Despite the fact that Wife and I shared an office space, and despite the fact that we were two of only about ten people in the office, we hardly exchanged a word during those first summer months. I would see her sit behind her desk, get up every once in a while to go for a cup of tea – tea is her cup of tea – and do whatever it was that she was doing.
I’ve never been in a fight. Not once in my life. Not as a five-year-old, not as a rowdy teenager, not even as a hockey player. I’m a lover, not a fighter – at least if those two are the only alternatives.
I can imagine that a couple of times I’ve been closer than I realized. Especially that one time when I happened to spit a guy, on other other team, of course, on his visor during a hockey game. At least he said he’d wait for me outside after the game, and that he’d beat me up.
Well, I didn’t see anybody as I ran to my car in the dark.
I’m in the kitchen. I’m making a hot dog, I have bought the buns and the sausages just an hour ago. They’re the Swedish style, in which the bun is only about a third of the length of the dog so when you eat it, you invariably have to start by biting off the ends that hang outside the bun on both sides. And then I hear the horns of the song, and my feet begin to tap. Then comes Dean Martin’s rich voice, and my feet start to sweep the floor in front of the sink.
Guys,
I could barely get out of the bed this morning. That loss last night, that hurt.
So did my back, my groin, and my arms this morning. It’s never easy to get up after one of those late night games, but this time, after I rolled out of the bed, it took me fifteen minutes to get up from the floor. That’s what a loss after 50 intense minutes of shinny does to you. Or me.
As I write this, I also have three chat windows open on my screen. One, opened this morning, five hours ago, is a MSN window to Wife, who’s sitting at her office. Another one is a Skype window to a buddy in Vienna, Austria, and a Canadian friend just popped up in a Facebook chat window. With the exception of Wife, a chat window is often my preferred method of communication.
It’s nothing personal – naturally, since I am, indeed, chatting with some of my friends throughout the entire day – it’s just that this way we cover a lot of topics and yet, each one of us is free to do other things as well.
When I was a young university student, I often spent weekends at a farm some 40 kilometers north of Helsinki. That was where my grandparents lived, sharing a yard with my uncle, my mother’s brother who was a half-time farmer at the time.
I had made that same trek on weekends as a child, when my parents and I would drive up to see Grandma and Grandpa. The town was a 40-minute drive from Helsinki. Close to the action, but completely in the countryside. Claim to fame: a mental hospital.
On my desk, there’s an envelope addressed to Santa Claus, on its way to Korvatunturi, Finland. Inside, there’s a handwritten letter.
“Dear Santa,
I would be really happy if I got the following things. (NB: All items are Lego). “
The items are listed by category – Harry Potter, Prince of Persia, Toy Story, Power miners, Atlantis, Racers, Space Police, Star Wars, and “Other stuff” – with a product number next to them, neatly copied from a Lego catalogue.
On the bottom of the page, it says “turn”, on both sides of the letter, then signed by Son.
Seeing people fall down is funny. It is, admit it. They look so helpless, and out of control, and that’s hilarious. Sure, you don’t want them to dislocate their hips or break their shoulders, but that’s not what you’re thinking when you see a big dude run as fast as he can and then slip and fall into the swimming pool.
I didn’t used to be a slapstick kind of guy, but hearing Wife laugh at all the people falling in movies, and in America’s Funniest Home Videos – why AFV, and not AFHV? – has made me appreciate the genius of looking stupid.
The bus was parked on the church parking lot, and the kids were running around, throwing their bags into the storage under the bus, laughing and swapping stories about what they were going to do once they got out of their parents’ sights.
I sat in the window seat, biting my lip. And I cried.
I’m not very good with conflicts. Never have been. It doesn’t matter which side of the argument I’m on, or whether I think I’m right or wrong, I feel almost physically ill when I’m stewing in conflict soup.
My personal problem is, though, that my brain is almost too quick to cook up pretty good oneliners to strip my adversary. Even worse, my mouth is just as fast to spit them out.
