How To Get Heismaned Without Even Trying

Last night was a first for me: I got rejected by someone I wasn't even trying to court. At all.

I had bumped into a friend of a friend when I first got to Stockholm a few months ago (which was not too surprising, since she is Swedish and recently moved back here herself), and we'd traded phone calls a few times and exchanged a handful of text messages (a recent example of which bemoaned a horrible date she'd gone on the night before; more on that in a second). Anyway, she invited me over for dinner the other night. Nice, low key, just some food and hanging out, catching up on the week.

While I was there, I noticed she had a whole bunch of pictures of Newfoundlands on the wall; it turns out she really likes those dogs. So on my way to work the other day, I see someone walking a great big Newfie named Jack. Naturally, I snap a picture.

Say hi, Jack.

Woof.

(Jack here is 18 months old and already weighs about 140 lbs. His owner says he'll top out around 165 when full-grown. He's basically a furry, slobbering sofa.)

Anyway, this makes me think of my friend, so I email her the picture. At this point, I am responding to her email from the day before, in which she says dinner was fun and again complains that gee, dating in Stockholm sure is hard. She even sends me this link to make her point. I figure maybe the picture will at least put a smile on her face.

Apparently, I am mistaken.

Apparently, emailing a picture of a dog to someone who has expressed a fondness for them does not quite mean what you think it means.

Apparently, it is Universal Secret Girl Talk for "By emailing you this picture, I pledge my undying love to you, and I wish to start a smoldering, unimaginably profound, acrobatically inadvisable sexual relationship with you as soon as possible, preferably sooner. We will put Pepe Le Pew to shame. The sheer majesty and aerobic vigor of our romance will dwarf the Kama Sutra; we will make Vatsyayana look like Mr. Rogers on horse tranquilizers."

Apparently, that's what it means.

I say this because I get home the next night and, at 10:30pm on a Saturday (that's 22.30 for our European and military readers), I see that she has sent me a text message, the gist of which is that she wants to make it clear that these dinners are "friends" dinners, no more. (Yes, I do realize that, technically speaking, I only went over there once.)

Yowza.

I hadn't even a remote interest in dating this person; it was just nice to have a friend here who is not a co-worker. By any reasonable measure of romance, the aforementioned dinner would amount to, approximately, a nano-fika. I never made any suggestions whatsoever that I was looking for a relationship. I was just my usual polite, friendly self... and I still get Heismaned.

Amazing. I think I've just experienced the dating equivalent of a "preemptive shhhh." <sup>*

*</sup> For those whose computers don't automatically play this link as a sound, but who nonetheless feel empty and incomplete without experiencing the author's wit in all its glory, you can probably save the clip to your desktop and play it from there. It should work fine with just about any media player.

Supersize This

Americans are occasionally (and perhaps justifiably) perceived as being somewhat gluttonous. We are the land of the SUV, warehouse stores, Shaq Diesel, and excessively large beverages.* (To quote a famous Dennis Miller rant, ask yourself: "Do I really need forty-four ounces of any fluid?")

But living in Sweden makes me realize that the other extreme is no picnic, either. Why the hell is everything here so small?!? Come take a quick walk with me through the apartment and allow me to 'splain:

Milk is almost always sold in 1-liter boxes (there's exactly one grocery store in my neighborhood that has the 1.5-liter ones). When I make dinner, I can suspend the colander across the kitchen sink—that's the wide part of the sink—and though it's not even a particularly large colander, it barely fits. The garbage bin under that sink seems to hold, approximately, one medium-sized piece of trash; consequently, I have to empty it roughly every two hours. That, in turn, requires using the opening to the garbage chute, which is so small that if you ever tried to throw away a basketball, you'd have to deflate it first. (Why you would want to do that is a different matter.) The elevator in my building is ridiculous, too: it's so narrow that when my neighbor takes his lumbering bullmastiff out for a walk, he puts the dog in the cabin but takes the stairs himself. It's so small you almost have to step outside to change your mind.

And why is my closet five shoes wide?!?


I have the feeling that if you marched the typical Medelsvensson—especially someone from a generation or two older than mine—into a CostCo in the States, they might feel as if they'd been taken to another planet. (Of course, this person might have a similar reaction to IKEA, so my little hypothetical obviously has its limits.)

The concept of lagom—roughly speaking, "everything in moderation"—is a cherished part of Swedish life. But some of my shoes, having been separated from their mates against their will, are getting a bit lonely. Couldn't we all just take our lagom with a little bit of moderation?

*If I ever see Shaq driving his tricked-out Escalade through a CostCo parking lot, drinking a Super Big Gulp, I think my head's gonna asplode.

Go Make Your Bed

A few days ago, I decided I'd had enough of the creaky old bed in my apartment, so I went to IKEA and bought a bed. Last night, after a very long day at work, I set about putting it together. While it didn't quite reach "mouse-A-sees-cheese-B" territory *, the assembly instructions were surprisingly complex for what I thought should be a relatively straightforward object.

Around 2am, tired and bleary-eyed, I arrived at the last step—all had to do was attach two metal ratchety thingamabobs to the frame with a couple of screws, and I'd be done. It was right about then that I noticed the parts wouldn't fit as drawn; I'd mounted one of them upside down, resulting in a frame that could collapse when released, instead of staying open the way it was designed to (so that you could get at the storage space inside). Assuming I'd simply been careless or inattentive because I was so tired, I just left the part off, closed the frame manually, and went to sleep. I figured I could just fix it in the morning.

After a good night's rest on my nice new bed, I carefully looked again at the instructions to see where I had goofed. To my amazement, I found that I had followed the steps correctly to the letter—one of the diagrams had actually been drawn upside down.

Given the amazing amount of engineering that goes into packaging most IKEA products, this was hugely surprising to me. How this mistake got past their quality assurance testers is also a mystery. Oh, well. At least I feel a little better about my ability to follow instructions. I had to disassemble the bed partway to fix the problem, but it works now.

IKEA: bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase "go make your bed."

* For a real-life example, check out the incredible Honda ad. Yes, it's real. Aside from one "join" about halfway through, the whole thing was done without any camera tricks. Rube Goldberg would have been proud.