Jim Hagarty

If I had one-tenth the persistence of my little dog, I would be telling the Nobel judges in Sweden or whatever European paradise they hang out in, that I have plenty of their awards and don’t need anymore. Because I would have achieved unbelievable things.

In the summer of 2018, there was a party in our backyard and number of partygoers roasted weiners for their hotdogs over our firepit. One weiner slipped off its wire rod and fell onto our brick patio. I don’t know how long the little tube steak remained on the paving stones but I am going to assume it was eventually picked up and tossed into the garbage.

“No it wasn’t,” insists my dog, who knows for sure that that weiner is somewhere on the patio and he is just the guy to find it. For the past 18 months, every time he is let out into the yard, he heads straight for the patio and for as long as he is allowed to remain outside, he uses his nose as a vacuum to sniff up every scent he can possibly sniff. He knows the weiner is there. He can smell it. It’s only a matter of time before he is eating it.

I love this little guy’s pluck even though, on a cold night as I stand in the garage doorway waiting for him to finish his weiner search and consume mission, complete his bedtime pee and come back into the house, I can get impatient and start shouting non-Nobel-prize-like words.

Eighteen months, five times a day, hour after hour, the search goes on.

Drive me crazy as he might, Toby is my hero.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

The gas price sign at my neighbourhood station said 92.9 cents per litre and that’s where I draw the line.

“I’ll walk barefoot uphill both ways before I’ll pay that,” I thought, when I saw it. Wasn’t it just a couple years back that gas was in the 60s?

So, the strategy was clear and simple. Inspired, really. Pop only $5 of the stuff at a time into the old jalopy until the boycott brought the price back down. Supply and demand. No demand, lots of supply. Prices dropping like a stone. This was one time it was going to pay to be an economics genius.

However, my gas station didn’t seem to be up on the law of supply and demand and obstinately stuck to its guns, refusing to crack under the strain of my almost daily soup-can fill ups. But, I can be a very patient man.

The days went by, the gas indicator needle sat on E. To me, the E has always indicated, “Enough to get me another 50 miles.”

A five here and a five there and I could see a definite nervousness on the faces of the teenagers who took my money. How long can we hold out, I could see they were thinking.

Last week, I gave the old E theory a run for its money. Up and down Ontario and Huron streets I chugged. By Friday afternoon, quittin’ time, we’d both had our fill – no pun intended (but if you think it was funny, then it was intended) – of the week. But chugging up the hill around Scotiabank, heading east, my engine began to shudder. Time for a tune up, it was clear. Up to the stoplight at Erie, the car began to shake. I slipped it into neutral to give it a chance to recover. I wondered if the spark plugs were dirty. Out Ontario Street my car and I progressed, hitting every stoplight along the way. All four lanes going both ways were packed with what is Stratford’s pretty significant Friday afternoon rush hour – or rush minute as some have called it.

Finally, at the corner, half a block from my home, loomed the big gas price sign, obstinate as ever: 92.9.

Time, I was resigned, for another $5.

But time, this time, was not on my side. Fifty feet from this main intersection, with beachgoers and theatregoers and mall shoppers and downtown diners all heading in their various directions, packing all four lanes full to overflowing, my jalopy died.
And so, almost, did I.

The first stage, of course, is denial but a lot of key turning produced nothing.
Finally, it was time to abandon ship.

Running like a 10-year-old after a rabbit, I dashed to my blessed gas station, under the sign with the 92.9. It could have said 922.9 it would have made no difference. Gas. Blessed gas. Just give me some gas.

The station, it turns out, doesn’t lend out gas cans, especially to boycotters, even when the attendants can see a guy’s car, stuck in traffic, part way up someone’s driveway, with a police car waiting patiently behind it.

Down went $12.95 of my hard-earned cash (is there any other kind) for a plastic gas can and some gas.

Back to the car to find that the spout on this little red miracle apparently fits every gas tank but mine. Gas splashes everywhere, except into the tank. I am reduced to trying to feed it with my fingers into the tank, all the while refusing all eye contact with the world.

Fortunately, I own the one car in the world that can actually run on fumes. I scream around the corner and up to a pump.

Twenty dollars later, the boycott has partially ended.

Jalopy and I live to fight another day.

©2005 Jim Hagarty

You know, if I didn’t absolutely have to, I don’t think I would ever leave the safety of my home, maybe even my bedroom. Because the avian flu is going to get me. Some crazed chicken’s going to come waddling into my backyard someday and bite me on the ankle when I’m not looking, and I am not usually looking for chickens in my yard. Or, somebody who has been bitten by a chicken – is that possible? – will come and sneeze all over me and I’ll be toes up within the hour. Not enough time even to finish watching the two episodes I’ve still got on tape of my favourite sitcom – “Funny, Funny, Hilarious, and Funny.”

So, okay, somehow, the avian flu passes me by. Chicken won’t cross the road, or something. I’ll be counting my blessings on that one until the day I’m over at the Farmer’s Market looking for some field fresh tomatoes and a guy walks in with bombs strapped to his chest and a hate on for food producers. Not noticing his suspiciously heavy vest, of course, I’ll go over and tell him the joke about the suicide bomb instructor who told his class to pay close attention to his demonstration because he was only going to show them once.

Alright, a terrorist doesn’t get me. l guess I’ll admit the chance might be slim, though it’s there. In fact I read not long ago a report by an expert on terrorism who speculated that London, Ontario, a city I often visit, would be a perfect target for a major strike in Canada, better than Toronto or Ottawa, which are too heavily fortified and where attacks are expected. London also has the good symbolic fortune to have the same name as that other city across the pond that Osama and Company are a little ticked off with these days.

The birds and the bombs pass me by. So far, so good. However, what chance on Earth do I have of surviving the natural disaster that will soon be heading straight down Albert Street as a result of that freakin’ hole in the ozone layer and the warming of the globe? I won the 440-yard race in Grade 9 (it helped that I was the only competitor) and I used to be able to hoof it pretty well (a skill I learned being chased by an angry boyfriend my date had failed to tell me about), but my days of outrunning tornadoes is past me. When the ground separates down the middle of Albert Street during the coming earthquake, what is the proper protocol: Do I dive into the crevice or jump in? These parts of southern Canada, by the way, are not entirely unfamiliar with quakes: My dad often talked about how, when he was a young man, he saw the pictures on the walls of our house suddenly swaying back and forth one day. It was a mild one, but a quake had struck.

Like a cat with nine lives but longer whiskers, I make it through. But what is my long-term prognosis? There’s a mosquito that follows me around whenever I take out the compost and I know he’s got murder in his heart. He’s just waiting for the right moment to needle me with a touch of the West Nile virus. (Mosquitoes, by the way, have killed more people than all wars in history.)

We former farm boys are hardy creatures. A little West Nile is nothing. Good for the immune system to bulldogs like us. However, those smog days are happening more and more, even in winter. If I don’t get mugged, bugged or plugged, I’m sure to get smogged.

The harmful effects of stress? Don’t get me started. Nervous as a cat at a dog show.

All child’s play.

What I’m waiting for is that guy who’s drivin’ his tank down the highway at 200 km/h while talking on his phone, watching a movie on his dashboard DVD player, checking his global positioning system, finishing up his cheeseburger, shaving with his electric razor, reading the business section of The Globe and Mail and having a knockdown, dragout fight with his wife …

To run over me.

When I get home from work tonight, I’m nailing my bedroom door shut.

From the inside.

Right after I chickenproof the house.

©2005 Jim Hagarty

Now that Canada has its own 24-hour-a-day all-news channel, news junkies country-wide can keep extremely well informed on the events and the issues of the day.

But amidst all that non-stop talk, talk, talk on the CBC’s new cable channel, Newsworld, a lot of non-vital information is being spewed out onto the air waves along with those bits that truly can be called important. Especially during some of the long, long interviews with people who are marginally noteworthy at best. But because it’s all presented with the flashy accompaniment of a lot of bells and whistles and lights and because the interviewers look so serious, it all seems significant, somehow.

“Does the fact that your right leg is longer than your left leg cause you any worry when you consider taking on some of these bigger climbs?” a serious-looking “journalist” quizzes the first New Zealander to ever scale Mount Everest.

The mountain climber’s jaw drops open at the total irrelevance of the question to the story but before he can protest, the concerned, worried face of a human limb pathologist from the research department at the University of Idaho appears in a little box next to the little box containing the startled face of the mountaineer and he begins his analysis: “Well, Bruce, though variable-limbed humans will generally deny that they feel any insecurity about their abilities to perform difficult climbing tasks, our research shows they do, in fact, worry a great deal about their capacity to measure up, so to speak, to the majority of us who are identical-limbed. This leads them to try to overachieve by attempting such feats as mountain climbing, disco dancing and skateboarding, to name but a few.”

“But, Dr. Fullovit, is it not possible some variable-limbed people just enjoy the challenge?” asks Bruce.

“I’m afraid not,” replies Fullovit. “It would be extremely rare to find a person of varying limb lengths who is not subconsciously trying to compensate for the variance in some way.”

“But, I just like mountain climbing,” interjects the New Zealander, pathetically trying to get back into the interview.

Another little box appears below him showing within its borders the scowling face of a woman who turns out to be head of a group formed to monitor media stereotypes of the variable-limbed.

“I think it’s an outrage that a so-called specialist like Dr. Fullovit would come on your program and suggest leg length has anything to do, with mountain-climbing achievements,” barks Ms. Malcon-Tent. “It is time society realized variable-limbed human beings are every bit as able as identical-limbed people.”

Before long, Fullovit and Malcon-Tent are fightin’ it out in public like a brother and sister over a last cookie while the mountaineer looks like he just wet his pants from embarrassment. And interviewer Bruce watches the proceedings like St. Peter countin’ up the sins on Judgment Day.
The only idiots in the whole farce, however, are us, who sit and watch all this as if any of it mattered.

It doesn’t matter.

Back to the hockey game.

©1989 Jim Hagarty

A friend of mine was showing me his new truck the other day and it’s a dandy. It has heated seats to warm his butt and at night, when a car approaches from behind, the car’s headlights automatically cause the truck’s rear-view mirror to darken down, saving the driver from distracting glare.

There are two drivers for my friend’s vehicle and each has a separate key. When he bleeps his key, the truck’s interior features automatically adjust to his preferences: Seat goes back, mirrors go into correct position, etc. When his wife uses her key, her settings are immediately set in place.
There is not much new about these things. They’ve been around for years. But they’re impressive nonetheless.

But my friend is most proud of his global positioning system. To demonstrate it, he touched a button labelled “home” on the little machine’s screen and instantly up flashed a map showing every road he should take from Clinton to Bayfield. He told me that if he takes a wrong turn, the GPS makes a sound to indicate he is going the wrong way.

Now, as knocked out as I am by all this, I think it’s worth taking a step back and comparing these amazing accomplishments to other times and things in nature.

Example One
My father used to talk about a farmer he knew who would take his horse and buggy to town on Friday nights, drink too much beer in a local hotel and sleep all the way home. This was possible because the horse knew the way and would deliver him to his front door. When a satellite and a little computer can take you home while you are having a snooze, I promise to build a shrine to it in my home.

Example Two
Yes, GPS is astonishing in its brilliance. But what about CHC (the common housecat)? There is no end of stories about the ability of cats to find their way home. I knew a man who lived near Kinkora who had grown weary of his cat. He put it in the car, drove it out to a road near Dublin, a distance of more than 10 miles, and dropped it off.

A week later, it showed up back home which was not bad for a cat who had never been off the property, let alone to Dublin.

So, the man piled it in the car once more and drove it 10 miles in the other direction to Monkton. But apparently, it is no harder for a cat to find its way home from there as it is from Dublin. A week or so after leaving home for the second time, the cat came waltzing in the driveway one day.

Defeated, the man kept the cat till its dying day.

GPS I can understand (sort of). Cats I cannot.

My trucking friend then showed me a panel in his vehicle, a GMC truck, for OnStar, a service available to GM vehicle owners only. If you are in a serious accident and your airbag deploys, the people at OnStar, wherever they are located (somebody said they are in California) know about your situation instantly and begin talking to you on an intercom to see if you’re OK. They will even call an ambulance.

But how about this.

If you have locked your keys in your car, you can call these nice people at OnStar and they will unlock the doors for you remotely, from whatever centre they are located in, wherever that is. Again, through the wonders of technology.

This, I am truly blown away by. Somebody in California, Alaska or New York, perhaps, unlocking my friend’s truck in Clinton, Ontario, Canada.

But I am left to wonder if other uses could be found for this technology. Could guns, including pistols, machine guns and rocket launchers, be jammed remotely, let’s say, by the United Nations? Grenades and bombs defused by satellites? Landmines blown up in the same way? Could every weapon produced be outfitted with an indestructible sensor that would make all this possible?

It wouldn’t stop wars since wars will never end. The combatants will kill each other with sticks and stones if they can’t find anything else.

But it would take a lot longer to kill a thousand people and knock down their homes with a stick than with a bomb.

©2006 Jim Hagarty

Sometimes a man’s characteristics clash. In effect, they cancel each other out. He might be very nice to people face-to-face then stab them in the back when they turn around. He might give great sums to worthy causes (often getting his picture in the paper for the effort) but be stingy with his wife and kids at home. He might help out an environmental organization and then douse his lawn with pesticides.

In reality, I guess, most of us, if we’re honest, must admit to being “conflicted” when it comes to our personal virtues and vices. I have never met a person who was perfect and the ones who pretend to be are usually, on closer examination, about as far from the ideal as possible.

Last Friday, two of my own characteristics with which I struggle sometimes came to life in a disturbing manner. On the one hand, generosity; on the other, tightwadedness. Let’s just say I would give you the shirt off my back but only if it was an old shirt I was about to throw out anyway.

A friend called me at work in a panic. Her car had run out of gas on a busy main street on a Friday afternoon. Could I help? By all means I could and would. I jumped in my own small buggy and hustled on over, knight in shining armour. By then, some passersby had pushed her vehicle into a parking lot.

My friend was not eager to buy a gas can just to put a few litres into her tank to get her to a station. No problem, I said. I have a can with gas in it at home. So, to my home we drove and I retrieved the gas from the shed.

On the way back, I started to worry about it. It was the highest grade of gas I could get (my lawnmower needs it) and it cost a fortune when I bought it a few weeks ago when prices were high. I didn’t really want to dump it all in her tank just to get her to a station. And – see generosity characteristic above – I refused all her attempts to pay me for my gas.

So, on our return to the car, I took off the gas cap and carefully poured half of what I had into the thirsty opening. Back to the office I went, satisfied at a good deed done.

The phone rang before I got back. She had run out of gas again, just two blocks farther down the street. I raced back to the scene and this is where logic got lost in the heat of the moment. I dumped the other half of my gas in the tank and somehow thought that would get my friend to the station. This time I followed her. She got two blocks and sputtered out again. In what must be a new record, she had run out of gas three times in the space of a few blocks. And I had helped her achieve two of those record-breaking feats.

Finally, we drove to the station where she (I wasn’t allowed near my own gas can) filled up the container and put it in my trunk. We returned to the car, dumped the whole thing in her tank and off she sped.

And while I am happy I was able to help her out, I am still fretting about giving up my half a can of premium gas.

But these days, maybe that’s not a totally unreasonable regret. I’ll just toss it into the trunk of regrets I keep tucked away in my basement and which I someday plan to douse in non-premium gas and light ‘er up.

True to form, before the fire’s out, I’ll regret having done that.

©2008 Jim Hagarty

Nov. 20, 2008

Workaholism has been getting a bad rap lately. Studies and newspaper headlines say that too many Canadians are working too hard and apparently we’ve been telling researchers in great numbers that we don’t like it. And yet we keep on slugging away, which suggests to me that we don’t mind it as much as we like to say.

When you’re a kid, of course, playing is your full-time job and the type of activity adults like to describe as “work” is not too appealing. A certain number of people go on playing their whole lives and I envy them in many ways. Life is all just one big day off.

But I think a lot of us come to a point in our lives where we start longing for a little meaning and purpose and staying out all night bar-hopping or lying on a beach under a hot sun all day just doesn’t cut it. Not to mention the fact that carousing and sun-tanning don’t pay the hills as well as holding down a job.

Workaholics, it has been said, are very insecure people who are driving themselves to early graves for a little bit of acceptance by others. In other words, we work hard because we’re searching for love.

Other workaholics are simply running away burying themselves in endless tasks to avoid dealing with the real problems in their lives, whether it be discord at home or simple loneliness. I am sure there is some validity in every theory put forward but I have also talked to a lot of people over the years who maybe work a bit more than they should because – they like it!

I will admit that hard work is an acquired taste but it can get to be an enjoyable habit after a while, providing the labour falls within a person’s field of interest. The goal, to me, seems to be accomplishment. You work hard and something changes. You’ve produced something, created something that didn’t exist before. Something has been achieved.

I don’t usually quote religious terms but it’s been said we were made in the image and likeness of God. And, as God was the Creator, I think we are most fully alive when we, too, are creating, whether it be a poem, a board fence, a work of art, or a new relationship. We were meant to create, to take part in the ongoing process of Creation.

So, for me, lying around on hot sand for 10 hours a day doesn’t get a lot created, except, perhaps, for a very painful sunburn. Therefore, if I have to choose between idleness and work, I’ll choose the latter most of the time. In fact, working hard at a job or a project of some kind seems to be the surest way to ward off worry, self-doubt, guilt and depression. A lot of problems that can’t be solved on the psychiatrist’s couch, mysteriously, can often be chased away by grabbing the handle of a shovel or a hammer and starting to dig or pound away.

I guess the point that people are trying to make is that too much work is not a good thing but who doesn’t know that? Water’s a great item but if you drink 30 big glasses of it in one sitting – you’ll die.

I must admit I do get a twinge of envy when I see some sunglassed couple go whizzin’ by in a beautiful little sportscar with the top down and the tunes blaring while I’m out trying to move a big rock from one flower bed to another. But I’ve been in the sports car with the sunglasses and I’ve gotta tell you, from my perspective, driving around can get awfully boring after a while.

So, whoever wrote, “Take this job and shove it!” obviously lived a different life than I have. Throughout my whole life, work has been the one constant that has never failed to keep me going. There is nothing worse, in my mind, than waking up in the morning with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no long list of tasks awaiting me.

All hail workaholism!

©2007 Jim Hagarty

Down through the years, every town and village in Perth County and the area just beyond us has had its share of eccentric characters – people who were strangely different from most of the people living around them but who were tolerated and even liked for their uniqueness. If we live long enough, I suppose each of us in our own time will become characters, of sorts, if only because our ways will become strange to the young people coming up behind us. But what I’m referring to are the truly odd, the ones who each day are given a totally different set of marching orders from the ones you and I step to.

There’s a man in one nearby town who never wears shoes or socks, summer or winter. A woman in another village keeps an unusual assortment of pets in her house including two small horses, chickens, dogs and a rooster. I would not like the job of changing the litter box at her place. Another town has a man who keeps an imaginary friend as his constant companion. I’ve seen him in restaurants, talking with great animation to the empty chair across the table from him. He and his friend go window shopping in the afternoons.

These people are mysterious and to our way of thinking about them, a little sad. Yet, they also seem relatively happy and have a habit of living far longer than we “normal” people around them who worry and work ourselves into early graves. I once knew a man who, by all standards, was very unusual. He walked with a bit of a stoop and talked to himself continuously, trying hard to “figure” out what was going on. He looked right through you if he looked at you at all and rarely stopped his chatter. He was always busy, making the rounds of the stores and shops in town that would accept him. He often carried a loaf of bread under one arm and showed up frequently in the barber shops, where he felt at home. He lived alone in a shack near the middle of town.

The people of Mitchell were good to Charlie. No one seemed afraid of him. And business people quietly took care of him. The food stores and restaurants helped feed him. The shoe stores kept him in shoes and the clothing stores gave him clothes. No one knew for sure why he was the way he was but there were theories. Some said he was part of a trapeze act in a circus and watched his wife fall to her death from a high wire. Others said his family perished in a house fire and the sound of their anguish drove him “crazy” from then on. Still others thought he was as normal as anyone, but feigned his strangeness to get an easy ride through life. The last view always seemed unlikely to me although he was more aware than he appeared to be. One night he approached me for a ride home from the hotel in Sebringville. Among all the people in the place that night, he recognized me as someone from his hometown. He chattered to me all the way home.

I’ve heard of a man known as Buffalo Bill who spent his days sitting on a bench in a billiards hall, head on his hand, cane under his bearded chin – asleep. The bench, unfortunately, was located at the end of a pool table and once in a while, a high flying snooker ball would leave the table and knock the sleepy spectator on the skull. Youch!

There have also been many odd couples, like the old man and woman who lived on a farm and who were given to fighting continuously. It was a toss up whether it was she or he who had the worse temper but I bet it was her. One day, while he was up fixing a hole in the barn roof, she took the ladder away for two days to teach him a lesson. That would teach me a lesson. I wouldn’t be able to wait to apologize.

Another couple of seniors used to ride into Mitchell several times a week on an old motorcycle and sidecar. People in town stopped on the sidewalks to watch the performance as they climbed off their vehicle and made their way into the hotel for a quick refreshment. He was “Klondike” and she was Annie. Another big show took place when the two of them mounted their bike and sidecar to take off again.

Another red-faced man with a happy smile named Vincent used to wander out of the hotel, train engineer’s cap askew across his head, and go out to the centre of the highway where he would direct the traffic.

Cities have their drifters and street people but it seems towns and village are kinder to those who are different, providing they are not malevolent or dangerous, though that is just my opinion. The ones in our area are part of the history of our county too and some day, their stories will need to be told.

There are people still around who could name five times the number of characters I have described above. I hope those tales get out.

©1986 Jim Hagarty

I was trying to figure out a way to break this to you gently, but now it appears I don’t have to break anything to anyone, nicely or not.

I had planned to leave my home in Canada next week for Lake Tahoe, California, a place I always thought I would like to live. I like the name, for one thing, and I am taken with the idea that if I moved, snow shovelling might be in my rear view mirror.

But I have changed my mind.

Last month, a family from Lake Tahoe heard some weird noises coming from the crawl space below their house. I hear strange noises coming from our basement too sometimes but it usually turns out it was the cat throwing up or the dog coughing.

The poor Lake Tahonians, however, didn’t get off quite so easily with having a barfing cat or coughing dog. What it turned out they had was a bear who was looking for a nice place to sleep away the upcoming winter. The family had left the crawl space door open and bear thought, “Why not?”

Over the years, I have often written about my fear of bears. Actually, it isn’t that I fear them so much as I AM DEATHLY AFRAID OF THEM.

So Lake Tahoe, you had your chance for a friendly Canadian in your midst but alas, I will not be coming.

A bear expert showed up and guided the bear out from under the house. She has known the animal for years. He’s nuts for the food from the Mexican restaurants and raids the dumpsters from time to time.

And that is the main reason I’ve decided not to move.

I am not crazy about Mexican food.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

A friend of mine is a confirmed luddite. He is not impressed by most modern technology, especially all the little devices we like to use to make our lives better.

Luddites made their mark in England in the first part of the 19th century when they tore apart new machines that were being installed in factories. They could see that the automation would allow for their replacement by low-skilled workers at lower wages. The revolts were so bad, it took the military to put them down.

My friend is not quite so violent, but maybe he is a bit, in his own way. He assaults me with logic and I have to confess, it hurts.

We were together at a function last week when I pulled out my smartphone. He started off by asking me innocent-sounding questions about it, as though he might go out and buy one himself. He was setting a trap; I fell right into it.

“Are you addicted to it?” he wanted to know. The question set me back and I immediately rejected his suggestion.

“No, not at all,” I said. “I just love it.”

And I do love it, but all week his words have haunted me. And I have to admit he is right. I am addicted to the little machine.

The first indication he had hit a nerve came when I started getting defensive. No addict likes his addiction to be pointed out to him.

But my friend wasn’t done with me. He was persistent. He wanted to know why I loved it so much and every time I explained a feature of it, how wanted to know how that improved my life.

I finally thought of a parallel.

“It’s like a Swiss army knife,” I said. “It’s everything I need.”

I went on to explain how I can take photos, write notes, send text messages and emails, check my bank balances and transfer money from one account to another, buy and sell stocks, do a brief audio recording when I am writing a song and don’t want to forget the new tune, shoot videos, browse the Internet, read all the news that’s fit to print, watch movies on Netflix, watch TV news programs and sports events live, use a calculator and a timer, set my alarm clock, write new posts for this blog, get reminders of upcoming appointments and the list just goes on and on.

My phone has replaced a lot of other, bigger machines that I used to use to do all these things.

When my Dad was young on the farm, he and his father would spend days gathering and preparing enough firewood to heat the old house all winter. It was a major job. When the oil furnace was invented, Dad was first in line to buy one. He never got over not having to go to the bush for wood. I think he might have been addicted to his furnace.

My friend seemed to be somewhat satisfied with the army knife comparison. Maybe he has one.

But yes, it is true. I am addicted to my smartphone. And like all addicts, I will declare that it’s my life and if I want to throw it away looking at a little computer screen in my hand, I will.

Is it interfering with my life? Maybe. I don’t go out as much as I used to. Not watching much TV any more.

For now, it’s fun and keeps this retired old guy entertained all day long. Maybe some day I will have to enter some sort of program or detox. Hopefully that day is a bit down the road yet.

For now, I will Google “smartphone addiction” on my smartphone and study up all about it.

©2016 Jim Hagarty