Last Thursday as we entered the classroom, my senses were
assaulted. It was mostly dark in the classroom with a few lights illuminating
the white board. A variety of candy and colored slips of paper covered the
floor. Bells, voices bartering, and general noise played with a projection on
the wall. It quickly became apparent that we wanted whatever was on the floor.
I knelt down and started gathering as much as possible. The tootsie pops were
very plentiful. I think they got passed by because they were so plentiful and small.
I figured I might as well take them, though, so I grabbed everything within
reach, including money. When my hands were full, I shoved the candy in the
extremely large pockets of my old lady housecoat. Those pockets were probably
my biggest benefit because I could grab without pausing. Once everything was
off the ground, we were told that the market would open in one minute, and I organized
my spot on the table. On the board were the candy names and prices. Mr. Kapptie
announced the market opening and Quin and some other people came up to me and
started asking to buy. My pride kind of got to me here. I sold without thinking
because I felt cool that people were coming to me to buy. I could tell that I had
been able to get more candy than most of the people around me. I sold to
everyone who asked, for about a minute before Mr. Kapptie walked by the board,
changing the prices of all the candy stocks. All the prices went up, and I
realized that I had sold cheap. Quin, after I had realized this, pointed out
how dumb it was… I thought a lot more about my sales from then on. I learned to
buy when what I wanted was low and sell when things were higher. Announcements happened
every two minutes, so everyone would stop and listen over the noise of the
projections. The prices of the candy stocks went up and down much more often
than announcements came. This happened very subtly which kind of threw me off,
but was interesting. At one point Chalin approached me and offered $120 for
each of my Heath bars, which was about a $30 profit on each (or something huge
like that). I just knew he knew something I didn’t, so I said no and resolved
not to sell those for anything. An announcement came that sent the market up,
and Chalin came back, telling me that what he thought was going to happen didn’t,
and he was willing to sell me all of his Heath bars (about ten) for a little
less than their value right then. I bought. Right before the market closed, an
announcement came about Heath bars. Their value shot up. Mr. Kapptie wrote a
higher price crossed it out, wrote a higher one, crossed it out, about four
times total. Each time he did this, I could hear Chalin, who was standing near
me saying, “I’m losing $5 for each of those I sold… $10, $20.” That was exhilarating.
Each time he said that, I’d gained that much. Mr. Kapptie announced the closing
of the market, flipped on the lights, and wrote the final stock prices. Tootsie
Pops, which no one had really thought about, were worth a lot, and I had 29 of
them. I made more than $2,000 on them alone. We learned that when a company (Nerds)
splits their stock, 3:1, the price may look like $30, but it’s actually $90. We
calculated our value (with no calculators). I ended up with $6,541, which was
the highest value in the class. And got a one hundred dollar bill for it (not
real, of course). But that felt good.
Notice how this is all one big giant paragraph with lots of
long, run-on sentences? That’s how Thursday’s class period was. No breaks. No
pauses. We got thrown in the middle of everything with little introduction, did
the entire thing from start to finish, and then figured out what was going on. Isn’t
it nice to have no structure sometimes?
