Twelve years ago, we were coming back from the daily routine, rafting the White River. Almost every night after the trip we would go to the internet cafe with my friends. Not to use the internet but to drink coffee. I knew coffee. I liked coffee then as I do know.

The internet cafes would only let you use hotmail. I did not know what hotmail was but I was happy with the coffee. Is hotmail a secret tool used by the US to communicate? I asked my Australian friend Xman, in my newly acquired Australian accent. He looked puzzled. Luckily Australians go with the flow. He laughed and moved on. But I still did not know what hotmail was. There was no reason for me to know. My life was in the rivers.

A few coffees (and beers) later, Xman asked me for my email address. What’s that I asked. That’s hotmail he responded. I was intrigued, I truly wanted a hotmail. The next day he went with me to the internet cafe to help me setup my email address. He said, forget the borg, go with Yahoo. Yahoo sounded fun plus I did not want to be part of the borg (whatever that meant).

I needed a nick name I could use. We tried antonio but the internet was so old by then that some idiot had taken that already. After trying for several minutes we gave up. Even then I was picky about this internet stuff without even knowing it. No nickname was good enough. I did not want to be antonio123 or altamirano2098.

The next day we met. He looked happy. He had been able to get me a cool nick. antoniocapo. I was like, wtf mate. But then he explained. Capo means boss in Italian and at the time I was pretty good at helping people stay out of trouble in the river. He’d nicknamed me capo. So the nick was born and I went on without using it for years. Today, if you look for me on Google you will see that all of the results are mine. I’ve become quite the internet citizen since twelve years ago. The end.