Thursday June 30, 2022 Spearin'

 Palmville Infirmary
Translated from Old Norsk to New English as requested.

   “I think I need to go to the infirmary, Ula. Just look at this,” Sven said, his voice trailing off as he examined his upper arms.
   “Why is that, Sven? You get hurt?” Ula said over the top of his newspaper as he awaited Sven’s answer from the inside of the outhouse yonder. He was sitting on his house porch where he was safely upwind.
 

   “No, I didn’t get hurt, Ula. I just noticed my arms just now ...” Sven said, looking into the outhouse mirror.
   “You just noticed your arms?” Ula said with some incredulity in his voice, his newspaper crushed against his lap. “How is a seventy-one year old man of your distinction just now noticing his arms? What?”
 

   “Well, it’s not like they are new to me, eh,” Sven said, his arms straight down to his side. Raising them slowly one at a time he continued, “They just don’t look the same anymore.”
   “You say what? Your arms don’t look the same anymore? Since when, breakfast?” Ula exclaimed, trying to smooth the newspaper pages out.
   

   “Well, I can’t remember when it was the last time I took notice of it,” Sven said,  crossing his arms behind his head and flexing his biceps, first on the left, then on the right. “And it frightens me a little.”
   “Frightens you?” Ula said, quite perplexed about Sven’s strange disclosure. “What in the world frightens you ‘bout your own arms?”
 

   “Well, I’m frightened that the elasticity of my youth is going from me skin,” Sven said seriously. “Look at these little pock marks here, eh? I’m thinkin’ this here will affect me spearin’ capability.”
 

   Throwing his newspaper to the ceiling, Ula roared with laughter and stamped his feet thinking to remove his spectacles before they crashed to the floor, the newspaper pages all wafting about him.
   “YOUR SPEARIN’ CAPABILITY??” Ula wheezed. “When have you started throwing spears? If this here ain’t the craziest thing I ever heard from you--an’ it ain’t.”
 

   “Well, ever since the other day when Monique insisted I fish the dead skunk out of the crick below the shack,” Sven said, pulling the chain to the outhouse light and closing’ da door behind him. “She said it’d got to smelling’ something awful.”
   “Can a skunk smell worse?” Ula asked, opening the door of the house to go inside. “I mean, uffdah, skunk smell stays with you for weeks. How did the skunk get there?”
 

   “Well, the other day, I shot a big ol’ skunk with the thirty-thirty as he was swimming ‘cross the crick straight at me. Remember me tellin’ you that story?” Sven began, opening a Cwikla beer and pouring it down the side of a frosted mug.
    “Afraid for me life, I was. An’ if’n not mine -- why Monique’s, the love of me life. I drove the little stinker clean to the bottom of the Mikinaak with a 170-grain square-nosed lead bullet with 1857 ft/lbs of energy behind it,” Sven said, pausing for Ula’s confirmation.
 

   “Uh huh, reason enough. Go on Sven,“ Ula said, cutting some pieces of Dubliner cheese to put on the table. “I remember. Would you care for some cheese?”
“Yah shure,” Sven said, using a napkin for a coaster. “This here will go good with Extra Stout don’t you know, miigwech.
 

    “I can’t smell nothin’ since I crashed me face into the frame of the tractor changin’ oil on it one time,” Sven said, knowing Ula was familiar with the story of when he loosened the engine oil drain plug all at once and, being on the wrong side of the ratchet, slammed his face directly into the frame of the tractor -- when he knew better.
   “Felt pretty stupid that time. Don’t think me nose works that good anymore,” Sven added. “Monique confirms that two or three times a day right to me face.”
 

   “Yah, I remember that, Sven,” Ula said, sawing away at a haunch of spekachut he had made in his smokehouse. “Strange you didn’t black both your eyes with that little number, eh? But back to the spearin’ part. How come you couldn’t just hook him?’”
   

    “Well, he was out there a ways, you see,“ answered Sven. “An’ you know the Mikinaak is ‘Too wide to jump an’ too deep to wade.’ I didn’t have a paddle for me jon boat, so there I was . . .”
   “Up the crick without a paddle eh, you old fool’? That’s a good one, Sven. Hooyah,” Ula chuckled as he set a plate of Irish soda bread on the table.

    “So I wanted to throw that spear out there with a rope an’ treble hook on her because I used to be really good at spearin’, but without elasticity in me skin I doubt I can do it,” Sven lamented. “I might tear, if you know what I’m sayin’, brittle as me skin is.”   

    “You’ve never been really good at spearin’ Sven,” Ula chortled, his Dubliner cheese slice crumbling onto the table top. “The last time you threw a spear, you was tellin’ me, was in a jealous rage when you were fourteen years old -- and you even missed your target, an’ hit your girlfriend instead! She had a big ol’ blue-green bruise on her hip to prove it, an’ limped to school for two weeks after that. I remember you hidin’ from her that whole year. Ha! Good at spear throwin’, my arse. What ever happened to Debbie, then?

   “Well, mebbe you’re right, Ula. Mebbe you’re right,” Sven admitted, finishing the bottle of Extra Stout. “That was probably in another life. We’ll just have to wait til that ol’ skunk floats up from the bottom and heads down da river past your house. How’s your spearin’ capability, Ula?”