“Hey, man,” I say, approaching the Ferrari and waving at him as I point out where my car is parked, nodding to let him know that I’m coming out. Am I seduced by the Ferrari itself ? Yes. I am a red-blooded American male. But it’s more than that. In that instant, the car symbolizes all that I lacked while growing up—freedom, escape, options. “You can have my spot,” I offer, “but I gotta ask you a couple of questions.”

He gets that I’m offering a trade here—my parking place for his information. In my twenty-seven years of life so far, I have learned a little already about the power of information and about the kind of currency that information can become. Now I see an opportunity to get some inside information, I think, and so I draw out my trusty sword—a compulsion for question-asking that has been in my survival kit since childhood.

Seeing that it’s not a bad deal for either of us, he shrugs and says, “Fine.”

My questions are very simple: “What do you do?” and “How do you do it?”

With a laugh, he answers the first question just as simply, saying, “I’m a stockbroker,”

but to answer the second question we extend the conversation to a meeting a few weeks later and then a subsequent introduction to the ABCs, of Wall Street, an entirely foreign but mesmerizing venue where I am just crazy enough to think I could do what he and others like him do, if only I can find an opening.

Despite the fact that I had absolutely no experience and no contacts whatsoever, looking to get my big break into the stock market became a major focus over the next several months, but so did other urgent concerns, especially when I suddenly became a single parent amid a series of other unforeseen, tumultuous events.