After turning back home from Kuortane Sports Academy in second week of May 1992, I had a very much mixed feelings. In Kuortane I had a great opportunity to taste what top notch teaching and world class training environment can give you. For a young athlete and chap who had gone years of bullying it was like a heaven on earth. On the other hand, I didn’t want to turn back home anymore. On the other hand, I had a job waiting as a sports instructor and exercising was filling a lot of days.
In some sense the rest of 1992 was a good year. Out of work, I was spending the rest of the year on my own. I was still living with my parents, but my daily routines were so different due to work and exercising that I mostly made my own meals too. I was in pretty good shape; I even ran one full marathon race just before I passed the 18 year milestone. It was a fun experience.
To be brutally honest, towards the end of the -92, I felt extremely lonely, I basically didn’t have any connection with other young folks.
Hang in With The “Old Farts”
Ever since I had been a keen reader of history, I was also interested in politics. So, I joined the local National Coalition Party’s association. It was literally hanging with the “old farts”. I was barely 18 and the other folks were no less than 40. Most were in their 50’s or more. Don’t get me wrong, age doesn’t matter ever alone much to me in anything, but I think it’s safe to say, that it was funny thing. I also joined the party’s youth side and went for a meetings in Joensuu. My “career” in politics lasted less than a year. I quickly realized that your opinion really doesn’t matter, and you basically should do exactly what the party and its leaders are telling you to say and do. So, I dumped the politics. However, I’ve been keeping on eyes the fairs of the world and still do alongside.
In Green
In 1993 finally brought opportunity to get into conscript so, better part of1993 and partly -94 I spent in greens learning to be a skillful infantry GI. It was demanding but it was fun time. I will still do that in a heartbeat anytime if I’d have opportunity. Conscript gave plenty of useful skills and opportunity to be led by the damn leader I have known still today. Young chief lieutenant called Rainer Kuosmanen was our Jaeger company’s draft leader and he was magnificent officer. His leading style was very much similar than one of those great teachers at the Kuortane Sports Academy. Well, Kuosmanen had paratrooper background so, it tells a lot. They’re no-nonsense guys there.
During the service I passed the application to Sports Institute of Eastern Finland.
That’s it! I had enough!
Pretty soon after getting into reserve, I started working again as a sports instructor and one point of the summer had also a very brief night supervisor job looking after music camp folks.
During that camp I got some good news. I was selected to study into Sports Institute of Eastern Finland. Studies would start in August. In June I participated in the selection event based on applications, so I reckon I had some skills and talent. I got myself a student flat which was about 22 sq. meters room in a three room student apartment. Before I finally moved away from home, I had a nasty encounter with a chap, a former competing powerlifter with a very bad temper. Let me call him by his real first name, Erkki. This Erkki fellow was infamous for his bad temper, on several occasions he got banned by a local night club as he had a habit of starting fighting with others when he got some booze. Well, he was bad tempered even when he was sober. Well, this “piece of work” drove once to the parking lot of school where that big music camp was. I was on my round and this guy stormed out of the guy and came a few inches away from my face threatening to beat me the way I would not walk ever again. Why? A few days earlier I heard at the gym while doing my workout that one guy was selling ice hockey shirts. Two chaps had an open conversation about it, and I knew the chap selling those shirt. The news that he was selling some shirts was new to me. By some reason this was such touchy subject to this hot head that he drove to threat me in the middle of my work shit. Can you believe it? I reckon there was something fishy in that. This Erkki was so much stronger than me and I didn’t yet have such a self-defense skills I later acquired and life experience, so I was pretty shocked. After such a shitty event it was a great relief that I was able to move to another town which I did in June -93. It’s funny how experience and certain type of skills you gain change the things completely. Once I was out of my birth home and on my own and wasn’t surrounded all the assholes, I started to see nightmares and had a sleeping problems. The traumas I had over so many years were pushing out from the system, and it wasn’t fun. However, things got a bit easier when the studies started at the Sport Institute. Days were very busy right from the start and there wasn’t so much time to worry about some old stuff. Those traumas would time to time come to haunt me over the next couple of years. Luckily, I didn’t know that then.