The other day, a friend of mine tweeted something about his childhood in Oshawa, Ontario. While I knew that he was Canadian, and may have been aware of the fact that he was from “Toronto”, I never knew he was from Oshawa.

Not that it mattered to me, but I replied to him, and said that you learn something new every day.

I often tell Son and Daughter that you learn something every day. Just the other day Son was a one-boy audience to a medium-long speech that Herb Brooks would have been jealous of, on the importance of practice, and learning by doing. Yesterday, when Daughter and I hung out at the rink, she worked on her math skills by tying to figure out how much time was left on the clock.

“Well, a bandy game lasts 90 minutes, and now they’ve played 86 .. so…,” I’d say, and she would be quiet for a while, and then deliver her answer with a big smile.

Sometimes, though, we learn something when things go wrong.

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My first real soccer shirt was a yellow, short-sleeved shirt with a small crest on the chest, with a stylized G in the middle of it. G for Gnistan, or “spark”. The day I got my first real soccer shirt was the biggest day of my life, until I got my first real hockey sweater.

The hockey sweater was dark green and had the word “KERHO” – “club” in Finnish – diagonally across the chest.

And the year after that, I got a sweater with real advertisement on it, a career highlight.

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The young, dark-haired man behind the desk at the gym said something to me and whatever it was, he was being passionate about it, that much I knew. He was smiling, and pounding his chest, and pointing at me. I’m reasonably good at lip reading, but that time, I was confused.

Usually, he just takes my card, swipes it, and gives it back to me, so I often keep my earphones in my ears, smile politely, and keep walking.

But, this time, he was still holding onto my card and talking, so I scratched my head a little, and like a great magician, discreetly pulled the earphone out without him noticing.

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I don’t know why I remember that particular line, but I do, and I think it’s funny. I think it’s funny that I remember it, and I think it’s a funny line. Maybe I remember it because I caught myself by surprise with my witty answer. It was almost as if I didn’t realize what I had said until I heard the words come out of my mouth.

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About 15 years ago, I spent New Year’s Eve with my best friend at my place. It was a nice place, in a Helsinki suburb, a ten-minute train ride from downtown Helsinki. We made some food, we called up another buddy to come over – he did, briefly – and we danced to the Doors.

“You know what my mother said when I told her about us hanging out at New Year’s?” my buddy asked me.

I had no idea.

“She said that she felt bad for us, ‘two miserable bachelors, alone at New Year’s’,” he added, and we laughed.

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My parents were in their early twenties when I was born, even if I didn’t know it then, and to be honest, I didn’t much think about it even as I grew up to understand it. In fact, when my best friend asked the seven-year-old me how old my parents were, I said I didn’t know.

“My mother’s 35,” he announced.

“Huh. I think mine’s 35, too,” I said, and then we continued our football match.

My mother was 28 at the time.

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