“Just take it from the top, read it through to get a feel, and you know, remember that you’re partly thinking about this out loud, but that there’s also an audience out there so you have to make sure you reach them,” said the producer.

I nodded, and pulled the microphone a little closer to my face. I leaned on the desk with both my hands, and stared at my script in front of me.

“Anytime you wanna go, just go,” he said.

“Ok, let’s do it,” I said.

“Oh, and, not too fast,” he added.

I nodded again, and started to read my story about rock songs that have been covered in Finnish. As slowly as I could.

Back in second grade, in the now world-famous Finnish school system – which might not have been the best in the world then, even if the product it cranked out is obviously first-class – the pupils’ reading abilities were tested with a speed reading test.

While the rest of the class was drawing or writing stories in classroom, each of us had to go out to the corridor, meet with the teacher, and read a passage out of a book. It’s the first test I remember ever taking, even though there must have been others.

When it was my turn, the teacher asked me to sit down at a desk that had been carried there, and opened the book for me. I sat down, and at “go”, I just started to read, out loud, as fast as I could. After the first page, I glanced at the teacher, but kept reading. Two pages, three pages, and a half of the fourth.

“Stop,” said the teacher. “Well done, very well done.”

“That’s farther than anybody else so far,” she added.

I walked back to the classroom as the proudest little man in the world. I was fast. I could read. I could read really fast. It was the only time anybody’s ever given me praise for reading fast.

The next year, our new teacher asked me to read the nativity story from the Bible in front of the entire school. As far as I can remember, she told me about the task while we were walking to the church. At least it was news to me then, so if she had told me about it, I had forgot about it.

I sat in the front row, waiting for my turn, and when it came, I walked up, and started to read:

“AnditcametopassinthosedaysthattherewentoutadecreefromCaesarAugustusthatallthe
worldshouldbetaxed.And JosephalsowentupfromGalileeoutofthecityofNazareth…”

My teacher thanked me afterwards.

“And hey, that was pretty fast, probably some kind of a record,” she said.

Last August, I met with a media company about possible work, that would have possibly included TV appearances. Now, I have never done TV, and I was about to tell them that, just to be fair, when I heard a voice from the other side of the conference room table.

“I see you mostly as a writer, is that fair?” said a man I’ve known since 1994.

“That’s right,” I said.

“I mean, I like your stuff, but my only concern is that…” he said, and left the sentence hanging in the air.

I knew what was coming.

“… well, sometimes you speak so fast,” he then added.

“Yes. I know,” I said as slowly as I could.

When some people get nervous, they blush. Like me. I also tend to read and speak a little faster than usual. I speak a little faster than usual also when I get excited. I have friends who joke about the way I answer the phone: “Rstpkrnn”

It seems that I often speak faster than usual, and you can just imagine what’s happening inside my head at the same time. But of course the speed reading is a method of escape, too: the faster I read the text, the faster I get out of the spotlight.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on a couch at the Finnish-speaking side of the Swedish radio, chatting with the producer and the program director. We were talking about the two-part series I had agreed to do.

“You haven’t done radio, right?” the program director asked me.

“No, not really, can’t really say I have,” I told her. I felt the words get stuck to each other a little bit, and I knew I was blushing.

“Well, that’s not a problem, we’ll get you here to record it, and help you out,” said the producer.

And so I wrote a little script for myself, and practiced it at home. I read it – slowly -, I tried different voices until I almost knew the text by heart. I was ready to go.

On the morning of the taping of my radio thing, as Wife and Son and Daughter were on their way to school and work, I reminded Wife of my radio gig.

“Oh yeah! Good luck!” she said, and then added: ““Just be yourself, you’re the best.”

“Thanks,” I said, and started to closed the front door when I heard Wife’s last instructions to me.

“Don’t speak too fast.”

But I think I did.