My name is Călin. And in the Romanian community in Houston the world knew me as a quiet, cheerful man with a smile on my lips. But, that was until the whole community and beyond was shocked after my daughter Alesia posted a letter online. Her statement immediately went viral, - with quite a large view in just four days. Now, I as a victim of the attack am reclaiming my identity and will tell you a story about trauma, transcendence and the power of words. Struggling with isolation and shame, after the attack and during the lawsuits filed, I will reveal the face of victims of injustice even in cases where the forensic evidence is clear and there are witnesses.
This book, I believe, will totally transform the way we view bullying, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking out loudly about the tumultuous reality. I hope that by weaving together grief, resilience and humour, my memoir will become one of the modern classics written from a contemporary reality. At a time when memoirs are being criticized as irrelevant and overly introspective, I remind you that our stories are worth telling, that names and the lives attached to those names matter.
When I decided to write, some time ago, I assumed that it would be possible for my readers to form all sorts of opinions about me, to like me or not, to approve of me or not, to understand me or not, to love me or not.... I have taken on all that could have resulted from my courage to expose my feelings, my most intimate thoughts and my way of seeing life's events.

I make it clear that the title is not fanciful, and that the material I have written corresponds to both. You will, you see, and it's not hard to convince yourself, it could have been written the other way around. In any case, this book, which I seriously intend to dedicate to those who have maligned me both publicly and privately, will not have a prodigious career, at least that's what I've been shown in the coffee-shops I consumed during my writing heyday, and that's because I don't dispute that there will be some who, out of elegance, and perhaps even out of respect for my age, will receive it positively. But there will be not a few who will regard it with condescension, who will even be annoyed, frustrated, hurt, annoyed beyond measure, and who, it is not excluded, when our paths (about interests, it is out of the question) cross, will pretend that (my, what a sample of cacophony I have avoided) some rubbish has got into their eyes. To these I make the following clarification:

Joking, humor, irony are the most serious things in life. For these to be born, considerable intellectual effort is needed; the others, drama, tragedy, serious situations, or the precarious economic state of some, come by themselves, here a good pen and a laborious mind are needed.
Old Shakespeare was always of the opinion that "the fate of a joke depends not on the mouth that tells it, but on the ear that hears it".

So, in this case I hope I manage to get my head around everyone (starting with my wife), get pointed at (preferably the middle finger), not have my greeting answered, possibly lose my last friend. So, to avoid a small part of the unpleasantness that, consciously or not, I have taken on, I pawned my cheek at a shoe factory.

Călin Pintea