A friend of mine in high school had an internship with Merrill Lynch that started at the end of our Junior year. He told me about it
while we were sitting in Ms. Sugg’s classroom, the first two people to arrive for AP
European History after lunch let out. He had just started, and he was unable to
sit still with excitement. “I’m not doing very much right now, but it’s helpful
just to see what they do. They said I could keep working for them through
college. They’re a really good company, but after a few years I might look for
a position with someone else instead.”
I nodded and smiled like I would with anyone speaking
a foreign language.
“This is so cool,” he said. “I really want to be in this
industry.”
More nods, more smiles. Then I finally said, “who’s Merrill Lynch?”
“You don’t know who Merrill Lynch is?”
“Nope, don’t think so.”
“They’re an investment brokerage.”
Blank stare.
“You’ve probably seen them before. You’d recognize
them. They’re the one with the bull.” He reached into his bag to get his
wallet. “Actually, yeah, this is it right here,” he said, handing me his spiffy new
business card.
I looked at the bull design. I had probably seen it in ads, but I
still didn’t know what Merrill Lynch was. “Why is their logo a bull?”
“You know,” he said. “Like bulls and bears on Wall Street.”
He and I had taken U.S. Government and Politics
together the year before, and we did in fact learn about those stock market
symbols, so I vaguely knew what he was referring to, but something more basic
wasn’t clear to me.
“So, but, what’s an investment brokerage?”
I’m sure he explained it very well, not that I
followed it at the time. Even if I had, though, what I didn’t get was even more
basic.
“You want to work for them?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I want to work in
investments in general, and Merrill Lynch is one of the biggest companies in the
industry.”
“But…” I was more lost than he seemed to understand.
“Why do you want to work in investments?”
“What do you mean? Because you can make a lot of
money, and because it’s really exciting!”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Yeah, great. That’s really
cool.”
What I was thinking, though, was more like, “What a
weirdo.” (I’m not particularly good at hiding my emotions, so I’m sure that
what I looked like I was thinking, too.) Wall Street? That’s where evil people wearing
red power ties rob the rest of us with their arcane arts. And making lots of
money? Whatever. The good life would be seeing the country through the window
of a bus, exploring unknown cities with friends, eating cheap food and seeing
amazing musicians in tiny bars… you know… like Jack Kerouac.
If you haven’t guessed, that was the year I read On the Road.
More accurately, I thought the good life was reading,
writing, and learning about the world. In general, I assumed that I would
become a writer, and I would make
money—somehow—but what was more important was being known. I wanted to be the
voice in people’s heads. I wanted to see my author’s photo in bookstores. In my
later years, I could tell stories about getting my first agent, or about battling
with editors over plot lines.
This all might have made more sense if I had actually
been writing.
At any rate, for the first five years of my adult
life, I had no real understanding of the need to earn money, let alone any desire
to earn it. Spend it, sure—I loved spending it. I spent as much as I could on
Magic cards in the 90s, when my income was limited to gifts and my $12 weekly
allowance for doing the dishes and cleaning out the kitty litter. In college, my
mother gave me access to my parents’ checking account so that I could buy all
the books I needed for class (which I felt no compunction about using to also buy
all the books I wanted to fill out my knowledge of whatever I was interested in
that month, including English poetry, Greek and Roman Classics, and continental
philosophy. I also got plenty of pizza down at Mangia on Main Street and, by my
sophomore year, cigarettes from 7/11.) Later, I took a year off and moved to
Los Angeles. My parents not only paid my rent; they also paid my credit card bills.
I wasn’t just buying housewares and food, either. CDs, time at the Internet café,
Starbucks coffee, newspapers, restaurant nachos, movie tickets… it all went on
that card.
I had jobs during most of this time—I’ll get to this
in another post—but they couldn’t begin to
pay for what I was spending. My parents brought up my spending with me
sometimes, but it was my mother who saw the bills and the bank statements, and
let’s just say that she isn’t the most confrontational person in the world. No,
let’s also say that she is one of the
most generous and loving people in the world.
My mother also paid off my college loans, even after I
was otherwise finally providing for myself. It’s only recently that I’ve understood
the extent of her help and her lenience. I started out my life with more of a financial
cushion than most people without a trust fund.
I haven’t known until now why I remembered my confusion
about my friend’s desire to work for Merrill Lynch. Our minds hold on to moments
that we don’t understand at the time, so that we can return to them when we’re
older and have learned more about that area of life. This happens especially
when we’re children. In my case, maybe I remained a child longer than was healthy.
In my next installment, I learn that most people do indeed follow norms, or else they wouldn’t be norms.