Last night, Son was playing with his Nintendo, recording sounds and then altering them to make them funny, and he asked me to say something.

I thought about it for a second, and then said, “Are you a Finn? I’m a Finn, too.” But I said it in a gruffy voice.

“Perfect!” said Son, and laughed so hard he almost fell on the floor.

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Often, when I try to explain something to a friend or Wife, I find myself drawing analogies to hockey. It seems like such a simple way to make sense of the world. Not that it always is that, like when I try to explain the euro crisis drawing parallels to no-touch icing, but sometimes it is.

A hockey rink is a miniature version of the world – because there’s a mix of all kinds of people, and, hey, we are the world.

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Craven Cottage, if you don’t know, is the oldest football stadium in London and the home field of Fulham Football Club.

A few years ago, when I translated a soccer magazine from Swedish into Finnish, there was a story about the legend of Cottage, its demise and return to the days of glory and while I didn’t remember much of the story when I got there, I remembered this much: Craven Cottage was a magical place.

And there we were, Buddy and I, last Saturday. We clapped our hands when the players walked onto the pitch, cheered on Fulham – “Come on Fuuuuuuulham” – and jumped onto our feet when Berbatov scored for Fulham. Well, I did, Buddy just laughed at me. We ate the longest hotdogs I’ve ever seen, and we took a lot of photos. However, while the match was fine, it wasn’t magical.

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All I know about the guy is that his name was Lothar. He was one of those people that I sort of thought I knew when I never knew him at all. I knew he was a hockey player, and today, 25 years since I last saw him, I don’t even remember where we played together – or whether we ever did.

I think we may have played together on my university’s ice time, or maybe not. He may have gone to the same university with me, although I don’t think he did. Our paths crossed only a few times in the late 1980s, maybe early 1990s.

In short, all I know is that did play hockey, that we kind of knew each other, and, while I didn’t know his real name, I knew he was called Lothar after Mandrake the Magician’s best friend, the Prince of the Seven Nations, and more importantly, the world’s strongest man.

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Was I worried that she’d say no? Well, I did expect her to say yes, but I was ready for a no, too. Honestly.

I had originally imagined myself on my knee in front of her, holding the most beautiful ring in my hand. The snow would fall on us slowly, and she’d fight off the tears, then tell me to get up, but she’d say it in a romantic comedy sort of way, so she’d say, “get up, you big old… you big, you…” but she wouldn’t be able to finish the sentence because I’d be up, and we’d kiss.

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One day, in second grade, I came home from school with a form that I was supposed to return the next day, with my choice of foreign languages filled in. I was asked to rank the languages in order of preference, and with luck, my number one choice would be the one I’d start studying the next fall.

Coca-Cola had come to Finland with the Summer Olympics in 1952, and by the time I was about to make that language choice, that faraway Nordic country had fallen in love with Rodney in “Peyton Place”, and Ben Cartwright in “Bonanza”.

Then the 50s America was cool, and “Happy Days” was cool. While Fonzie was the coolest of cool, even Ralph Malph had something I really wanted. A cool high school jacket.

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