Like a rubber ball

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Risto

There are two schoolyards in the world that I know better than most, despite the fact that I never went to those schools. One of them is the the schoolyard of Son’s and Daughter’s school in Stockholm, and the other is an elementary school in Joensuu, Finland.

The school was right next to our local multipurpose arena: a gravel pitch where we played soccer and Finnish pesäpallo in the summer, and hockey in the winter. The school was just 200 meters from our house, but went almost completely unnoticed by me the for first two years I lived in Joensuu. However, when it was time to go to high school, and ride my green Peugeot to town, the schoolyard was the perfect shortcut, and saved me at last ten, maybe fifteen seconds on my way to school.

Continue reading →

It’s a little bit funny

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Risto

I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind
That I put down in words…
How wonderful life is, now you’re in the world

Moulin Rouge, the movie, came out in 2001, almost two years before Son was born. I didn’t know much about it, but for some reason I thought I wouldn’t like it, so I never watched it. About six months before Son was born, Wife and I traveled to Maine, and it was one of the movies shown on the plane, so I watched it with my nose about six inches from the six-inch screen, and I loved it.

When we got home, we saw it at a friend’s place, and then finally, on the big screen. And I loved it every time. For years, I had the “Can can can” song as my ring signal.

Moulin Rouge

Continue reading →

My girl

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Risto

“So, anyways, I’ve met someone…”

Continue reading →

Whose fact is it anyway

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Risto

The other day, as Son and Daughter and I were walking towards the bus stop, we noticed a lot of earthworms on the sidewalk.

Every step of the way, Son was yelling warnings to Daughter and me so that we wouldn’t step on them. There really were a lot of them and I jumped over each one to my please my animal loving kids. (“That’s why I don’t use worms, but bread, as a bait when we go fishing,” said Daughter). Meanwhile, the other half of my brain, the half that’s not in charge of my walking and jumping, was busy trying to come up with an answer to the question I knew was coming.

Continue reading →

All the world’s a stage

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Risto

The other day as I was going into the sauna, I walked right into a boy’s shirt that was hanging from the door on the inside. On the shirt, there’s a note – in Son’s handwriting – that says: “Costume #2, “Dad”, sophisticated Q725”.

Son has always been making all kinds of plays. He’s gone to a drama school for five years, he’s been in a movie, and he’s currently in a comedy show, but he’s always liked to tell stories and jokes, and perform. My mother bought him a microphone stand when he was two, and apparently, that was his thing. (After a joke, he’d press a button with his tiny foot to start up the laugh track).

Continue reading →

At the math club

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Risto

The other day, while looking for stamps in my desk drawer, I found my old calculator. The one I used all through high school, the one I bought, or was told to buy, because I was a math guy. The one that saved me in my high school final exam.

Up until high school, I had been a languages guy, but once it was time to graduate to high school, I was told it’d be too much to try to do both math and physics, and still take another language.

So I dropped my German studies – I took our German teacher’s house burning down to the ground as a sign – and bought a calculator. A “scientific calculator”, as it says on it.

Continue reading →

Oh yes, Oulu

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Risto

OULU, Finland – Sometimes the stars are aligned just perfectly, and the great stories we all love in sports get the fairy tale ending we yearn for. That’s what happened in Oulu when Game Seven of the Finnish final went into overtime.

That’s the dream kids dream, and depending on where they live on this planet, it’s their local team that scores the winning goal. These days even kids in Finland, Sweden, and Germany may dream about getting the Stanley Cup clinching goal for a team in Southern Florida, but for most kids, the first heroes are always the ones that are the closest.

Continue reading →

The Impressionist

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Risto

I’m the kinda guy who’s fairly easily impressed by others. I may not always say it, or show it to the person in question, but in my heart I know it.

I look up to those people and I try to emulate them. Maybe I’ll start to dress like them, or I try to walk like them, or – just something. As a kid I taught myself how to fake Wayne Gretzky’s autograph, and I put a photo of Wayne over my own photo in my bus pass. When somebody told me I walked like Esa Peltonen, a Team Finland star, I made sure to keep walking that way.

When I was ten, or eleven, and read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I wanted to be Mark Twain. He’s still my literary hero and one day I will have a mustache like that, too.

Continue reading →

Me, superhero

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Risto

I was only ten years old when I realized the first of my superpowers. I was sitting in the backseat of our car, in a parking lot somewhere, waiting for my father to come back from the store or the hockey rink. For some reason, I wasn’t reading comics, or a book, but instead just looked out the window – like kids used to do back in the day.

As I was staring out the window, possibly trying to see if Dad was on his way back, I realized that I was actually looking right through a lamp post.

Continue reading →

Tommy’s mistake

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Risto

“Hey, Jack,” said the young man with the aviator glasses.

“Hey, Tommy,” replied the man named Jack. He was sitting at a small round coffee table, with a paper cup and a newspaper in front of him.

Neither one said anything for a while as Tommy poured himself a cup of coffee, and then some milk, and sat down at the table.

Jack turned the page, then another, and when he finally had read the newspaper, he folded it up and threw it back on the table.

They sat at the table silent.

Then Tommy slammed his clipboard on the table.

“Here they are,” he said with a big grin on his face.

“Who’s here?” said Jack, and then barked:

“What are you doing here, Tommy?”

You can check out but you can never leave.

Continue reading →