I’m writing this while sitting at a desk at the NHL head offices in New York. New York City. Behind me, under me, I can see the 6th Avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, with all the people scurrying back and forth like ants, jumping in and out of taxis – very un-antlike behavior.
When I look up, I see a wall with the photos of all NHL captains this season, from Jonathan Toews to Nicklas Lidström to Mikko Koivu.
Not only do Wife and I quote movie lines, such as “Let’s ride!”, back to each other, we also imitate movie action in our lives. Not to the extent that we’d fly to Mexico to save a poor village from El Guapo, or that I’d be working on a time machine in our garage – although I do like Doc Brown’s hair, a lot – but when we like something in a movie, we’ll make our own version of it.
(Writing the above sentence, I also realized that there’s another line we do use with each other. A lot. Whenever one of us says something like, “Oh I hate that” or “I really liked that buffet”, the other one says, “Oh yeah? How much”, to which there is only one correct answer: “A lot”. It’s a scene in Life of Brian, a movie that Wife can recite from beginning to end, which really makes me admire her. How much? A lot).
There’s an old joke in Finland, a popular one, that goes like this: “When the Swedes switched from left-hand side traffic to driving on the right side of the street, the move was made in steps. First, only trucks and buses…”
Nine years ago, after I had recovered from the initial shock of the nine-eleven attack, I sent an email to a New Yorker friend, to see that he was OK. Below is his reply.
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.
I’ve always wanted to get head hunted for a job. I think it’d be nice if some movie director saw me order a caffe latte and asked me to audition for a role in his movie. I would have even auditioned for the part of Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies.
A friend of mine once told me that he’d heard somewhere that your home will always be wherever you are living when you’re 18. Regardless of the questionable reliability of the source, that’s a claim that’s pretty easy to believe, it kind of makes sense.
Home is where you are when you’re a teenager.
I bought Wife a watch for Christmas because she didn’t have one but also because I like watches myself. The only problem with buying a watch is probably that once I find one that I really like, I realize that I like my money even better but when I was buying that watch for her, I figured that she was paying half of it anyway.
Just kidding.
Only the best is good enough for her. And I found one that she likes “a lot,” as she just told me in a chat window.
It finally happened. For weeks now, I’ve been walking around wearing a white shoe on my left foot, and a black one on my right, except on a few days when I’ve had a black shoe on my right foot and a white one on my right, and nobody’s said anything.
Today, though, when it happened, I was wearing white on left, black on right, and I had just got scrambled eggs, a sandwich, and the local Tampere specialty mustamakkara, a blood sausage.
“Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.”
– Thomas Alva Edison
Terry, my Canadian (exchange student) brother had a buddy called Sweaty. I’ve never met Sweaty, and in the only photo I’ve ever seen of him, he was asleep – or passed out – and not really sweaty, but I’ve always felt a connection to him.
I’m sure you can figure out why.
The first time my father came home and told my mother that he’d just witnessed a man die, I was about 11 years old. And – at least as far as I know – my father wasn’t a Mob hitman, so this was not an every day occurrence at the house.
