Have you ever done anything really stupid?

            Wait.  Let me rephrase that question, since the very fact that your eyes are pointed in the general direction of this blog makes that original question superfluous.

            Have you ever intentionally done something so incredibly stupid that you can’t trick even yourself into believing that it makes sense—and yet you are 100% convinced that it is the best thing that you ever have done?

            I ask this, not because I have even a remote interest in you or your life story, but because by asking this question of you, I can engage you I hope in the life story of me.  For in all objective candor, I can answer “absolutely yes” to the preceding question.

            “Surely he exaggerates his own stupidity,” you may be saying to yourself.  Unless you know me or know someone who has met someone whose brother’s roommate’s cousin was in one of my math classes.  In which case you are saying, “Surely he understates his own stupidity but exaggerates the magnitude of this stupid thing that he has done.”

            But consider this.  In less than 24 hours, I will walk away from my house of 18 years, my city of 37 years, and my country of 64 years, and start all over.  And the scientific probability puts the odds at just over 93% that this is the best decision I have ever made. 

            Of course, these probabilities are influenced by the facts that: (1) I am moving to be with the most wonderful woman I have ever met; (2) I am moving to one of the top 10 places to live in the world (and, no, the US is not on that list); and (3) I am moving to a country that consumes coffee at the greatest rate anywhere.  These facts alone would be enough to make this the best decision of all time, but I haven’t even yet told you the most important fact.

            As you have already correctly assumed based on the facts in the preceding paragraph, I am moving to Finland.  Home of coffee, beautiful women, coffee, dull and slow-witted men, coffee, enormous natural beauty, coffee, universal healthcare, the finest education system in the world, coffee, and—one last thing—coffee.  But it is also home of the Kalevala myth.  An epic story of the creation of the world and of the epic heroes of that time.  And the first and greatest epic hero is Väinämöinen.  A hero that could easily be mistaken for my identical twin.

 

            As you may have perceived, Väinämöinen—even at the time described in the Kalevala—was older than the automatic male response of “yes, dear”.  And, if you are truly clever (which I know that you are), you have also seen that Väinämöinen is crazier than a shithouse rat.  And if you are ever caught by the CIA, held at a black site and subjected to an unspeakable torture—meaning, if you ever are required to read the Kalevala, you will discover that the young girl who was pledged to him by her brother chose to drown herself rather than marry a crazy, old man.

As I said, my identical twin.

I will continue this picaresque tale of travel, adventure and the concealing of my true personality from all residents of Finland shortly.