I don’t remember when I first met Pauli, but it must have been in the Helsinki Business School gym locker room after a game of floorball – not that you’d think sports was the one uniting factor if you saw us at the Pizza Hut buffet today.
Neither do I really remember or know how we became friends, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter 38 years later.
All I know that by our third year in the university, I would often knock on the door a few doors up the hall, and Pauli would open it, and without a word, turn around and go back inside, trusting that I would find my way in. And of course I did, his apartment was identical to mine. In other words, it was just a room, with no kitchen. Just a bed and a chair, and a small table.
And a TV. And Sky Television, and their VJs and silly shows, and Get Smart and I Dream of Jeannie. But mostly the music videos. That’s where we’d sit and chat, and chat and sit.
Pauli and his friends had also started a sports club, and he invited – persuaded – me to run in the annual university relay with them. I had a 400-meter leg, all downhill, but I lost to two people dressed as bananas and a guy pushing a wheelbarrow.
Afterwards, he still invited me to play floorball with them, and I guess that’s when we became friends. We made a trip to Sweden in 1989, and I talked Pauli into buying a Swedish floorball stick – Jolly – and the Alannah Myles new CD. That spring, we played that album every time we drove to a close-by McDonald’s – until he switched it to a Taylor Dayne CD.
Back then, we saw each other every day. Then Pauli got a real job while I worked on my final thesis, but he stayed in his small apartment down the hall. We still played floorball, too, but we also added squash on the agenda. When I needed a color printer for my thesis, I found one in Pauli’s office. I also found a corkscrew which I still have.
For a couple of years, we played squash every Sunday, and somehow, we stayed in touch, even if it was more sporadic than before.
I moved to Sweden, Pauli moved to Sweden, and at one point, we lived closer to each other than at any point before, except for those dorm years. I got married, Pauli got married, Pauli became Daughter’s godfather.
He may also be the smartest person I know (although the competition is tough, I have lots of smart friends). There are two Pauli quotes that are famous in our house.
The first one is a very laconic, “Impossible to know at this point” which you get when you ask him what he’ll do on Sunday. Or if he’ll go somewhere. Or if you inquire about his vacation plans. Because, he claims, nobody can tell. And I kind of like it.
The second quote is one that has given me peace of mind many times over the years .I was telling him about some problem that I had, I can’t remember what it was about, but I remember Pauli listening to me, and then saying, “Well, if you can solve it with money, it’s not a problem.”
Words of wisdom in the spirit of Karlsson-on-the-Roof.
Naturally, we both have our parts to play in the friendship. I’m the funny guy, the clown, and Pauli’s the straight man with the dry wit. One thing we have in common is our tolerance for silence.
A few into my relationship with Wife, Pauli came to visit us in our Helsinki apartment. She then stayed in the bedroom to do her things while Pauli and I stayed in the living room, chatting, and watching the TV.
At some point, Wife tiptoed to the door and looked inside.
“It was so quiet that I just wanted to see if Pauli had left,” she said.
Oh, no. Pauli was still there. Of course he was. We were hanging out! We didn’t if we weren’t talking the whole time, we’d pick it up at some point, surely. We always did.
That also applies to our friendship. There may be silent periods, the squash games have practically ended, but when we do get together, we pick it up from where we left it.
Today we celebrated his birthday over a few slices of Pepperoni Lover pizza.
And it was perfect.