, dreading the workday ahead of me. And periods when I liked being at work but was not enthusiastic about going home, for a variety of reasons, at the end of the day. Who knows how those two things come into balance but show me a happy person, and I will show you someone who fits the formula more or less perfectly.

By Jim Hagarty
1987

When the huge, steel garbage bin arrived on my front lawn, I couldn’t believe my good luck. This thing was so big, I’d have no trouble at all getting all the junk I had into it with room to spare. Lots of room. How can the company which delivered it, I wondered, afford to rent out such gigantic containers at such reasonable prices?

Relieved at the knowledge one bin would do me, I went up and down my street on a mission of goodwill inviting neighbours to throw in any trash they might have sitting around and getting in the way.
Everyone seemed genuinely and appropriately impressed with the offer.

“That’s awfully nice of you, Jim,” was an often-heard reaction to which I graciously replied, “Don’t mention it,” “What’s a neighbour for, anyway?” and “Well, I’ll sure never fill it up with the little bit of stuff I have.” And it occurred to me that being a nice guy is worth all the little bit of effort it takes.

The first day, a neighbour hauled a large pile of long grass and weeds out of his garden, across his yard and into the bin. I was glad to see someone accepting my offer. I gave him a happy wave.

Second day, neighbours across the road held a yard sale and threw into the bin all the items that didn’t sell – a lifejacket, fishing pole, table, wooden cabinet, shoes, an old mattress. Appreciation was expressed. I was just glad to help, I said. I flashed a broad and friendly grin.

It was a few days before I got around to putting anything of mine in the bin, but of course, there was still acres of room left when I did. After I finished putting a new roof on my house, I filled up the back one-third of the container with the old shingles. The amount of room left was ridiculous. I thought of taking out an ad in the newspaper, offering free space in my bin to anyone in the city.

Over the next couple of weeks, more and more neighbours started taking me up on my offer and they came from farther and farther down the street. Each day when I’d get home from work, there’d be a bit more refuse in the bin. An old window frame here. Some burned out fluorescent light bulbs there. Lengths of old eavestrough. Boxes. And lots of boards. Sometimes, overnight, almost like magic, more junk would appear in the bin, and I’d look out at it each morning like I was seeing the first snowfall on the lawn in late autumn. But, the morning after that, half of it would be gone again – taken away who knows when to who knows where by who knows whom.

If I ever felt like I really fit in a neighbourhood, it was around this time. I’d look out the window, see men, women and children heaving their litter over the walls and into the centre of the bin and I’d feel good all over. You can never overestimate the value of getting along with others. Do even one nice little thing for someone else, and you’ll be repaid ten-fold, somewhere down the line. Generosity, good will, glad heart. Do unto others. These are the things for me.

By Saturday, my bin overfloweth. There were tree limbs and tin cans, glass and grass, posts, pots and paint pails. There was cardboard and plywood, arborite and aspenite, stones, sticks and several snythetic substances. In fact, the only things not in there by this time were any more room and – all of my stuff.

You know, they really should make those garbage bins a lot bigger than they are.

It’s remarkable how fast they fill up.

My hope now is that the raiders of the front yard will come back again in the middle of some night and make off with more of the good junk.

If they don’t, I am looking at renting another bin.

The neighbours will be pleased.