When I Was a Young Boy

Judging by most of my Facebook "friends'" statuses, there really isn't much going on other than the fact that the Ravens lost to the Steelers in OT and that the new Facebook is probably the worst travesty to happen since "new" Coke. Perhaps the biggest (and possibly most overblown) news is that the stock market has the stability of a dinghy in a stormy harbor. I'd probably feel more comfortable at a blackjack table at Atlantic City than putting my money in the market at some points.

I've always had an interest in the stock market. Every time I saw it on the television when I was younger, it looked real exciting. The floor looked like a giant crowded playground, except they were dressed much funnier and no one yelled at them for littering. They were always energetic and yelling all the time and using words that weren't broadcast over the 5:00 PM evening news. It seriously looked like great fun and I thought it'd be nice to play dress up and yell when I was younger. (Wonder what that says about me as a child...)

I remember way back in the day when it was a real possibility to make a decently easy buck during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. It was rather alluring to me as a kid. When your life consists of having to endure the crap from your peers as a weird middle school kid, the fact that people who were just as weird as you were being able to make large amounts of money and seem cool was rather alluring. That dream always stuck with me throughout the years, even though the meteoric rise only meant a even more meteoric fall. As such, I've always watched the markets...just in case.