Childhood

I’ve been working through my childhood in therapy lately and asking myself what drives me to fix things: problems, computers, code, people, etc. And with enough work I’ve pinpointed it to a single interaction that I’ll recount here. I don’t recall how old I was, exactly, but we’ll place the time period around Windows 95. It was a typical evening in the Gennari house. I would say probably sometime after dinner and before bed. And I recall the phone ringing and my mom handing the phone off to my dad. To date myself, these were the times when phones were attached to walls. If you were lucky, the cord to the handset was long enough you could walk around the corner. I was sitting at the dinner table, probably finishing homework when my motioned to me. ...

This story was written in 2006 when I was 24 years old. Today an traffic cone was left outside our home, and bringing it inside I realized I had never properly shared it. So now that history has come full circle, I’m reviving it here so it can live forever. Prologue The following story is commonly referred to as the day that single-handedly ruined my entire childhood. Of course, that’s just line that runs over and over in my head. But, in reality, it’s become quite the opportunity to embarrass my father at family gatherings. Enjoy! ...