He is well beyond the days of his youth.
Not old, not young, not senile, not naive.
Just in that stretch of life where the miles show in the legs and the memory holds a thousand closing bells, a thousand fast markets, a thousand mornings when the trading floor opened like a bat out of hell. He came up in the noise, in the sweat, in the pit where a man’s voice and his word mattered more than any spreadsheet.
Open outcry was its own religion.
The floor was a church with quick hands, sharp eyes, and fast instincts. The weak didn’t last, the unsure got run over and those who stood, day after day, year after year.... those were the men who built something real.
He was one of them.
Then the world changed.
The trading pits went quiet.
The floor emptied out.
They turned the screens into the battlefield and took away the roar. What once was a storm of humanity became a whisper of keystrokes in a room lit by monitors. He adapted, not because he wanted to, but because that is what a working man does. He doesn’t get the luxury of quitting when the game changes. He adjusts the stance, squares the shoulders, and digs in again and again.
Now he works in a trading office tucked miles west of the lake. A place where on clear days he can still see the city’s outline, just a faint blue ridge on the horizon. The distant building doesn't have a statue of a Greek goddess on the roof, but inside, every day, he shows up.
He puts in the hours.
He calls the bids and offers.
He fills the orders.
He does the job.
And the job has taken its toll. The long grind, the early mornings, the market cycles that don’t care about fairness, loyalty, or how hard a man tries.
Because he is from the era where a man keeps his chin up, even when the lungs burned. Where you didn’t show weakness, not in the pit, not in the locker room, not at the kitchen table. You walked forward, even if the steps hurt.
But he is not done.
He wants a few more good years. Just enough time to show his kids what finishing looks like. Enough time to stand on his own two feet and not let the last chapter be written by someone else’s hand. He wants to retire where he is, not bouncing around like a quarterback trying to squeeze one more season out of a worn-out arm in some other town, wearing a jersey that never quite fits. He wants to walk off the field with the same colors he fought for.
“What are the damn chances?” he says.
About fate.
About curves in the road.
About how life is shaped by things you can’t see coming.
The chances are whatever they are. Fate doesn’t explain itself. A man only controls how he responds.
So he laces up again tomorrow. Shoulders the weight. Does the job.
Not to prove them wrong.
To prove himself right.
