She came running from behind me, and swooshed by, with a quick step, arms pumping up and down, giving her the beautiful rhythm I think she has. I’ve said it a hundred times, I’ll say it again: Daughter knows how to run!

She stopped, and opened her jacket, then took it off, ignoring Wife’s and my protest.

“I’ll wear it, I’ll wear the hood over my head. Just the hood,” she said, then asked me to help her put on the jacket so the hood was over her head.

I did, and then kept on walking. Two seconds later she came running again – oh, so beautifully – yelling that she was a superhero.

I did the same thing when I was a kid as did surely millions of kids around the world. I would wear my yellow bathrobe an jump down from the benches in the sauna dressing room, pretending I was flying. I know I haven’t told Daughter about that, so it must be an idea that just occurred to her. And to millions of kids around the world.

We all want to be superheros. We all want to be powerful. We all want to be special. Only the heroes change.

In her head, Daughter was Batman.

Jumping down from that bench in a Helsinki suburb decades earlier, I wanted to be Super-Goofy.

“Ha ha, like your old boss”
– Wife, on Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt sticking his fingers up his nose while watching hockey.

Bosses, I’ve had a few. But then again, too few great ones to mention. I’m probably not an easy employee, and it’s not because I want to be difficult or because I think I’m smarter that the rest – although I understand that even writing that as a possibility probably qualifies me as a jerk – or because I ask tough questions. I sometimes do ask silly questions and I often tried to make everybody laugh at a company meeting, back when I still had bosses.

These days, I have clients.

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When I moved to Sweden over twelve years ago, I told my parents that it wasn’t such a big deal because “Stockholm is closer to Helsinki than Joensuu is”. Helsinki was my hometown then, and Joensuu theirs.

It’s true. The distance between Stockholm and Helsinki is 398 kilometers, while the Joensuu-Helsinki trek is a 440-kilometer one (and I know every inch of it).

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I’ve gone retro. I’ve gone back to using a pencil. Trying to, at least.

Pens have always been my luxury item. I’m not big on rings or bracelets. I’m not a shoe collector, and the odd days I wear a watch, it’s my ten-year-old plastic watch with The Phantom’s face on it, and the text, “The Phantom, the man who never dies”. I like watches, but I’m too cheap to get the really nice ones.

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When I first met Wife and we started dating, she lived not far from where we live now. It’s a ten-minute drive from our house to the cul-de-sac where the other yellow house is. My place across town, on the south side, about a five-minute walk from our first apartment together, was an 18-minute drive from her. But that’s in the middle of the night, with no traffic, and with some speeding.

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“I don’t think driving five hours a day for weeks would be fun. You’re the one who loves to drive.”
– Wife, over dinner, talking about vacation plans

I heard somebody say recently, in the aftermath of the restructuring of the American and Swedish auto industries that he felt that having a domestic auto industry was one of the signs of a nation being a true industrial power. I can’t remember who it was, or the actual phrase he used, but I know I heard it in my car, driving to an interview about an hour from my office.

I also remember thinking that the man had a point.

After all, the Americans had their big old cars, the Cadillacs, Fords, Chevrolets; the Germans had their Audis, Volkswagens, Opels; the Brits the Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, Aston Martins, Jaguars; the Italians the Ferraris, the FIATs, Alfa Romeos, Lancias; and, of course, the Swedes Volvos and Saabs.

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