- - -

When I was eight-years-old, it would have been an understatement to call me a young entrepreneur: I was a tycoon, a ruthless mogul, a merciless snack-baron. I pushed the other little-kid lemonade stands out of business-they couldn't compete with Zack's Snack Shack. If the going rate for a cup were 50¢ halfway down the block, I'd sell two for 75¢ at the corner. I slashed lemonade prices by buying concentrate powder in bulk, then throwing it in an old pitcher with a few lemon halves so it would look fresh-squeezed. No one suspected a chubby kid with a goofy incomplete grin and a backwards snap-back Mariner's cap. If I had known what a Ponzi Scheme was while I still had that drive, you'd hear "Bornstein" whenever you now hear "Madoff".

Now, I never really knew what I planned on spending all that dirty money on. I never really had a goal, but I had always wanted to keep the option open of running away and living on the lam off of Saltines and Caprisuns without having to beg too much, so I kept each and every penny I ever made locked up in my own cedar box. It was brown and smooth and about the size of a shoe-box. It had a key no bigger than my thumbnail. I kept the key hidden in a separate, littler box with two jangling Chinese meditation balls and changed the location of both boxes every day to throw off bandits and my neighbor Chuck.

I got my first taste of moneymaking a few years prior when coach gave every one of us on my tee ball team-the Queen Anne Iguanas-a box of big cheap chocolate bars and told us to sell them door-to-door for $2.50 a pop. They left the bulk price sticker on the box, so I calculated that the adults were having us mark up those bars $1 each for the team to buy new uniforms. So after selling three bars, I figured, why not ask for another $1 each for myself? And sure enough, moms and dads bought them just the same. I kept marking them up and up, until finally, the McGibbons asked me if I was sure I was "supposed to be selling chocolate bars for $18.50 each, even such fancy chocolate for a good cause?"

Instead of wondering how many chocolate bars I could sneak for myself like the other kids were, I was exploiting the market. And it got me wondering why the adults were having us sell them instead of doing the footwork themselves. I had never seen an old fogy trying to peddle lemonade on the street corner, so I realized that there's something about a little kid, especially one missing teeth, that makes adults irresponsible with money-the same reason people put sweaters on dogs or talk baby-talk to babies, displays of dominance under the guise of "Oh, aren't you just precious!"

The lucky part is I realized moms and dads just loved buying things from little kids while I was still a little kid. So I handmade myself a cute-as-could-be folding table out of planks I rummaged out my neighbor Chuck's wood scraps and a few old hinges I took off my bedroom door. I painted it pastel colors, plastered it with smiley-face stickers, and made a sign with "Zack's Snack Shack" scrawled in those felt markers that smell like licorice or mint or whatever that chemical is that people in suits have convinced us to associate with the word "cherry." I've still got that table tucked away in the backyard at my parent's house, though one of the legs snapped off a while back. The table is still covered in those smiley-face stickers, the same ones I put on all the goodies I sold-my first branding strategy.

Eventually I affixed some wheels to my table so I could pull it behind me by a rope like a sad dog. Everyday after school, I'd waltz into the grocery store-Thriftway, Safeway, Ken's Market, didn't matter-and buy up all the Oreos or Twix Bars or Juicy Fruit I could with my last yield, anchor my pastel table on the corner down the block, throw the foodstuff in plastic baggies, slap on some smiley face stickers, sail the "Zacks Snack Shack" flag, and sell each and every piece for twice the amount that customers would have paid if they had just stepped inside the store.

But moms and dads bought and bought from me just the same-lapped it right up. Next day, bigger yield, more foodstuffs. Sometimes I'd get fancy with a pot of iced tea-Lipton in Bulk-and Pepperidge Farm mint Milanos-with a squirt of icing to look homemade. Repackaged. Resold. Why doesn't everyone do this? I asked myself, not knowing that the concept of retail had already been exploited for years.

"My Zack, he's such a little businessman!" my mom would brag, "I don't know where he gets it, certainly not me." I'd be in the other room getting my goods ready to sell to her dinner guests. "And get this," she'd go on, "He made such a fuss that I leave him alone, not because he was embarrassed, but because he said people bought more when I wasn't around! Isn't that just darling?"

Whether darling or good salesmanship, it was true. Mom accompanied me the first few weeks, but walking up to Queen Anne Ave every day was starting to interfere with her work, and she knew I had the route down, so it was easy to convince her to let me start going it alone. I agreed to never stay out after dark and to always go to the same corner, right where Queen Anne Ave met McGraw St. I became a cutthroat capitalist by accident, so I kept selling, hard as I could, my Mom, my customers, and me none the wiser.

I learned quickly, things like: if you give change in $1 bills, the customer is more likely to drop one as tip, or that it's easier to offer the snacks to the kids so they do the begging, or pour a cup as they walk up so it looks like it was just made. And that flashing a big grin with a couple missing teeth works wonders.

- - -

Missing teeth becomes exponentially less cute as a person ages. But at eight-years-old, missing a couple teeth earns you money-and not just from the tooth fairy. I got a few folks to throw a quarter in my tip-jar by dazzling them with loose tooth tricks-depending on the way the tooth dangled off the strand of pink gum, I could flip it and spin it, or bobble it side to side with Cirque Du Soleil finesse.

I loved exploring the inner texture of a tooth with my tongue from the bottom up, into the rough cavernous shell, or just practicing my act for hours and hours in front of the mirror, flipping the loose tooth in and out of its socket, dreading the day I'd lose the last one.

It would have been just as much an understatement to call me an entrepreneur as to call my tooth fairy unconventional: she was eccentric. She'd insist I write a note, and if I didn't specifically request that she leave the tooth, she'd horde it away for herself. Once I forgot to ask her to leave the tooth in my note, so she kept it, and I cried and cried and cried, because I had kept all my baby teeth up until that canine. Even at eight-years old, I was relentlessly nostalgic, even if I only had a handful of memories to be nostalgic for.

So I kept writing note after note begging her for that canine tooth back, tucking the politest words I knew-like "please" and "thank you" and "sincerely"-under my pillow, until one morning, she gave it back in the same way she had given back all the rest: in a small plastic baggy with a handwritten note:

"Good to see you again, Zack," they'd begin, and be accompanied by a few small foreign coins. The foreign coins were different every time-Israeli Shekels with the hard angles, Vietnamese Dong with the square holes in the middle, Canadian Loonies with gold insides surrounded by silver. And once the tooth fairy ran out of all the coins from places my parents had pictures from, she started giving me any kind of weird money she could get her hands on here in the States: a big ol' 50¢ coin with JFK's face, a $2 bill from 1934, if they'd had Sacajawea Golden dollars back then, I bet I'd have see one of them, too.

I kept all the bags of teeth and notes and coins in my cedar box, right next to the dirty money, all rolled up neatly and sorted into film canisters by number-$1 bills in here, $2 bills in here, $5 bills in here, and that one lucky $20 I found lying on the ground all lonely inside its own canister-if the police had searched my room and found a box of teeth and an eclectic array of currencies, they would've thought they had found a serial killer.

They wouldn't have been too far off: the kids at school did think I was crazy. I skipped first grade, because I was doing math with the 4^th graders while I was still sleeping with my blanket and sucking on my fingers to fall asleep. A one-year difference isn't much when you're older, but when you're eight-years-old, and all the kids in your class are nine and ten, having lived 10% more life means a lot.

Even if it weren't for the age difference, I still wouldn't have much in the way of friends, I imagine, for I was on the obnoxious side of the spectrum and not good enough at sports to make up for it. So after school I spent a good deal of time counting and feeling and studying what was in that cedar box, and it made me feel safe, like I was worth something that could be summed up by digits. And it wasn't just money and teeth in there, I had been collecting all sorts of things over the years: shiny black obsidian rocks I found at the beach, a square cut out of my first blanket, notes I started writing to myself, ones like:

"Dear 10-year-old Zack,

I hope you have lots of friends and are good at kickball. Good luck.

Sincerely,

8-year-old Zack"

Those kids at school might have all the friends in the world and could kick the kickball over the fence, but my money gave me the freedom to leave if I ever so chose.

Problem is, I didn't really have a good reason to ever choose to leave. My mom made me so much chicken noodle soup from scratch, I thought scratch was an ingredient until I was in college trying to make some, and I asked an employee at Eastside Market where I could find some scratch. Sometimes I'd find a note under my pillow even when I hadn't lost a tooth with a story about me and Jimmy the Jellyfish fighting crime together scrawled in my Dad's handwriting.

But after a while, it became hard to believe what my parents told me, that I was such a nice, handsome boy when the kids at school would argue over who had to take "porkity porkity" onto their kickball team even for just 15 minutes until recess was over. I wasn't looking for pity from anyone, so I didn't say much, just kept my head down-to better my odds of coming across some loose change.

- - -

It was a crisp autumn afternoon when Zack's Snack Shack began going out of business. I had opened shop for the day when Grant from the Iguanas came strolling up to my corner. He was the one who'd gotten the whole team calling me "curly-tail" because I was slow-which my Mom told me didn't make sense, because pigs are actually quite nimble, so maybe they meant it as a compliment, but I knew they didn't mean it that way, because they also called me "stanky fat ass bitch" and "pork-face, get off, you're tilting the merry-go-round!"

Grant saw me and sniggered, his old cleats clacking just out of sync with his chuckles, making it sound like his whole gaggle of friends were laughing at me together again. Then he saw my goods and licked his lips, and asked in a voice making it sound like we were brothers, "Hey buddy, can I get some fruit snacks?"

I grit whatever baby teeth I had left and asked him, "Strawberry or Blue Raspberry?"

He looked down at a pack of Blue Raspberry-a flavor invented in a tall building by a room of marketers and not in the forest by a hundred million years of evolution-and snagged it right off my handmade table. "This one," he said and started walking away.

"Grant! Grant! That's 75¢," I called after him, knowing that I normally only charged 50¢.

"What? You're gonna make me pay?"-which would have been a good time for me to say, "If you don't give me my money, you bet your behind you will!" but instead I just said: "yes, please," because I had never been beat up before, and this didn't seem like a good time to start, with my goods all out for the stealing.

"Cmon, man, we're friends," he said, although he had never invited me over to one of his Monopoly sleep-overs with the other Iguanas-I would've cleaned them out at Monopoly.

"Well, normally, they're a dollar, so I'm giving you a discount," I said, lying through the gaps where my teeth had been.

"I don't have any quarters on me!" he said, "Cmon please."

"Fine, Grant," I spat, "Will you pay me back, then?"

"Sure, whatever."

"Soon?"

"Yes, fine."

Knowing darn well he wasn't going to be quick about it, I shot off every thinking cell in my head, and said, "Well, how about you enjoy those fruit snacks now, but every practice you don't bring me my money, that's another quarter, alright?"

"No way, why would I-"

"Fine, then you ain't getting no-"

"Alright, fine, whatever," he said and I made him scrawl his name on a napkin agreeing to the deal.

Now of course he didn't bring me my 75¢, and I sure as heck didn't remind him, so when the last game of the season came about, just as his Mom and Dad were clapping him on the back, praising their little angel for hitting the game-winning home-run, I went right up to his Mom, showed her the napkin with his stupid little signature, and she looked mighty disappointed before handing over the best $10.25 I ever earned. At eight-years-old I figured out how to charge a high interest rate off some kid that I knew wouldn't pay me back, and that's how I stumbled upon subprime lending.

A few months passed, and my box was filling with rings I found on the street, and small Fimo animals I made in art class, and more money. It was the first snow day of the year, and there weren't a lot of people out on Queen Anne Ave. I thought there was going to be sledding and snowball fights through the streets, people getting cold, looking for a warm snack, so I had headed out early with my goods: hot chocolate mix, marshmallows, and a few thermoses of hot water. The snow was coming down harder every minute, making the ground all nice, like no one had ever stepped on it before. After a half hour, I couldn't see the footsteps that had led me up to where I parked my table, so it looked like I had just popped out of nowhere.

"Hey oinkity!" I heard, and looked around not seeing anyone through the snowfall, "Four hot chocolates, extra 'mellows." Grant and his gaggle came waddling up out of the whiteness, breaking the perfect snow blanket on the ground with their feet. I was so excited for the first customers all day, even such nasty ones, that I served up their hot chocolate and loaded them up with 'mellows , nonetheless, pausing only to pop one in my mouth. They snatched them right up and took to enjoying them.

"That's 50¢ each, so-" I began.

"You owe me these," Grant said, "My mom made me pay her back for that napkin thing."

"No, but-" I began again.

"You been out here long?" Grant asked.

"No," I said, "But you have to-"

"Well, we're heading over to the park to sled if you wanna come." My ears perked up within my earmuffs, and I replayed his sentence with every thinking cell in my head. Something about the last sentence didn't quite register with me for a moment. I tried to understand, "You want me to come with you?"

"Sure, you want a hand with your table?"

"Thanks!" I said and meant it.

We walked over to the park together, drinking hot chocolate along the way, and I kept topping off everyone's' cups to offset the snow coming down, so our drinks wouldn't get cold. The snow was coming down so hard now, I couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of me, so the park emerged out of nowhere. I could see the merry-go-round, with a couple inches of white on top, looking like a baker had artfully frosted it.

It wasn't until we got to the top of the hill and one of them shoved me real hard, and I fell over another kid who was on all fours that I realized that none of them had a sled with them. I hit the ground with my back, and it didn't hurt too much, because I was wearing a nice big waterproof coat. I slid all the way to the bottom on my back, head first. They came chasing down the hill, Grant first. He was brandishing a piece of wood that looked like one of the legs of my homemade snack table. He was the first one to reach me, and he swung that piece of wood into the right side of my mouth so hard, I felt one of my teeth go loose. I started crying, because I didn't know what else to do, and I just lay there, and Grant hit me again with the leg in the right side of my mouth, and the tooth popped out completely-what a waste, now I wouldn't get to play with it and feel its inside and practice doing all sorts of tricks with it as it got looser.

I managed to flip over onto my front, where the four of them just kinda kicked at me for a while. With my face covered, it wasn't the worst pain had I ever felt, because I wearing such a nice big jacket, but it certainly took a while for them to get tired. After they had their fix, they gave up and ran off away from the hill, in a direction I could tell exactly from their footsteps, because the snow was still all perfect on all sides except up the hill they had pushed me down.

I flipped back over onto my back and lay there for a while staring up at the white sky. Some of the snowflakes were sticking together in midair and dancing down to the ground together. I lay there for another while. And then I stood up, and spit out my tooth into my mitten. It was the tooth on the bottom right side just behind the canine tooth. It was covered in blood, and some dripped down and stained the snow. I pocketed the tooth and ate some snow, which made my mouth feel better.

I trudged back up the hill, straight up the trail I had slid down on my back so I wouldn't disturb any more fresh snow. I plopped down onto the merry-go-round and it tilted under my weight. Then I ran-like a pig, because that was the only way I knew how to run, I was told-I ran and ran and ran until I got home. Mom's car was gone. She must've driven over to my corner of Queen Anne Ave to bring me home from the snowstorm.

I ran upstairs and went for my box. It was time to start living off of Saltines and Caprisuns.

I screwed open the vent where I remembered hiding it last, but instead of a box, I only found warm air. My stomach dropped. I reached my arm in as far as it could go, but I just kept finding more and more warm air and no cedar box.

I looked under the bed inside the Hungry Hungry Hippos box and in the attic behind the portrait of my Grandpa and in every hole outside I had ever buried that box. I must've looked in at least two dozen different places, but it wasn't in any one of them. I just kept finding a mixture of warm air and cold air, and sometimes just one or the other-but no cedar box.

I lay on the floor and pulled my blanket tight over my face then stuffed it into my mouth and screamed, so it wouldn't make any sound. When I pulled the blanket out, it was spotted with red. I reached back up into my mouth and poked at my gums. They were still bloody, but I had numbed them with the snow, so they didn't hurt too much. I reached back and found my last baby tooth, a molar. I pinched it with my fingers. It didn't budge. So I tried wiggling it a little. It didn't budge. I wiggled it and wiggled it, and then started shaking it like I didn't want it any more. I shook it and shook it, and then started yanking at it. It started giving a little, and my tongue started working it from underneath. I ran to the bathroom and grabbed some floss and tied it around the tooth. It was easy to tie, because there was no tooth in front or behind it. I tied a square-knot, just like my Dad had taught me, with one end around the tooth and the other tied up around the doorknob to my room. I closed my eyes. I slammed the door.

Nothing happened. I was standing on the wrong side of the door, so the floss just went limp. I opened the door up again, went and stood out on the other side. I closed my eyes. I kicked the door in with my foot and was yanked forward. I felt the tooth loosen from its socket. A pulsing throb spread up through my jaw, but I was angry and numb and cold, so it didn't hurt. The tooth still hung on by a thread of pink gum, so I tied it up again, and kicked the door in and it flew right out and dangled from the door like a person who was hanged to death. I untied it and went and cleaned it off and stared at myself for a moment. My face was almost perfectly round like a kickball, but the right side of my mouth was all swollen, which would take a good lie for my parents-maybe I fell and hit my jaw on the curb or got a hickie on the side of my mouth by a leopard.

I looked down at the tooth. I had just pulled it out. I made the decision. I made the decision to pull my tooth out, and I did pull it out. And that made me feel strong. Like I was worth something.

I went up to my room and took out the other tooth from my jacket that Grant had knocked out with the table leg I had stolen from Chuck's wood scraps, and I got out a piece of paper and a red crayon and wrote:

"Dear Tooth Fairy,

I lost 2 teeth today. They are under the pillow. You can keep them. They are my last 2 baby teeth. I am not a baby anymore. Thank you. I hope to meet you one day.

Sincerely, Zachary Bornstein."

- - -

Now years of every penny of every allowance and every nickel from every chocolate bar and cup of lemonade I ever sold and every dime I picked up by keeping my gaze down wherever I walked and every quarter I found scouring the couch for hours and every half dollar from grandpa for finding the Afikomen and every dollar from every birthday gift, and every foreign coin and two-dollar bill from my eccentric tooth fairy had gone into that cedar box, and when I counted it before I hid it, it would come to a sum that would need me to write down four numbers before the decimal place just to encompass it all-If you're not one for the math, let me tell you, that's a lot of Saltines and Caprisuns, maybe a couple years worth.

I still look for that box every time I go home: in the fireplace and in the back of closet under my dad's ties and on top of the fridge behind the napkins and in the toilet tank and in the Mouse Trap game box. I still have the key, though, just nothing to unlock-it sits in its littler box, meditating alone next to the jangling Chinese balls.

Every now and then I find my mom's or my dad's or my brother's box-they had similar ones, but never bothered to put anything in theirs or hide them like I did-and when I do find theirs, I run it up to my room and place it on the bed. I scrub my hands and say a prayer. My heart starts racing and my jaw twitches like there's someone tickling my brainstem with a frozen feather, and I open it up millimeter-by-millimeter with my fingertips tingling, only to find a thin layer of dust and a mild stomach ache from all that anticipation.

I reckon that if I ever did find mine, I would spend a couple of weeks reliving my past, sorting through the teeth and coins and film canisters and obsidian and squares of old chewed-up blanket and notes, maybe even writing back to my eight-year-old self-he could use a boost.

So if you're reading this, eighty-year-old-self, I wouldn't mind a little advice myself. The location of the box would be dandy, of course, but really if there's anything else-how to make a living without getting beat up or scamming children, how to run like a horse and not a pig, or how appraise my worth with something other than dollars. Pretty much everything I do is for your benefit, so I think you owe me one or four. It'd help us both out. You scratch my back, I continue to generate the cells necessary for yours. The future is all we have to look forward to, you and me, and all the ones of us in-between.

Sincerely,

22-year-old Zachary Bornstein

Former Chief Executive Snack-Baron

Zack's Snack Shack™