The Sunday Morning Muse, June 17, 2012

Do You Know the KOOKLEE MAN?

Spending time with my Finnish cousins this week has been great fun, and one of the things I have loved about it the most is listening to their conversations in Finnish. It is a musical language, and it can be very difficult to translate. I loved to watch Mia at our family picnic struggle to keep track of who she could speak to in Finn and who she couldn't. (Some of my aunts and uncles are still fluent...but rusty.) She laughed with me, as she stopped mid sentence in Finnish and said "No..Nooo sorry, You are NOT one of the ones who speak Finnish." Then she launched into whatever she wanted to say in English, sometimes deferring to her sister
Kaisa for a special word or phrase.

Pictures were taken and beers were passed around, and I caught a phrase that seems, well really funny in an odd sort of way.

They were talking about the Kooklee man. "Do you know the Kooklee man?"

She said it as one word. The KOOKLEEMAN.

I shook my head, and she insisted.  The KOOKLEEMAN!  He come to my house!  He come to your house! He come to Salmela! I looked around the table, and indeed, some people had seen the Kookleeman.
They nodded their heads and went on with their conversations. It seems I was the only one who clearly
had no clue what this was about.

Tejho jumped up and said we must go in the house and see the Kookleeman, and off he went...and soon the
others were following. I waited a few minutes, still puzzled and then joined them in the livingroom. Tejho was
firing up the computer. The next thing I knew he was doing a search for his home in Finland. He wanted me to see his new house, the beautiful lake, his summer cottage, and also the nearby family farm, Salmela.

He was drawing down on the Google map....and I could see his country, his city....and suddenly he clicks on the "street level view" on the screen...the LITTLE MAN.  The Kookleeman! You see, it is now obvious.

Their "g's" sound like "k's"... and they knew nothing about our "silent e"...

The 'GOO-GLE' MAN!

The screen suddenly was filled with a lovely little olive house with a red car out front, and a very blue lake
visible in the back and lots of trees....the Kooklee man had been at his house!