Halfway through the park today, Ian asked a very reasonable question: "What does Papa do?" It was on his mind because Ian went with Papa to his office on Sunday to help him move into a new office tower adjacent to the World Trade Center site. But how do you explain "he works in finance operations for a large investment bank in lower Manhattan" to a four-year-old? That is my answer for adults, but I figured it wouldn't fly with him.
So here was how I explained it:
"So, Ian, let's say you have two people. The first person has money and the other person has a really cool toy. So the first person decides to give the other person his money so he can go home with the toy. So what Papa does is he makes sure that when they exchange the money for the toy, it all works right."
"But why wouldn't it work right?"
Good question. Why wouldn't it work right? How do I explain global compliance, IT infrastructure, trading desks, queues, exchange rates, etc, etc? I spent the night on the couch, in part because of the aforementioned pacifier separation issues with Julian, so I was not a very quick draw this morning. Here was my really sucky answer:
"Well, sometimes it just doesn't work right. Like maybe the first guy drops his money in a puddle and it gets all muddy."
"What?!" says Ian, wrinkling his face. Makes no sense, clearly. What kind of idiot drops his money in the mud.
Fortunately, Ian took over and came to my rescue. "But Mom, that's not what Papa does. Papa has TWO computers on his desk. He works on the computer!" Eureka! In Ian's simple little mind, if you have a computer in front of you, nay two computers, you're doing work. It's called "working on the computer."
With that thorny question resolved, he proceeded to tell me how Papa's building is really really really tall and he climbed all the way to the top of it like Spiderman. Really? I asked him if he looked out the windows and what could he see. What windows? OK, clearly he was mostly paying attention to the TWO computers. A career is born.
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