gaiverruksia · 14.2.2018 · 8 kuvaa

Kuinka tapasin ystäväni

HOW I MET MY FRIENDS A note to my non-Finnish friends: in Finland, Valentine’s Day is known as ystävänpäivä, friend’s day. It’s a day when you can celebrate your friendships, not just your romantic relationships. “Right, it’s that time of the year again…” // “According to the theme of the day I’m going to tell you…” // “…how I met my friends. About, the way I remember it. Some of the people mentioned here I haven’t met in years, others have been my friends to this day. I’ve changed the names in this comic.” // “First off, I’d like to apologise to those friends of mine who don’t appear in this comic. You are important to me but I don’t remember how we first met!” // “And then to the point.” // I met my first friend Elli when I was a couple of months old and she was a couple of hours. Our moms are old friends. And no, I don’t actually remember this! “The first time I really remember making friends was in kindergarten. I was maybe five...” // …and I had just gotten into a new group. (My hair started to curl when I was something like ten.) “Are you new in this group?” “Yes.” // “My name is Katja.” “Kati.” “We have almost the same name!” // “I guess we have the same name day, too.” “Yes! You want play with me?” We were the best friends for years. // “The there was this boy, Ben, from the neighbouring house…” // I don’t remember how we met but I do recall we didn’t get along… // “This went on for some time, until one day…” “Boo-hoo! Why did you bump into me?!” “You ran there yourself!” // Our mothers came by: “Enough with that bickering!” “Indeed! Behave and be friends.” // “Well, then…” “All right.” // It led to other good things, too. “This is Mikaela from my building. Is it okay if she comes to play with us?” “Yeah, sure!” // “Some of my best childhood memories are my adventured with Ben and Mikaela, and Mikaela and I were the best of friends for years…” // “I don’t remember the first time I met Wiivu. I’ve been told we’ve met in some club when we were but toddlers…” // “…but I remember very well how we really got to know each other on third grade, the first day after Christmas holidays.” “Locked?” // “Hey, get in from there!” // “You can get in from the backyard in the morning, so you have to go there.” “Oh, okay.” // “I didn’t know, I’m new in this school.” “Yes, you must be that Wiivu who’s coming to our class.” // “How did you know my name?” “It says so in your bag.” “Oh.” // “Wiivu and I ended up in the same middle school, too, and there we got to know new people… The first day I was still feeling a bit shy…” // “That girl is sure good at drawing horses…” // …but then, on about day four: “What are you doing, Snowhorse?” “This is Wiivu’s friend book.” // “”—and kill all the bad guys with the light sword.” Shouldn’t it be lightsaber?” “It’s a different thing but it could be lightsaber, too. Do you like Star Wars?” “Sure, Star Wars is the best!” // “What other movies and books do you like?” “At least A Tale of Redwall…” “I like Redwall, too!” // “Some of the greatest stories begin with other great stories. Then I went to high school.” // And made quite a few new friends. “Were you on that concert?” “Yes, I was.” “Me too!” “Cool!” // During my first week in high school I also got to know Mr Brony (who, at the time, had short hair). // “You’ll pay for that!” “I know this guy. He means what he says.” “Oops.” // So, I let him push me into the lake. // “Mr Brony still claims that the threw me off the dock as a revenge, but believe me when I say this: I LET him do it!” // “The most unbelievable meeting happened in the summer of 2011 in a workshop where we made owl dolls. I started talking with the person next to me…” // “What was the next step again…?” “I think you need to glue that…” // “Have you seen many owls in the nature?” “No, just a couple of tawny owls.” “I’ve seen an eagle owl once.” // “But maybe I’ll see more of them soon as I begin studying biology at the university.” “What? You’re starting in biology at the university this autumn?” “Yes, how so?” // “Because I’m a biology fresher, too!” “No way! Awesome!” // “That really was the craziest occurrence ever – and that we started to talk about out studies! A couple of years later I went to St Andrews as an exchange student, and I really didn’t know anyone.” // On the first night… “They said there’d be free pizza here…” // “Hi, I’m Rikku. Who are you?” “Huh? I’m Kati, an exchange student from Finland.” “Cool! This is Ezra, we just met each other, too.” “Hello.” “Hi. (All I wanted was to get some pizza and then go to bed…)” // “Luckily though, I met Rikku and Ezra again later on when I wasn’t quite so tired…” // On the second night… “The word is there are free hamburgers on the backyard today.” // “Should I try and get to know people? I don’t really know anyone yet, and I’ve forgotten the names of the people I met yesterday…” // “These people behind me look like they don’t really know each other… Maybe…” // “Hi, I’m Kati, an exchange student from Finland and I don’t know anyone.” “Awesome! We’re exchange students too. I’m Sunshine, from USA.” “And I’m Whale, from Germany. We just met each other.” // “We talked and went to see stars together – there is a comic from autumn 2015 about that in this blog.” // I met Mudkip a couple a days later when my corridor had a kitchen meeting. “Hi, I’m Topi.” “I’m Mary.” “My name is Mudkip.” “I am Kati.” // href="https://cdn.sanity.io/images/ofa9xfc4/production/04ae9d8a3388e6eb0f1bc6b7fd540e9bf207fbe8-595x841.jpg"> Nothing very special happened there – maybe the fact that we both were nerdy biologists just drew us together. “This guy has a nerdy aura…” “Do you like sci-fi?” // “And then there was Jimothy. I think he was a friend of Mudkip’s first, they had started talking on some lecture or something…” // We had been sitting in the same table over meals for weeks without really paying attention to each other until one day… // “Thanks to whoever said the magic words! If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that a friendship can begin almost anywhere…” // “To all my friends, both those who appeared in this comic and those I can’t remember how we met… Happy friend’s day! And THANK YOU for being my friends. Without you there’d be something very, very, very important missing from my life.”