“How can you write that shit?” The man was seated next to me on an Estonian Air flight to Copenhagen. He thought we’d been double seated, asked to see my boarding pass, and identified me as Vikerkaar. “I’m a Canadian Estonian, too, you know,” he said, “and I’ve never heard of anyone with a name as silly as yours.” The foreign Estonian’s name was Taivo, and he had the aisle seat. I was completely blocked in.
The issue of my silly name aside, what “shit” was he talking about? I’ll admit some of my columns are better than others. But shit?
“You know,” Taivo shoveled half a bag of peanuts into his mouth, “how you write about poisonous mushrooms, your neighbor’s house on fire, and singing prostitutes.”
Oh. That shit.
I put my seat in its most reclined position and gave him the answer I give all foreign Estonians with that complaint: “You mean how do I ignore the fact that in reality Estonia is a perfect nation where the sun shines every day, children sing, and lovers picnic in the grass?”
“What I’m saying, smartass” — he shoveled the other half of the bag in his mouth and two peanuts tumbled back onto his lap — “is that you shouldn’t write what you write. You should only write about the good things in Estonia.”
Read on at Vello’s blog,
http://vellovikerkaar.blogspot...