I do remember the first day of May in 1994.
I was at Piliggi’s house, there was some party going on; I can’t recall if it was his birthday or what else, maybe it was something about his first communion. A few classmates and I were downstairs, in the internal courtyard of the apartment complex where he lived, possibly passing a football or possibly planning to take over the world, as ten-year-old kids do.
I remember that Piliggi called us from his balcony:
– Hey! Senna died!
– What are you talking about, Pier!
– No, really!
– Yeah sure, we believe you
– Just come upstairs
And Senna had indeed just died. We weren’t that much into car racing, nor we really understood much about it; after all we were just kids. But it was that moment in history where you’d always hear about Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, and a certain Michael Schumacher guy who was starting to make the news.
I remember I was deeply shaken by the news. It felt impossible: how can someone like Ayrton Senna die? In a sense, I think that that was the first time I had to deal with the transition between life and death of someone whom I knew, albeit indirectly.
I forgot pretty much everything else about that afternoon: I only recall that conversation between the balcony and the courtyard, the feeling of dismay at the watershed between before and after, and the Game Gear that someone had given Piliggi: I always wanted one myself, but I knew that from that point forward in my mind I’d have always linked the TV Tuner attachment to Senna.