The times they have a-changed: This morning, I woke up to an invitation to come dance at the nearby disco. There was a time when waking up to an impromptu disco dancing pajama party would have been nothing short of cool. That would have been the kind of story I would have told my friends over and over again, as proof on my own coolness.

The impromptu disco dancing event I woke up to this morning wasn’t that, but there I was, dancing in my pajamas, like the rest of the family. Son woke us up to join him in his room, in his disco, where he was the DJ, playing music from the Harry Potter movies. Daughter did cartwheels, and Wife and I careful dance moves: she was cool, I was the dork that I am on the dance floor.

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I probably could have jammed myself into the subway train, had I really been obnoxious and pushy. Literally pushy. But I’m so lazy that instead of doing that, and having to stand up all the way from the arena to the train station, I decided to take the next train. I understand that I still had to stand there, outside, for another three minutes waiting for the next train, but then I’d get to sit down, I figured.

The train arrived, and sure enough, it was almost empty. I got a window seat, and continued reading my book – Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro – as the doors closed.

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When I was three, and we were visiting family friends, I would make a point of asking the host/ess where my coffee cup was. Because, apparently, I drank coffee back then. One part coffee, 52 parts milk, I suppose. At 4, I quit drinking coffee, to the point where I wouldn’t even eat coffee-flavored ice cream.

Or couldn’t because I couldn’t handle the taste.

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With all the snow that we have in Stockholm now, the kids will never believe me if I tell them that when I was a kid I had to walk barefoot through more snow than they’ve ever seen. But, fortunately, I have other stories to make my own childhood seems fairly Dickensian.

Like the fact that I didn’t have a real bed when I was five years old and, instead, slept on a piece of cardboard between two chairs that faced each other.

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To say that I am a handyman is a major overstatement. In fact, if somebody comes up to you and tells you that, call him a liar. That’s what it is, an outright lie. I can’t fix anything, I can’t build anything, unless I can do it with tape. (But I did once write a series of columns under the pseudonym “Handy Cap”).

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The plan was to get up early and see Helsinki from afar, from the sea. See the two churches somewhere in the horizon, the President’s castle, the City Hall, and the market square, and the Ferris wheel of the amusement park. I wanted to go out to Deck 12 as the ferry was approaching the tiny bay, and I wanted to feel the cold air on my face, and I wanted to worry about how the wind was going to mess up my hair.

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On the ground floor of our apartment building, about a floor and a half below us, there was a barbershop. The barber of the barbershop was something of a celebrity, a popular local hero, a sports fan, a fisherman, and an artist.

But first and foremost he was a barber, and because he was Dad’s childhood buddy, and because he had his shop in our building, that’s where I went to get my hair cut. Or, that’s where I went when Mom told me to get a haircut.

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Counting down Top 9 of 2010 .. next stop: Number 2!

April 26, 2010 » Naming rights
On our hockey team’s trip to Sweden in the late 1970s, one of the players fell in love with Hubba Bubba chewing gum, because he could make huge bubbles with it. Of course, one of them exploded in his face, covering it completely, and leaving him picking gum off his face for days.

Ironically, that didn’t stick.

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Counting down to December 24, here”s the Top 9 list of the year.

At number 3…

March 7, 2010 » Born To Be My Baby
There we were, reading the paper, eating toast, drinking tea, talking about stuff we saw in our newspapers. So, Brother-in-law, even at this point, seeing Girlfriend – your sister – giving birth to a child, and myself becoming a father, seemed very surreal. We were just having breakfast.

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We’re almost there. It’s so exciting!

Nummmbbeeeerr fooooooour:

August 26, 10 » Discovery channel
All my life I’ve been waiting to get discovered. It may be because I’m lazy by nature, although I think that since I’d simply like to be discovered for what I’ve done – instead of just playing the lottery – I think I’m not a complete slacker.

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