Biographical Notes

When I was a kid, my parents used to complain about their own stupidity at having produced me and my brother - their lives would have been sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better without us.

If I had one of those mishaps kids always incurs - say, broken something, hurt myself doing some stupid play -  my mother main issue was that my father would have gotten angry at her lack of supervision. Me being hurt? Does it matter? I was clearly full of myself, back then.

She was also always saying me that no girl would ever love me, because I was not as beautiful as my brother (whom, however, was despised by both parents as they were a 2nd and a 3rd children with enormous chip on their shoulders against their older brothers).

My father thought that I was not good enough to do any job but to keep going on with the small contractor business that he had, and he tried his level best to force me into doing it, although he loved the idea that I would somehow, someday expanded it "on a bigger scale".

The fact that I could not care less for masonry never managed to enter his skull before it was too late.

I went to a vocational high school with a somewhat narrow technical curriculum that, after the second year, branched in four directions: Electrics, Mechanics, Information Technology and Building.

I had no idea what "IT" was (it was 1987, in Italy), so I was undecided between Electrics and Mechanics - and went with E. simply because a couple of friends were doing it.

When my family discovered it, it looked as if I had killed somebody, with dishes thrown at my face and an atmosphere of betrayal.

They forced me - it was that, or to start working full time with my father as a labourer with no pay or insurance, and I wasn't keen on that either - to pick the stupid "building" course(s).

They thought that I tried to betray them but - really - they were betraying me  -
(as they did with my brother, before me, forced to follow the same idiotic path).

If I will ever amount to anything, I will use some suitable pseudonym that will guarantee that no light will ever shine upon their pathetic names.


_DB