The One Hundredth

I’m gonna count to hundred and then I’m gonna find you!

How much is milk? I don’t know, a hundred euros. This is a genuine conversation I’ve had when I was broke.

Let’s all just calm down and count to hundred.

I have already told you a hundred times!

I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you take the next customer/add some slushee into the machine/go tip the popcorn kettle/let me take a quick nap in the back/solve the energy crisis.

I once ate what seemed to be a hundred meatballs, with mashed potatoes, on a cruise. I was eleven.

One hundred stories. Not yet, but soon. This is the ninety-ninth, today.

Winter in Finland. One hundred days of cold and sleet and wind and darkness, and if you are lucky, snow. Lots of snow.

A hundred years of sleep, for Sleeping Beauty.

A hundred points, the highest score.

I have watched Friends, all the episodes, I’m thinking a hundred times over, in my life. Ditto The X-Files. Ditto Gilmore Girls. Ditto some movies. Over and over. It’s my thing. Where others drink alcohol, or go mountain climbing or get high or bungee jump to zero down their brains, I do couch potato TV show marathons to shut my mind. (Because I do not drink alcohol, especially prosecco. Never. *cough*) Some of my best ideas come to me when I am watching TV, something familiar so I can think about other stuff simultaneously. It took a hundred years for my man to get this about me.

A hundred pairs of shoes. Is that wrong?

A hundred vintage dresses. Is that wrong?

A hundred pairs of underpants, in case of systems breakdown.

A hundred handbags. Just kidding. It’s more like maybe forty. If you ask my man, it might as well be a hundred.

A hundred books. Just kidding.

A hundred magpies in the old birch and on the wire.

A hundred sightings of the Hendersons this summer and fall, a family of swans who lived by the edge of the field giving to the small lake behind the thin wall of trees.

Aurora Borealis. The Arctic Circle. The lakes and forests. A hundred mentions of these clichés in the brochures. But man, it’s all true.

I am going to live to be a hundred and tell the people of the future that on the one hundredth anniversary of this country, I was working the whole day, a ten-hour shift, and took the bus back to my empty house because my man was working as well, reporting the celebrations until the wee small hours of the morning, and the weather was gorgeous, gods blessed us with the Winter Wonderland snowy whiteness this year for Independence Day, and I dug out and put up and switched on the Christmas lights and ate some fabulous pasta and watched a little TV and marveled how beautiful it was outside, wished my man good health and happy thoughts for the evening, coping with the enormous workload, and went to bed early. A fine Sixth of December. At my workplace we had cake, blueberry, and joked around and decorated sundaes with small flags. Everyone were friends, everyone became lazy as the day dragged on, everyone agreed that days like this were great sometimes, boosting the morale, because we for once had some time, after the early afternoon rush, to debate movies, music, food, to laugh at nothing.

A hundred arguments.

A hundred kisses to make up.

A hundred songs of love.

A hundred pieces in the puzzle.

A hundred ways to make up my mind.

A hundred wishes for peace.

A hundred thoughts for happiness.

A hundred apologies.

A hundred forgive and forgets.

My grandfather, myself. We are the one hundred, together.


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