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).

I don’t remember who started it, or which movie it comes from, but whenever we need to do something quickly – clean up, get the family packed in a car, get takeout food – we’ll call it a “military operation”. And without saying a word, we actually do know who’s supposed to do what, and with no time wasted, we get our act together, and execute the silent plan.

It’s also very ironic, because I truly am a lover, not a fighter. Unlike 99 percent of my generation in Finland, I never did do a military service, or any sort of non-military service. They told me they didn’t exactly need me.

Anyway, the family “military operation” works only when it’s just the two of us doing all the work. Wife and I will run back and forth, pick up stuff, go in and out of the house, car, or garage, while Son and Daughter wait in the car. Or the house.

With Wife in Rome for five days, on a business trip, I’ve been the Project Manager at home. And I think everything’s been going well (like that line, “everything’s going so weeeell”, in Moulin Rouge). The kids have been fed, they’ve played, they’ve been outside, they’ve gone to bed early, and we’ve made it to the previously scheduled appointments, like Daughter’s gymnastics class, and a birthday party.

Of course, I’ve also tried to be a little creative. Instead of reading to both of them each night, like we always do, we watched a movie on the first night. Donald Duck is so funny, we all agreed. Oh, and, we had a bowl of popcorn, too. And chips. Some peanuts. Ice cream. After the movie, Son and Daughter went to bed, and I pulled out the rest of the chips, watched an episode of Columbo, and sent Wife a text message about how well things were.

The next night, we didn’t eat chips, simply because it was Saturday, and on Saturdays, we eat candy. But we all agreed that it had been really nice the night before when we’d watched Donald Duck so we figured Goofy might be just as funny. And on the third night, it was already our thing: put on pajamas, watch a funny film, and go to bed. Besides, “Once Upon a Time… The Discoverers” is not only funny, it’s also very educational, we all learned a lot.

Sure, I have been angry, too. I’ve thrown the pajamas pants – Daughter’s, not mine – in rage, I’ve raised my voice, I’ve threatened to cancel the candy day, the movie time, the trip to the park, and I’ve counted to five, several times, in various volumes of voice.

Gym class and birthday parties are nice and important, but, being ten minutes late isn’t the end of the world. Neither is being ten minutes late for school, I guess, but it’s school. Therefore, this morning, I had no buffers, no cushions, no wiggle room.

It was military operation time.

One, two, get up and go, three, four, then out the door. Get dressed, get downstairs, get breakfast, get moving. I woke up two minutes before my alarm was going to go off, and a minute and 45 seconds before my alarm was going to go off, I was fully dressed, on my way downstairs.

I prepared some breakfast, so that everything would be ready when Son and Daughter woke up. And I was in a good mood, so I let them sleep in a little. Just a little, because in five minutes, our military operation would kick in. The problem is, of course, that my little soldiers weren’t it. When I got them out of their beds twenty minutes – and a short puppet show – later, we were running late.

I barked instructions to them. “Get your clothes, I put them on your beds, then get downstairs, there’s no time to do anything, we have to get going or we’re all … going … to be laaaaate!”

“You have to be ready when the long hand is on the six, because we have to be sitting in the car when the hand’s on the nine, and you know how the traffic is on Mondays, so, what do you want on your sandwiches? You there!” I said, and pointed at Son.

“Marmalade,” he said.

“No, no, no, you have to have a real sandwich first, so, baloney or ham?”

“I don’t know.”

“Private Son, gimme twenty!” is what I should have said. But instead, I buttered a piece of toast and slammed a piece of ham on it.

“You there, what do you want?” I barked while leaning on the kitchen counter, eating a sandwich, and reading the paper. (Leading by example)

Daughter looked at me. “I want the lion to ask me,” she said, and pushed her little toy lion towards me on the kitchen table.

“No time. There’s no time for the lion. The lion’s too slow! Your brother can’t be late for school!”

“The lion!” she said.

Sometimes I do negotiate with terrorists. And I do it out of love. Because love is when you want to believe his promise of reading just one comic book before turning the lights off or that she’ll, for sure, get up as soon as I wake her up in the morning, and you want to believe it so bad that you make the deal, even though, nothing in the other party’s past says that they’ll keep their end of the deal. But, maybe one day they will.

“Fine, what would you like to have on your sandwich?” I said, in a high, peeping voice, while tickling her on the neck with her toy lion.

“Ham and marmalade,” she said, laughing.

“OK. But we have to go now. Put your clothes on, you can eat your sandwich in the car,” I said.

Because I had noticed that the clock’s big hand was almost on the nine. I knew we were running late. And that I’m no soldier. But I’m a pretty good puppeteer.