My name is Don MacDonald, and I
was born in 1960 in Sacramento, California. A place warmer
than Sweden, to be sure, where I arrived in 1968 when my
parents divorced. I have lived here ever since, with the
exception of ten months 1993-1994, when I was in California
and Utah. In Sweden my home has been in Eskilstuna since
1979, where I moved at the age of eighteen after mother
died of cancer. Previously I lived with mother and sister
in Hälleforsnäs. There I also went to school, and was
unfortunately mobbed a lot. I was permitted to continue my
schooling in Malmköping, which was my salvation. Bullies
existed there too, but on the whole I liked it there very
much. I frequently played on the dining (assembly) hall
grand piano - perhaps some of the old teachers remember me
for that.
Then I went to S:t Eskil's gymnasium (comparable to senior
high school in the US, so I'm told), which was by and large
a disaster. I took the Social Science course, as was
recommended for "he who doesn't know what he wants to do".
A music gymnasium would have been suitable, but such
existed only in Stockholm and Gothenburg and so was out of
the question. At S:t Eskil's I was unhappy, not so much for
any other reason than being fairly uninterested in social
science… In my last term mother died, and for some
reason I don't remember I quit school a few weeks before
graduation. Of course a lot was going on then. I travelled
to relatives in California and stayed there for six weeks,
I think. Upon returning I moved to Eskilstuna, as I had to
move somewhere when the house was sold. That I should
remain for so long, I could never have imagined. (cont)