‘This would be really funny if it wasn't happening to me’ – oh yes, tell me about it. I wish I was exaggerating or just making all that up, but alas, I’m not. I’m an endless source of amusement and puzzlement for my friends: how can one be so far apart from the reality and therefore end up with the weirdest messes? I suppose it runs in the family. Is somewhere in our family’s genome a gene called ‘everything you do, do it in a worst way possible and survive from it’?
Let me tell one (the first of many of them) example. In my freshman year in university I and my flatmate decided to make popcorn in a ‘traditional’ way: boiling them in a saucepan with oil. No crappy microwave popcorn for us, we thought. Well, it was my responsibility to prepare them, and I left them to boil awhile. After a nice chat with my flatmate, she suddenly remarked there was a strange odour in the air. ‘Have you checked the popcorn at all?’ she asked. I hesitated and realised that I had happily forgotten all about them. We ran to kitchen and behold! There was a smoking hell loose. I removed the gateway to Hades alias the saucepan in question, and ran out from our flat.
‘Put it down!!’ flatmate shrieked and I did so, dumbfounded. There we stood, aghast and surrounded by that unholy, smelly smoke. Afraid that fire alarms would react and we’d both get evicted from our flat, we opened the window in the corridor and tried to move the saucepan into the windowsill. Ah hah. ‘This shit is stuck into the floor!’ I cried. My friend just stared blankly at me. ‘Are you joking?’ ‘NO!!!’ Apparently it had melted into the floor and there it stood, still smoking and people began to peek around the corners to see what had happened. Oh, crap. Either of us couldn’t pull the saucepan off on our own, so we decided to do it together. It’s called girl power, isn’t it? After a long struggle we managed to rip it apart from the floor, which now looked pretty much wrecked. Very embarrassed, we tiptoed back into our flat and threw that damned thing under running water. You can just imagine for how long we stared at each other, speechless. ‘Never again’, we promised. The melted spot in the floor has nowadays become kind of an attraction to our friends who know the story. Yes, they actually visit to look at it. This is my life.
And what about being far apart from reality? This is a very serious issue for me, because I never know where I’m going to end up (at the right place, eventually, but via a few mishaps). Once I was sitting at a train station, waiting for my train, obviously. But it wasn’t obvious that I would get onto a right train. You see, I innocently stepped onto the wrong one and realised it a little bit too late. In panic, I asked from a conductor what I should do. This very friendly man called the other train (the right one, that is) and when we reached our next stop, there was a vehicle resembling suspiciously a lot like a golf caddy, waiting for me, lights flashing. I was horrified when I realised that it had come to take me to another platform, where – and this is really priceless – my train would stop for me. Yes, for me, because its route didn’t actually stop there at all. A lot of people were staring at me out of its windows when I arrived, trying to act like it was completely normal for a whole train to stop for just one misplaced person. Yippee.
Travelling is our greatest passion, but also the greatest source of (un)fortunate events. This time, I was going to pay a long visit to my Dad in Switzerland departing early in the morning, and I had been awake all the night, chatting with my friend. I was running late at the airport, so I was almost hyperventilating when I got to the check-in. Exhausted, I showed my passport and you can just imagine how surprised I was when the friendly woman at the check-in desk told me that the passport had expired a month ago. Filled with adrenalin and brains not functioning at all, I ran to take new passport pictures. Results weren’t very pretty due to many reasons (panic, being in the verge of fainting, overall grumpiness and so on), but had to accept the situation and bring them to the airport police. He issued me a temporary passport, and to my delight (strong sarcasm included here) he told me that I was short of five euros. I really hadn’t time to go to the ATM, which was on the far side of the airport, so this blessed man (I seem to have thank so many total strangers in my life..) said he’d pay that sum for himself. After blurting numerous thank-you’s and you-saved-my-day’s I ran back to the check-in, just in time. Plane left about ten minutes after when I finally made it through the security check-in. And yes, I was sitting on the plane. I eventually got to see my Dad, but didn’t tell him about this pandemonium earlier that day. I won't ever dare to.
My point here being, we are survivors, me and my sister. Our motto is ‘it will be okay’ which is used pretty frequently. I was born four years before my sister, but I’m not at all any smarter or more organized than her. Physical age really doesn’t count, when it’s about mental age. I think she’s right, when she once said our parents probably needed a break after me, and that was for four years. I was a very hyperactive toddler, getting my fingers into trouble early on. I even managed to burn a whole right arm – that boiling water in kettle - me trying to help my mother to cook - third degree scald - incident. I was only one and half year old, but I didn’t cry for once. My first reaction immediately after that was just to tut-tut at myself, believe it or not. I didn’t cry either when nurses had to change my bandages, which apparently hurts like hell. You should see that photo where they made a document on TV about injuries happening at home and there I sat, grumpily, my arm fully bandaged beside my mother, who tried to convince the interviewer that I usually was a very cheerful child.
I’ve always loved speed and danger. Which isn’t very ideal combined with my accident-proneness. The first day I learnt to ski downhill at the age of eight or something, our teacher explained how to zigzag downhill. She also sternly told us to stay on the children’s slope. You might guess already what happened next. Off I went, zigzagged awhile and decided it was too boring, heading for a bigger slope. There I whooshed down, drawing line as straight as the trajectory of a bullet. It was so fun I decided to give it another try. I somehow lost control of my damn skis and ended upside down, tangled into a plastic, bright orange security fence. The teacher came for my rescue eventually, lecturing how dangerous it is to ski downhill without zigzagging. Apparently I never learnt, because ten years later, my friend had to look after me horrified, when I shot straight down – in the Alps. She thanked God I hadn’t broken my neck. I thank, too.
It seems I often end up hanging for my dear life, shouting someone to save me. I can instantly remember at least three life-threatening situations, in which I hanged from various places (a windowsill, a railing, even a cliff) – and every time someone came in time to drag me back. Just because I am this silly creature, who loves to have fun once in a while and realises too late it has stopped being fun a long time ago. I’m thankful for having guardian angels around me, my family and friends. Once, when I was a teenager, we climbed uphill nearby our school (we had decided to run off from our boarding school, which is a teenager thing, I suppose) and suddenly I felt my feet losing the contact with the slippery surface of the hill, and fell down. It felt like forever, happening so slowly. I was sure I’d die or at least would get seriously injured, till a hand reached into mine, and held tightly. My friend had reacted unbelievably fast and saved me from a visit to hospital. Thanks, Jussi!
I’m actually a bit amazed how many near-death experiences I do have. Let me tell one more. We were learning how to surf in one of the beautiful beaches of Los Angeles, the City of Angels. Our friend instructed us, were we to see a big wave coming in the behind of us, we should let go of our surfboards immediately, otherwise the boards could hurt us badly while we sunk into the wave, because they were bound onto our ankles. My travelling buddy didn’t sink, but of course I did. I remember vividly how I had been surfing a while, and was lying on my board, swimming back to the beach. I saw my friend waving desperately far away. I looked behind me, and there was so big a wave I could only briefly think ‘oh, shit’ and my hands clung tightly on the board, in panic. A stupid thing to do, but one doesn’t think very clearly, when it’s a matter of life and death. Wave ripped me apart from my big board and there it went, swooshing around and almost breaking my nose (I saw it speed past my face like a blurry white lightning). I sank really deep, and when the power of rip let me go, I realised I probably wouldn’t make it back to the surface. There was sun glimmering distantly, and I feebly tried to swim towards it, telling myself ‘so this is how it feels to drown’. I wasn’t afraid, I just didn’t want to die in that way (I’ve read it really hurts when water fills your lungs), and so I kept swimming. Miraculously, I finally felt my head break through the surface and gasped for air. My friend was swimming to me, looking like he was about to lose it, and hugged me tightly, saying he for a second didn’t believe I would make it. Well, I did, but learnt an important lesson. Let go of that freaking board!
Friends are always asking me ‘what happened this time?’, when I’ve been travelling, because there’s always something to tell. Sometimes I wonder why I do still run around; though I’m truly, deeply afraid of flying, and often have to consult the poor air hostesses about my phobia (most of them have been really amazing and supportive). I’ve lost my bags at the airports (one of them apparently flew to Murmansk instead of Helsinki, and I’m not joking); I’ve spilled damn hot tea into my lap while the plane was shaking violently in the turbulence and had to stare at the woman beside me praying; I’ve been so late from my flight that my heavily overweight bag had to be slid straight into the plane without security check (think about bombs.. well, I avoided the overweight fine); I’ve been told I cannot sit on that certain seat because I’m deaf, which led into an open argument while the other passengers looked at us puzzled, and so on.
Yet all those things diminish in my mind, when I see those wonderful, beautiful places all around the world. My family has been born to wander like gypsies (my sister is now thinking about of living in South Africa, which is bloody cool, and I hope she does it), and I feel strangely at peace when I am on the road, whether it is on the train through Italy, watching boasting (and ugly) men on the beaches slip past; in the car driving through large corn fields in Canada to visit the farm where our dog Sydney was born; in the ferry from Goteborg to Harwich, England, and truly realising the world is round – there was nothing else to see around us than just sea, which was strangely bending at the horizon; riding a horse in New Zealand and almost getting my leg chopped off by that very same horse; flying above the United States and admiring the snow-covered Rocky Mountains in the sunset.. This list is endless. World is just too beautiful not to be explored, and you miss way too much if you don’t do that.