There’s Something About Mint: How the Swedish Way Travels

Saturday mornings have a rhythm now.

Crossfit first. Space by 9fitness, just off Retiro. Three years ago a few friends dragged me there. I skipped my fair share of sessions in the beginning. I didn’t think that kind of training was for me. Then pouches helped me get through the squats without running on empty. I started lifting heavier. Not a lot. But more than before. And I stopped skipping.

After that, Olena.

Olena has been cutting my hair long enough to know exactly what I want before I sit down. Her salon sits right next to Retiro park. Every time I’m in the chair we catch up like old friends. That Saturday she was tired from long shifts. Excited about her summer. On Sunday she was going to El Rastro with her sister. Then Morocco.

I asked her to do what she always does. Trim the sides, fix the top so it doesn’t go wild. My hair grows fast and if I leave it too long it has opinions of its own.

I put my tin of mint pouches on the mirror desk next to her scissors while she worked.

She stopped mid-cut. “Juan let me see those chewing gums you carried today. I had never seen them before.”

I told her they weren’t chewing gums. That they were what helped me quit smoking. She listened while her scissors kept moving.

Olena is a casual smoker. She asked if I had a spare tin.

I happened to have an extra tin in my bag that day. We finished the cut and when I went to pay I handed it to her. She turned it over in her hands trying to figure out how to open it. She found the disposal lid first, the small compartment at the top for used pouches. She thought I’d handed her an empty box. We laughed about that.

I helped her open the right side. She leaned in and smelled the mint. Read the label carefully the way you do when something is new and you want to understand it. She said she liked the tin’s closing mechanism. The way it clicks shut.

She put it in her pocket and said she’d try them and let me know if they were for her.

That’s how it travels. Not through speeches by out of touch politicians. A tin left on a mirror desk next to a pair of scissors on a Saturday morning in Madrid. A Ukrainian hairdresser noticed something on the desk and got curious.

Somewhere in Sweden there’s a girl who handed me a pouch at a conference and said try this. I gave Olena a tin on a Saturday in Retiro. She’ll make up her own mind.

That’s the Swedish way. It doesn’t ask for anything. It shows up.