Lately this blog has been rather serious given the erosion of civil liberties in these United States and the associated articulations about those cultural "engines" that have helped to make the weakening of our constitution possible. There is of course nothing funny about these matters.
Still, I was imagining our family--a weirdly Finnish and patriotic group--Lutheran, polite at least in public. I got to wondering what it would have been like if the former King of Sweden had somehow found himself sitting in my family's kitchen. Here are the results of that exercise:
The King of Sweden came over for dinner. He had trouble arranging himself at the table because Scandinavian royalty wear complicated undergarments which makes sitting rather challenging. We tried to make him feel better by saying that we once had the Pope over to our house and he also has difficult underpants, etc.—but we were just making that up because of course we wanted the king to feel better. My family is nothing more than a group of "enablers" as they say in pop psychology.
But really: the king looked awful. Like most northern blue bloods he had a papery, thin skin and there were hundreds of spidery veins wear his hair should have been and God, he could really sweat quite profusely. Add to this the fact that owing to his underpants he couldn’t sit up straight and owing to these same factors he couldn’t sit still, and you have a good picture of the man’s general condition.
I hasten to add that we didn’t feel smug about this situation. Lord knows we’ve had plenty of ill fitting garments in our family. And certainly one or more of us has sweated at table.
My grandfather looked in the Finnish-Swedish dictionary to see if the Swedes have a word for "wedgie" for in this way he hoped to tell our guest that it was alright if he wanted to use his hands.
The long and short of the matter is that the Swedes have no word for "wedgie" and we weren’t about to make one up.
After the king was gone we gleefully imagined euphemistic terms that we might have tried on the king.
"I see, Your Highness, that you have a Goat in the Garden! Please, feel free to use your hands."
"A long fish sometimes requires ten fingers, eh Olaf?"
As I say, we had the general decency not to laugh until the King was safely in his carriage.
Our family has good manners where the nether parts of Nordic royalty are concerned.
S.K.
He didn't give you things that you were needin'?
Posted by: TheQueen | May 02, 2008 at 01:13 AM
George Carlin: "You have a letter in your mailbox."
Posted by: Kay Olson | May 14, 2008 at 11:35 PM