“It’s not, like, fair. All the guys from my class have, like, made heaps of money from crypto and investing in stocks in the last year. The girls have been left out and are only now beginning to put money in….” my 23-year old daughter complains (this Gen says ‘like’ 224 times a day, plus/minus standard deviation of 30. Even when they have a problem with someone they say, ‘I like dislike him’, which drives me, like, nuts).
She continues “This investing, why is this, like, a guy thing?”
“That’s because girls, including you, generally have much more common sense,” I counter. Good strategy to apply praise with a butter-coated spoon, but lost on her. Completely.
We are in a traffic jam, approaching an intersection and an argument (in reverse order). I try to tell her that the stock market has been insanely over-valued for a long time and has now gone completely cuckoo (Cuculus canorus, if you are a micro-details bird-watcher with disdain for writers and other fungi). “If the markets are crazily high and risky, how did these guys, like, make money?” she demands, and quite rightly so.
“Well, they could have lost too, because this is not investing, it’s gambling.”
“But they didn’t! That’s the point! And, like, K has made 12 lakhs this year…”
“Which bank did he rob?”
“Serious, Pa!”
“Ok, tell me what he did then?”
“He lost in crypto, but has been, like, buying and selling shares in the last few months everyday. He quit his job last month and four of them have taken up a flat where they, like, play video games all day and invest in stocks.”
“Correction. They gamble in stocks.”
“HOW is it gambling if they are winning all the time?”
Well, she has a point there.
“A crash is overdue and can happen, like, anytime. Will you stop saying Like, it’s getting infectious.”
“Like, the crash last year?”
“No, that was like the pothole, like, on 9th Main. This will be a big crash.”
“Like, when was it last?”
“Long ago, when you first got on to Harry Potter. K is making a big big mistake by quitting his job. I knew he was weak in the head, this confirms it.”
“At the moment, he is way richer than me, Papa!”
“That means Jacks**t and bull string. It’s not real money, just the current value of his shares.”
She’s not understood what I said, so she changes the topic. Good thinking, I do the same (these things run in families). “Ok, so he’s agreed to, like, help me invest some money.”
“No. Not invest, gamble. Plus, don’t do it.” Anti-Nike.
“Then, what should I do?”
“See if visas to Argentina are being issued now. Backpack a month in Tierra del Fuego.”
“Pa! That doesn’t make any sense.”
Another argument lost. It’s time to ask that driver in front if he has any idea how important I am.
