Just like “there are times when the Phantom leaves the jungle and walks the streets of the town like an ordinary man”, you can sometimes spot me jogging a little around the neighborhood. Not very often, never far from home, but still, out there, with my lazy eye of the tiger.
Yesterday was one such day.
Long before I had moved to Sweden, or met Wife, and long before there was Son and even longer for Daughter, I sat on a train. It was a red train, a commuter train, so you know it was a long time ago because it was when the trains were red, and the seats were blue, before the red-and-white and the green-and-blue-and-white trains, and before the platform at the Helsinki train station had got its roof.
“How come you don’t have any beard over here, where you have that scar?”
– Son, one recent Saturday
Right on the edge of my chin, on the left side, there’s a scar. It’s not a big one, just a couple of centimeters long, and since it is where it is, you don’t really see it, especially if I’m clean shaven. But then I make a funny or scary face, or grin, the scar travels a little further up, and it’s there for you to see it.
And every once in a while when someone realizes I have a scar on my face, she asks me about it.
“How’d you get that scar?” she’ll say, and I’ll smile and say:
“You should see the other guy.”
And then I tell her the story.
Eight years ago, a young Finnish goalie name Tuukka Rask was excited because he had just been drafted into the NHL by the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was only 18 years old, but his career plan was right on schedule. He had won the Finnish junior championship, recording six shutouts in 10 playoff games, and he had played in the IIHF World Junior Championship.
Today, Rask is the Boston Bruins’ starting goaltender. His name is on the Stanley Cup as a member of the Bruins’ championship team in 2011, and he might well have won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP had the Bruins beaten the Chicago Blackhawks in the Final in June.
And eight years from now? Rask hopes he’s still wearing a Bruins sweater. Right after the Stanley Cup Final he said he wanted to play in Boston “forever,” and in July he got his wish, “forever” with an asterisk, as he signed an eight-year, $56 million contract.
Ever since I realized it was cool to have parents who have done extraordinary things, I’ve told all my friends that my father won a Finnish championship as a young man. It was a major ace in the hole when other kids were bragging about their parents’ successes.
Now, my Dad was no longer a player, like Lare’s father – who played Division II soccer – and my Dad wasn’t a candy wholesaler like Pekka’s, but he sure had won that Finnish title.
Except that he won it in pesäpallo, which while being Finland’s national sport, was, and is, also a small and rural sport, and therefore, not the coolest of sports.
Also, he only sort of won a championship. That he was on the team that won can’t be disputed and never will be disputed, because I have the evidence right in front of me. On my desk there’s a photo, a newspaper clipping, in which he’s holding the trophy and his teammates are all around him, beaming.
If Richard Nixon could leave the White House for the last time in style, looking like a winner, after he’d been run out, forced out, after he’d lied to the nation, and had faced impeachment, you can emerge from your little adversities looking like a winner, too.
And that’s more than half the battle. If you look like a winner, you are a winner.
(Of course, results may vary).
Here are a few examples of situations you may find yourself in, and the proper response.
1. You go to an all-you-can eat tex-mex buffet, and just as you’ve loaded your plate with nachos and salsa, and guacamole, and cheese – a lot of cheese – and meat and beans, and just as you’re about to get some more nachos with your right hand, while balancing the tray with your left, you realize you forgot to get a glass, so you take a few steps back, then trip on the bag you left on the floor, and while trying to hold onto your food and the glass, you fail miserably at both, and drop everything on the floor.
As you get up and see the entire food court staring at you, you stand up, brush the nachos and the cheese – a lot of cheese – off your shirt, and you do this:
As I type this, every once in a while I catch a glimpse of something orange hovering over my keyboard. It’s the plastic bracelet with the New York Mets’ logo on it, together with their slogan, “Ya gotta believe!” I’ve been wearing it around my wrist for two weeks now.
I’ve been trying to become a fan for years. A fan of … anything, really, but mostly a team of some non-hockey sports team. My method has aways been the same: I first make up my mind about the sport, then go about deciding which team to choose – then buy that team’s fan merchandise.
Dear co-rider,
In the spirit of John Lennon, a one-time New Yorker, I say: yes, yes is the answer. “Yes” is the answer to the question on everybody’s minds earlier today: “Do you smell something weird?” And “yes” is the answer to the question, “is that short fella standing in the middle of the car the source of said smell?”
So I say to all of you, yes, yes I did smell something weird, and yes, the smell seemed to be coming off that man –– and yes, I was that man.
My first trip to New York City was a 30-hour layover on my way from Montreal, Canada to Helsinki, Finland. I had been at a sports fair in Canada, and had somehow managed to convince my boss that it was a good idea for me to travel through JFK, and, well, did it really matter if I stayed there for three hours or thirty? He didn’t think it did.
That’s how I arrived in New York City late on a Friday night. I was going to stay at a friend’s place in New York, and not only had he welcomed me to his home, he had also arranged for a driver to greet me at the airport.
One recent late night, when I should have been writing, and was instead scrolling up and down my Facebook page, I saw the status of an acquaintance of mine – a Formula One reporter on Finnish TV – in which he wrote: “Heard that a version of my name may have been used in the Donald Duck magazine. Can anybody confirm that?”
A couple of days later, I asked him if he’d heard anything. He hadn’t. Then I asked him why he had asked that.
“It’d be a great honor to be featured in the Donald Duck magazine,” he said.
