Just like it’s difficult to keep up with the changes in a child growing up in front of our eyes, the world around us changes so slowly and fast at the same time that it’s hard to overlook how big some of the changes in the last 50 years have been. Fifty years is a long time for a person, but not for mankind.

Sometimes, Son and I play a game called, “Tell Me What Didn’t Exist When You Were Little, Dad”.

And the list of things gets to be pretty long, pretty fast. Some of the items are obvious just by looking around – the Internet, the laptop, the flatscreen TV, the 21-speed bike, the microwave, the ethanol car, the watch (just kidding about that one) – but what you can’t see are the true changes. The fundamental changes.

The ones that always shock people in the now if they weren’t with you in the then.

I interviewed a history professor the other day, and in fifteen minutes she not only educated me, she also activated parts of my brain that don’t get a lot of workout at the rink. That would be the thinking part.

Again, just kidding!

One thing the history professor mentioned was that Finland, divided into two camps – the reds and the whites, the left and the right – in 1917 when the country declared independence from Russia, actually got completely united and heeled by the early 1990s.

Sounds unfathomable for somebody born in, say, 1985. By then, Urho Kekkonen had passed away after a 25-year reign as the President of Finland. A former colleague of mine told a joke about there being a passage in the Finnish schoolbooks that said, “the president of Finland is Urho Kekkonen who’s elected every six years.”

It’s actually funny, because it was true.

In the 1970s, there were two major sports federations in Finland, one for the lefties, and one for the righties. Depending on your political direction, you steered your children to the correct sports team. I caught the tail end of that phenomenon, having “signed” with a team that was a member of the lefties union, swinging on the workers’ side of the fence, so I even got to play in a Finnish workers’ union hockey championship tournament.

[Insert a joke about our team being not that into working here].

Things change and it’s difficult to evaluate the past with today’s standards. For example, my grandfather was a communist. I remember seeing the leftist newspaper on the kitchen table at my grandparents’ house, and I remember the heated discussions in the same kitchen, often between my grandmother and my father – the son-in-law coming in from the right – but with the entire family taking part in it.

Except me, of course, I was too busy looking cute and acting smart.

Some things never change.

In 2009, if you hear somebody talk about the Communist Party, you’re most likely getting invited to a post-modern ironic house party where people sport Mao jackets and big Russian hats, drinking vodka and acting arrogant.

I once joined the scouts. I had been reading Donald Duck comics for years, and the things that Huey, Dewey, and Louie did sounded like fun, so I wanted to be just like them, with the Davy Crockett hat and all. Plus, I really wanted to have a cool knife like my father had – and I wanted to learn how to tie cool knots.

The meetings were held at a basement storage room in an apartment building not far from our house. In the first one, we talked about, um, stuff. I was sitting way in the back, and we were only five or six there anyway. After a half hour of scout talk, we went out to play my first ever round of the “Can”.

I also put in an order for a real scarf. No hats were available.

The next week, we played the Can, and the week after that.

The week after that, we made a field trip to the main police headquarters which at that time was still across the square from the Helsinki Cathedral.

The week after that, after our game of Can, we got our scarves, and instructions on how to tie the knot properly. Back at home, having finally tied the scarf in way that I thought was acceptable, and worthy of showing other people, I wrapped it around my neck and went to show it to my parents.

My father saw red.

Because he saw that the scarf was red, with two black stripes going around it. Apparently, I hadn’t joined the Boy Scouts, but its leftist counterpart, the Finnish Democrats Pioneers Union, and instead of a scout, I was a pioneer.

After that, I never played the Can with my pioneer buddies, and while I got to keep the scarf, and have it around my neck at home – especially after I saw Kid Creole – my career as a pioneer was over. Even if the first rule of the pioneers was, “you can always trust a pioneer’s word.”

However, I did get a real scout knife. My father’s knife. I still have it.

Son is coveting it now. But he’ll have to earn it. Maybe learn to play the Can.

Old school.