Twenty-Five: Nick

Nick was born in 1984, summer of money-love, summer of Springsteen’s American anthem.  Momma and Daddy both had jobs, radical incomes, lived life to the fullest with no holds barred.  Nick stood on a stool to play pinball in the basement.  Mom and Dad entertained on the weekends, cook-outs on the patio near the pool, or poker nights downstairs by the wide maple bar.  Nick had an Atari, then a Nintendo, then a Super version.  Nick had the cool games, all the Zelda strategy legends and add-ons, Dragon Warrior, Super Mario in all its incarnations.   At Halloween he took the gun from Duck Hunt and pretended to be Boba Fett.  His costume was bad to the bone.

Nick learned to drive with the riding mower, and got to take the boat out alone during the summer, when he was only 12.  He went to LA with his dad, to the Cape with Mom.  He played through the ranks of little league and wiped the field clean with his homers.  During school he majored in basketball, track, and lacrosse.  His skateboard was always somewhere nearby, along with his boom box, then CD player, then iPod and dock.

He got an MBA, got married, got a house.  He made a killing on the market then had to confess to his parents that their profile was a lark.  A scheme, a sham, something only reliable on paper if you don’t hold it up to the light.  He said in a conspiratorial whisper:  it’s cool, they can all ride along till the heat’s off the Street, then jump right back in for the next blossoming wave.  He didn’t understand their concern.  It was only numbers, percentages, cut rates.  Isn’t this what he was supposed to do?  Go for the best and screw all the rest, right?  It was how he’d been raised, after all.