Abi Male Spiritus

Tuomo scrīpsit: Here's another Bagel Moment (well, sorta): penkkarit. I just happened to be browsing some Finnish news websites when I came across some articles and video clips on how the penkkarit had gone peacefully under sunny but freezing conditions. Sigh... I can't believe it's been 23 years to the day since I took part in my own penkkarit. Oh the days when I was 18, still young and fresh - while now I'm barely and.

So what on earth is penkkarit?!?

In Finland, the year high school students, or Abiturienttis (or Abis for short) graduate, the regular coursework ends for them around mid-February, usually coinciding with the beginning og the week-long Winter Break (formerly also known as the Ski Holiday). From then on, the intensive 5-7 week preparation for the ylioppilaskirjoitukset, or matriculation exams starts; these exams are important because the results affect your chances of entering college in potentially crucial ways. In fact, right before everything comes to an end, the graduates in spe will have taken the listening comprehension exams in all the languages they will be tested on in a couple of weeks - usually at least in English and Swedish or Finnish.

However, now is the time to celebrate the end of 12 years of having had to rot in classrooms (only to realise that there was a reason why our teachers had been so presistant about the relevance of hypothenuses, stamens, and moles in our young lives). On this day, the Abis, or the graduates-to-be get on trucks that have been decorated with posters that have all kinds of funny slogans, usually acronyms or puns based on the word Abi. The year I graduated (you do the math!), we thought we were so cool to have come across the Latin phrase Abi male spiritus "Go away evil spirit." Oh it is so true: the youth is so wasted on the young :-)

As an aside, to provide some insight to what a language geek I was (already) in high school, I would have complained (probably up to this day) about how Cabirrean is not a word of English and therefore should not be used. Not even in the sense of a pun...! :-)

Then the trucks from all the high schools in town gather at a starting point from where they drive through the main streets, one after the other, and the Abis make a lot of noise and throw candy at passers-by. And everybody gets nice rosy cheecks from the cold air :-)

I remember my year that I was particularly POed about how my English listening comprehension test had gone. I think I barely got a 20 out of 30, which I thought was horrendous considering that I had gone to the English School of Helsinki for grades 1-9 and that English was my strongest language. Although the Board of Education always tries to find ways to make the English tests challenging for former exchange students and the kind, that year the passages and the questions seemed unusually difficult; even the time given to answer the questions seemed clearly shorter than previously. In fact, the one and only in my graduating class to get the perfect score had never gotten 30/30! And my then-best friend Mikko, who was bilingual and who never got anything below 28/30 in English, scored "only" 27/30...

On the actual penkkarit day, to demonstrate how upset I was, I made this vest out of a black hefty bag on which I wrote in English, "I'm a perfect 10. How many did you guess right on the listening comprehension test?" Much to my dismay, nobody got the joke! I had to explain the "joke" to almost everyone - so much for quality education in English in Finnish high schools in those days! (Or was I such a geek that it didn't matter to the others...?)

Just like today, the day 23 years ago was bright and sunny... and -20C! Once the truck started to move, I unfortunately had to take the hefty bag vest off. Later on in life, I experimented some more on using hefty bags as clothing and came to the same conclusion as on that cold day: plastic does not keep cold away (or allow sweat to evaporate...)! Therefore not many people got to see my chosen words of wisdom, and those who did probably never understood what it was all about. To quote my friend Pekka: I was surrounded by amateurs and idiots!

At any rate, I couldn't help feeling quite nostalgic when I watched a clip on Iltalehti on how the the graduates-to-be celebrated their penkkarit (who - mind you - weren't even born when I graduated - AAAAGH!!!). So young, so full of hope and aspiration... My only consolation right now is that 23 years down the road, they'll be just as nostalgic! :-)