Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga

Structural Patterns

Reflections on Art, Technology and Society

They Took All My Money in One Day

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Walking along the 86th Street and 2nd Avenue Q platform, I heard screams of agony from a young voice. Between loud crying and guttural sounds, I distinguished the phrase, “They took all my money in one day.” The words repeated over and over as inconsolable screams with pauses only to breathe while crying.

I couldn’t see who the boy was, but as I quickened my pace out of curiosity and to reach the far end of the platform before the southbound Q arrived, the cries got louder and louder. Finally, I was in eyesight of the tortured creature; a boy who looked about six wearing a blue blazer, white shirt, and khaki trousers, light brown hair neatly parted to one side. The boy was accompanied by his father, an older middle-aged man, athletic in appearance.

The father kept his left hand on the boy, rubbing his back and gently squeezing the shoulder. His right hand held a briefcase. He was speaking softly trying to console the boy, but the boy did not appear to hear a word that the man said as the crying and screaming – “They took all my money in one day…” did not stop. The boy’s chest was heaving, large tears falling down his cheeks. In the short time that I could see them, I observed the boy’s face redden. Myself a father, I was intrigued. Had the boy been bullied by schoolmates who took his money?

I put aside my goal to make it to the far end of the train and board the last car, which at the Brooklyn Church Street stop leaves me right by the stairs leading toward my home. I was now hoping the train due in two minutes would be delayed so that I could learn about this boy’s lament.

The father and boy had slowly made their way to a steel bench at the center of the platform. The father sat down to be at eye level with the boy. They had their backs to the southbound side of the platform that I had been walking along. So I walked toward them, considering taking a seat on the same bench, but really just trying to get close enough to hear the father and get a sense of what had happened to this poor boy.

It was 3:30 in the afternoon and on my way to the subway, I had walked past similarly uniformed boys of various ages. Certainly, this boy attended an Upper East Side private school – The Buckley School or Saint David’s maybe Dalton? Perhaps his money was spent by the twelve or thirteen-year-olds buying pizza on Lexington. This was a group of unruly boys in the same uniform. I had to brush against the blue-blazer’d mob as they monopolized the width of the sidewalk just outside of Famous Famiglia at 84th and Lex. I could easily imagine those older kids taking money from a six-year-old just for laughs.

I now heard the father repeating to the boy, “This is just part of the game, it’s how it works…” as he held the boy’s arm. I was now discreetly watching. I observed the boy reach into his pocket, his chest still heaving, tears still streaming down his face, but he had stopped repeating the phrase. The boy pulled out an iPhone, cupped it in his small hands, and with a couple quick thumb swipes opened a trading app. The app in dark mode presented red, negative numbers, and a plummeting sparkline. The boy stared down at his phone as the screen blurred with tears.

Written by ricardo

January 19th, 2023 at 3:11 pm