And Once Around

Okay I know I’m doing the It -thing to death now, and I swear, this will be the last one and then I’ll move on.

Just a short note from my weekend -long dialogue with Swinton, my workmate for the first autumn rush hour. We share a lot of common ground, popular culture -wise, and when our superiors throw us together on a work stint, it’s pretty much all babbity-bab-bab until the bell tolls on Sunday night, and our colleagues are finally relieved from having to listen to our ramblings on the book versus the film, you know, insert the hot title here, or Buffy, or Neil Gaiman, or one of the three Davids; Bowie, Lynch, or Duchovny, et cetera.

Since, quoting the one and only Lorelai Gilmore, our babbling capabilities are infinite, there was a whole chapter during the weekend concerning food and eating, what each of us had brought along as lunch, what went well with what, and so forth. Roberts had made Alexander pastries at home earlier in the week, and posted some photos of the mouth-watering, really gorgeous finished products on her Instagram account. I was gushing and awe-ing her beyond professional baking skills, she was belittling herself and telling me the sugar crust had come out too thick, and I was all you shut your mouth now, because belittling herself is like a second nature to Roberts, and she has lost all credibility as far as I’m concerned, because all of her baked goods are always so delicious and beautiful; I was just yammering on the topic for the umpteenth time. Begrudgingly, Roberts finally accepted the compliment.

Swinton was telling us about the chicken soup she had prepared, and I was retelling the sad story of the black currant porridge of the weekend before, because who doesn’t love a good black currant porridge story? And since I never learn anything, I had, for this weekend, prepared a large batch of my Cloudy Dream Porridge and hauled it along once again to work. This time, though, the news was fine, and since I had used the more traditional lingonberries, I had also remembered to add sugar. The porridge isn’t exactly salty goods, though, and since Hanks was preparing his usual French fries and meatballs in the oven, and the salty aroma of the lovely junk food was all over the kitchen, I had a sudden, urgent need for something less sugary than my own food.

I disappeared in the backroom, and, while popping corn on the large professional popcorn machine, I ended up eating probably three liters of the stuff during the ten or so minutes time I spent doing the chore.

I rolled back to the front, and said to Swinton, who had been manning the counter, that I felt I was so full of salt right now, I would probably pop right back up, should anyone try and drown me in the sea. Or was it the other way around?

“I think it maybe the other way. But I see your point.”

“Man, I cannot believe I ate so much of what really is just pure oil and salt. I feel just sick. I feel like the Michelin man. And I think you’re right, we’re thinking of the Dead Sea.”

“Yes. It’s the water that has to be salty, not the person, in order for a him or her to float there. But with how you were just stuffing yourself with salt, I think it’s safe to assume that when they throw you in some water, you’ll float too.”

I am not kidding. This is what she actually said, but right at that moment we both had customers coming at us, and it was only hours later that I was finally able to make merry with the fact that she had, unwittingly, uttered the hottest tagline of the season in a conversation. Because she had said it in Finnish, she herself had not taken notice of using the line at all, but did remember it when I reminded her.

Maybe it was the natural, deadpan delivery, along with the Finnish translation, that made her saying the line to me, all matter-of-factly, even funnier. Whatever the reason, I had a hard time stifling my crazy clown smile for a while right after our Dead Sea converse.