I wonder how many people an average person meets in his lifetime. I actually think about that quite often, when I’m on the subway, at the airport, or, like now, sitting at a coffee shop. And when I think about meeting people, I mean connecting, not just being in the same place at the same time.

For example, I haven’t really met that bald man in front me, even if we just had eye contact. (Then we both looked away). Those two women to my right, with their cool glasses and salads and scarfs, aren’t people I’ve met, in these official meetings statistics.

They could be.

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Even though I can’t order a croissant in Paris, and have practically never spoken Spanish with a Spanish-speaking person, I proudly list both French and Spanish under “language skills” on my resumé.

And why not, I had, after all, somehow passed my French exams in business school – the ones I quite literally slept through, forcing me to learn two year’s worth of French on my own – and even studied two years of Spanish at the same university. I do know the lyrics to “Besame Mucho”, and feel pretty good lip syncing to “La Bamba”. Yo no soy marinero.

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I got fired from my first job. I had fought long and hard to get it, finally landing a position that I hadn’t even applied for, getting hired just on being persistent. Having seen the scores of my interviews and psychological tests, the consultants had recommended hiring somebody else.

I knew that when I called the CEO a few nights later, while driving on the highway. We talked about the job, and my tests, and I remember telling him that I disagreed with the results because I knew I’d be great at the job. He agreed.

“I agree, those tests are a bunch of crock,” he said. “I like you.”

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A few blocks from the hospital where I was born, a few blocks, but the other way from the house where we lived when I was born, two blocks from where we lived when Son was born, and just around the corner from where my parents’ friends, and my sometime babysitters lived, there used to be a movie theater.

For decades now, in its place, there’s been a Pentecostal Church.

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A year before we moved, Dad had another job offer, and everything about it sounded nice, but we stayed put in Helsinki. I used to like to think that I had vetoed the move, but upon a few decades’ reflection, I’m not sure if I should be so proud of that – if it was true. But I just liked being where I was, playing hockey with the guys I knew, going to the school I had gone to with the same people I had known for the past six, seven years.

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