Swedeland!

First, congrats to the Swedish World Cup team for coming in third and, in particular, for beating the French.

Second, congrats on the K9 corps dog thing. I would have expected no less, but still. You got it done.

The main point of the day, however, is much better. Here in the US we call the type of overattentive, smothering parent that makes you hurl* a “helicopter” parent. They are always hovering over their child, you see, just waiting to rescue little Maria from calamity. Or obsessing over the wonderousness of their average, normal behavior or something.

I have been informed that the Swedish call their version of this “curling” parents. As in the sport of curling. Now those of you who are not Canucklanders or Swedes may not immediately recognize this sublime reference. You may recall a half glimpsed interlude on the teevee during the Winter Olympics. When the coverage switches off that riveting bobsledding and you decide you have time to hit the loo. Perhaps when you return you are momentarily graced with some idiots madly sweeping the ice in front of a lumbering bit of rounded granite. Rendering an unobstructed path yet even more polished and smooth so as to further ease passage of the object of their devotion.

That’s curling. And the folks who are madly sweeping an apparently smooth sheet of ice? Those would be your image of the “curling parents”.

Evocative, isn’t it?

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*I keed, I keed. (Most of those I link-pickedon know via other online venues that I’m the worst sort of braggart about my awesome offspring….)