“Oh, Sir, just one more thing.”
– Lt. Columbo, LAPD

Whenever I’m alone at home, with Wife and Son and Daughter away somewhere, I watch an episode of Columbo, the show about Lt Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Because I own every single Columbo DVD box there is, I have a pretty good collection to choose from, and it’s just a matter of mood whether I want to go for one of the early 1970s cases, in which Peter Falk looks like he could still run after a bad guy if he wanted to, and in which his old Peugeot still looks mostly European, instead of just old, or a 1980s style Columbo.

I’ve been a Columbo fun since those 1970s episodes first aired in Finland. I remember vividly one time coming home from school, then going back to school for some extracurricular art project – yeah, really – and rushing home in time to watch Columbo. I know exactly which episode it was, too. This one.

I’m sure there was a time when others – not me – said they liked Columbo but they were just being ironic. Meanwhile, I recorded old episodes on VHS tapes, and once they started to come out on DVD, I bought them one season at a time.

I’ve read Peter Falk’s memoir, I’ve introduces Columbo to Wife, and a couple of years ago, Wife and me, pulled Daughter’s Godmother into the Columbo Club. She comes over, often on a Sunday night, and we sit, and talk, and eat, and watch Columbo, a show she had never watched before. We’re now halfway through Season Four.

About two weeks ago, I got a letter from a friend in Vienna. Well, not a letter, a package, because there wasn’t even a note. Inside the envelope, there was a brown T-shirt that has the face of Lt. Columbo on it. Underneath it says, “Can I ask you a personal question?”

I am wearing it today, and if I could, I would wear this T-shirt every day.

School’s out for summer. It’s the first day of summer holiday so the kids and I don’t have our routines down yet, and, well, time flies and there was nothing in the fridge … and, well, nachos are just so good. So I took Son and Daughter down to the mall for lunch.

We parked our car next to the gym and walked down the stairs towards the food court when I noticed that a young man was staring at me. Or, my Columbo T-shirt. I realized he was trying to see what it said so I said:

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

He stopped and look startled.

“Um, yeah, sure,” he said, in English (naturally).

“No, no, I just mean, I thought you looked at the T-shirt, and that’s what it says there, ‘Can I ask you a personal question?’,” I said, turning around, as I was now a few steps further down the stairs.

“Oh, heh, sure, yeah, nice,” he said, and smiled.

We kept walking to the nacho place. It’s an all you can eat place, which is a good deal for me, but usually not so great for Daughter. This time, the man behind the counter looked at the kids and gave me a deal on the spot.

“The boy, um, 70, and the girl, well, 60. OK?” he said, and smiled.

Then he looked at me, and made a gesture with his hand. A little wave in the air, to the general direction of my T-shirt.

“Columbo. He’s great,” he said.

I smiled, nodded, and said, “yes, he is.”

“He is the reason why I’ve always wanted to become a policeman. You know, a detective like him. I always thought it’d be great, and you know, I want to make the world a better place,” he said.

“But it takes me so long to get a permanent resident visa here, and I can only get a work permit one year at a time, so…“ said the man from Azerbaijan and shrugged his shoulders.

The words were left hanging in the air, just hovering above the taco sauce.

“Well, you never know,” I said, trying to make them drop down.

Then he asked me if were were from Finland, and I said yes, and no, and he asked me if Finnish was as difficult as everybody said it was, and I said it probably was, too, and I asked him how a Columbo fan from Azerbaijan had ended up in Sweden, and he said that the story was so long that it would fill an entire book.

Afterwards, when we had taken our trays back, I went back to him, and I said:

“Oh, Sir, one more thing…”

He smiled.

“Yes?” he said.

“Thanks, it was delicious,” I said, and he smiled again.

And as far as I’m concerned, he’s making the world a better place just by running that awesome tex-mex place.

Tonight, Daughter’s Godmother will come over, and we’ll watch another episode of Columbo. It’s going to be Season 4, Episode 4: Troubled Waters. I will be wearing my Columbo T-shirt.