So how do you spend your days now, Jim, I am sometimes asked by people who are trying to find something by which to explain my encroaching and increasingly perceptible insanity.
Well, you know, I reply.
The Hagartys are a one-car family, the first one-vehicle family since the Clampetts rode their infamous truck into Beverly Hills. Also the Flinstones had only one car.
So our little buggy is on the road a lot.
Take a recent Wednesday, for example, and Wednesdays are the worst.
At 9 a.m. I drove my wife to work and came home.
At 10 a.m. I drove my son to school and came home.
At 11 a.m. I drove my daughter to school and came home.
At 3 p.m. I drove my daughter to the dance studio and came home.
At 4 p.m. I drove my son to work and came home.
At 4.45 p.m. I picked up my daughter at the dance studio and came home.
At 5 p.m. I picked up my wife at work and came home.
At 8 p.m. I picked up my son at work and came home.
Eight trips on one not untypical Wednesday.
I have no figures for this, but there are a lot of taxis in my city of Stratford and my guess is there is at least one cabbie who didn’t have eight fares on the recent winter Wednesday I refer to.
One mid-morning a while back, I picked up my wife at work.
“Where to?” I asked in a monotone. “Hospital?” Yes, she was headed to a meeting at the hospital.
Later, I realized, all I had left out of that conversation was the Ma’am as in, “Where to, Ma’am?”
Other than that, since my retirement, I have nothing to do and it takes me all day to do it.
©2015 Jim Hagarty
