Just a reminder: my hockey stuff is now at Puckarinen (www.ristopakarinen.com/hockey/)
Puckarinen
1
Cheeks in the mail
Three years ago, I claimed a word. I coined a phrase. A few weeks ago, I saw a Finnish version of the word in a paper. Was I the first one, really, or did somebody else’s brain produce a similar gem?
I’m sure it was the latter.
The legend of the blue pants
A part of hockey’s lure has to be in the equipment. There’s something magical in the ritual of putting on all that gear that looks nothing like anything in the real world. Nothing.
Gloves are so padded that when the players do the now-ubiquitous gloved hand-clap to thank the fans after a game, it looks bizarre, unnatural. Same goes for the helmet, the socks (yeah, right), and the pants.
When I was four years old, following my father to hockey games in Helsinki, I was fascinated by goalies who, to me, looked like freaks of nature. I mean, where did these people live? I had never seen such creatures – with their wide legs, their chubby upper bodies, and their big, blocky hands – out on the streets.
Honk if you like honking
Where I live, honking is a lost art. I’m not going to tell you where I live, out of paranoia, but I will tell you that it’s getting pretty dark pretty early around here these days. And that people are polite and fairly quiet, and don’t wave their arms and hands when talking.
That’s why honking is often interpreted as something hostile, like a rude gesture, or a shove in the back. An elbow to the ribs in a crowded elevator.
When in Rome (or Italy in general)
INT. ITALIAN GROCERY STORE – DAY. CHECK-OUT LINE NUMBER 7.
WIFE, SON, and DAUGHTER lift a lot of groceries from a basket onto the conveyer.
WIFE
Put that pasta on there, please, Daughter. Thanks, good job. And Son, don’t pile all the stuff in one spot, OK?
WIFE, SON, and DAUGHTER keep adding groceries onto the belt.
WIFE
I wonder … I wonder which side the bar codes should be. Oh, see, over here they have the bar code reader installed facing up, in the same place where we at home have the scale, so we should probably turn the groceries so that the bar codes are facing down, OK, Son?
Husband, can you give me that divider bar so that that lovely and picturesque Italian couple – don’t look now, but he looks just like Rocky’s brother-in-law – behind us can put their stuff on the belt.
HUSBAND
Here.
WIFE
No, wait, the bar code reader is where it is at home, so everybody, turn the groceries over so the bar code faces us.
INT. ITALIAN GROCERY STORE – DAY. CHECK-OUT LINE 6:
A piece of meat
The finest dish I know is chateaubriand. I’m not sure what it is, really, except that it sounds like something out of the French cuisine, and that it’s meat.
And that in 1975 Bulgaria if you went to the restaurant of the finest hotel of Varna, you were only allowed to order it for two people. If just one person in the party wanted a nice chateaubriand, too bad, because that was against the rules. It was a dish so fine, so exquisite, that it wouldn’t be wasted on just one poor soul.
Sleep less in Stockholm
Some people really like to sleep. They think of sleep as if it were their hobby, always looking forward to the weekend when they can sleep all the way to lunch, even beyond. They take pride in the amount of time they spend between covers in their own dreamy land.
Then, other people try to sleep as little as possible. Some super-CEOs – and other dictators – sleep only four hours a night, and micromanage and create master plans for world domination for the next twenty.
The end
Now I know what the opposite of "very funny" is. It’s "And then we came to the end," a book I finally managed to finish,which is mostly a great testimony to my perseverance and will power, since it took me two years and three tries to get to the end.
Speechless
It was very subtle, actually, but the signal was there. Something about the man was a little off. Not the hat, it was fine. It was an old NHL hat, last season’s design, but OK. It wasn’t the windbreaker – we were on a boat, after all – and it wasn’t the pants, although they were kind of big, and baggy, and not in the cool way. But I didn’t notice that until afterwards.
After I had seen the subtle signal.
He smiled at me which was a nice enough gesture for me to forgive him for cutting in front of me in the line. Besides, I could tell he was traveling with friends who were already standing in front of me.
But. What made me do a double take was this:
The man had his shoes on the wrong feet.
Two hearts
He was lying on his side, supporting his head with his hand, stroking Wife’s hair gently. She was lying on her back, reading a magazine.
