Category Archives: Incidents and accidents

Camilla

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Camilla fixed her hair with her hand, trying to tame the one stubborn lock that stuck out above her left ear. That was the price she had to pay for going from Marie Fredriksson– the Roxette singer – to 1950s Tove Jansson. Now she was stuck at 1980s Isabella Rossellini, and while Camilla had nothing against her, and even knew that in a way Rossellini was the perfect role model for her, she had been born in Rome, not the north of Italy like Camilla.

She stood by the facial creams and rearranged the cartons and bottles while humming ABBA. “Mamma mia,” she sang, “here I go again.”

One day I will go, she thought. I will leave Milan and move even farther north. She hadn’t made up her mind yet whether she’d move to Sweden or Finland, but one of those countries.

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Plates, trains and automobiles

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This may come as a surprise to you, but Swedes love vanity plates. That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn in my twenty-plus years driving (and sitting) in Stockholm traffic. Every day, I find myself behind someone who wants to signal something to their fellow citizens.

Since the maximum number of characters is seven, there’s not a lot of room for witticism on the plate, and off the top of my head, I’d say the most common vanity plates are people’s first names. You know, the Monicas and the Anderses. And the Ömers.

There’s a HEJ close to where we live, and a VIRGO about as close but in the opposite direction from our house. I’ve seen a SORRY and an R2D2, too.

I’ve often thought what I’d like to have on my vanity plate. I’m too private a person to have my name on a plate – I don’t want others to know my name! I wouldn’t want to have Wife’s name on the plate, either.

What about our dog’s name? That would only be funny if he also drove the car, and while he’s smart enough to do it, he’s too short.

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Superfans

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Last weekend, one of Daughter’s hockey teams played their last game of the season at our local rink. We played twice against the same team – and when I say “we” I’m trying to draw your attention to the fact that I’m the assistant coach – and since it was the season finale, we had even got a little news item on the club’s website. 

You get it. It was a special event. 

In fact, it was so special that even the man I had earlier only seen at local soccer games and the men’s hockey team’s games – working the door, hanging out with the officials, cheering on the boys – was there on both days. He hung out in the locker room corridor, fist-bumped the head coach, and took in the action.

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Movie magic

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In the latest issue of Empire*, English director-writer-producer Edgar Wright invites his famous friends to tell about their magic movie moments, things they remember about having watched movies with others in a theatre. 

Because, as we all know, that’s where the real magic happens. 

In the magazine, there’s Steven Spielberg talking about the desert crossing in Lawrence of Arabia, and Chris Evans looking back at the time he saw Neo stop the bullets in Matrix, and Paul Rudd chuckling at his memory of seeing Indiana Jones shoot the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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Just another magical day

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While it may seem that we, up here in the northern-most part of the northern hemisphere, spend most of our days between November and March in a haze in which every day is like the one before and that we only come alive when we finally see the sun again, with a little effort, you can see tiny miracles almost every day. 

Today was one of those days. 

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A Christmas story (with a cactus)

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I could hear them calling for me but I wasn’t ready to come out yet. I was deep underground, in a cave where I was sure an ancient Inca treasure was buried. Or, maybe it was a treasure chest left there by Blackbeard, an infamous pirate, like my friend Ari said. 

Fine, I wasn’t technically underground, because the cave Ari and I had built was made out of snow and the pile of snow was most definitely above ground. 

I guess it’s needless to say that there was no real Inca treasure, either, but I’ll just say it anyway so that there aren’t any misunderstandings: there was no Inca treasure. There was no pirates’ treasure, either. It was all in our our nine-year-old heads.

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The 3 train back to the future

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On a recent Friday night, Risto Pakarinen was sitting on a half-empty 3 train going uptown, his legs stretched out and his black-and-yellow hoodie unzipped. He was on his way back to Harlem where he and his friend, Ari Lepisto, a fellow Finn, were spending the night. 

They were in town to check a few items off Lepisto’s bucket list, heavily slanted towards sports events. It wasn’t the first time the duo had done it. A few years ago, when Lepisto wanted to cross out “watching a Premier League football game” off the list, Pakarinen joined him on the trip to Craven Cottage in London to see Fulham take on West Bromwich. 

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A regular guy

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At home, I don’t really like to be a regular customer anywhere because I like my privacy, but when I’m traveling, I suddenly find myself humming the theme song of Cheers and feel that “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.”

Caffe Connect, the coffeeshop I’m writing this at, has a loyalty program. Collect nine stamps and you get the tenth coffee for free. We’ll only be here for three more days and I only have one stamp on it, so I’m probably not going to get my free cappuccino, but I wanted to get the stamp because I figured the guy behind the register would also be happy to get a new regular.

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Santa may be coming to town

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Lately, Son’s gotten into politics. He’s dashing off to all kinds of meetings, and he’s arranging events and moderating debates, so much so that it’s hard for me to keep up. I do know, though, that he’s a smart and caring boy and that his politics are very warm and that he’s out to change the world for the better. He wants to help people, which is nice.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to me that he wants to get out there and make things happen. A few years ago, maybe around five or so, he ran a one-man one-cause campaign at school as he paraded the schoolyard with a sign that said, “BELIEVE IN SANTA – He is real.”

Now there’s a message I can get behind.

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