I was always floating around the class; sure I had a friend group, but in a small class, everybody is friends with everyone else, and I more than most. My class-clown status was a factor in my popularity, but I was also pretty nerdy. I was interested in science, books, and geology, so my jack-of-all-trades qualities let me navigate the classroom easily. But every recess, it was guaranteed that I would be playing the Star Wars masters game. My friends and I would gather around and choose our jedi masters or sith lords, and then we would start flying from tree limb to roof top, zapping each other with force lightning, and throwing each other to the ground with force push. In some rare situations someone would even lose a limb, but every time, they would miraculously heal before class—oh, the wonders of childhood. Naturally, being seven-year-olds, we were eager to win and even more eager to use our imaginations, so these battles would go on for a long time.

    My imagination had always been my constant companion. It was easy for me to lose myself in its depths. I was always thinking of fantastical ideas for invention, but my greatest by far was The Ship™. However, I needed something to legitimize the ship, something that I could use to sell the ship in later years when I finally made it. That something was my official company Techlead—or Leadtech (I could never decide which). Techlead was my secret passion that I would fantasize about for hours, but eventually I decided no good secret should remain a secret and promptly told my friend group about it. Naturally, my friends shared my sentiment, and so soon, the whole class knew. They were all extremely interested in it. In fact, to my delight, they wanted to be a part of my humble day dream. Nobody could resist the stock option and 401K, so I hired all of them, revenue be damned.

My recess would look a little like this: I would sit at my miniature vacuform plastic table with my CFOs, CBOs, and other high command discussing how to spend the millions we would inevitably make once our parents loaned us the ten thousand million and twenty dollars we were perpetually begging for. Never mind the fact that my CFO was a seven-year-old who, an hour prior, had been discussing the optimal way to smear paint on the carpet. Then the vultures would descend and every single kid would crowd around my table with petitions:

“Can I have a million dollar raise?” one kid would ask.

“What do you do for the company?” I would respond.

“I throw rocks at the slide.”

“Very good, very good. If you can double your daily rock throwage output, the raise is yours.”

    Now this was of course quite a sight for the teachers: little children knowing nothing of the financial woes of the world, trading stocks like tiny, vicious Wall Street execs, and throwing around millions like wood chips (which was common, because wood chips were, in fact, our legal tender). But they couldn't say a thing to us about it because, if they so much as dared to hint at the fact that we were playing a game, the wrath of fifteen carnivorous first-graders would be upon them.

Naturally, in business, one has to make sacrifices for the good of the company. I did it all the time. For example, now that I had a real job, I didn’t have the time to play some silly Star Wars game. But one sacrifice specifically has not left me after all these years. There was a boy named Zach who was extremely enthusiastic about Techlead. He wanted the position of marketing manager and comic-book designer. Naturally, I gave him his post not thinking anything of it, but lo and behold, he came back the next day with actual work to show. We were dumbstruck. We had hundreds of employees but no protocol for when one actually completed work.

    “Excuse me Gabe, I have something to show you,” Zach said timidly amidst the crush of the other juice-drunk employees. 

    “Oh… Wow, please show us your work,” I replied curiously. Zach pulled out a sheath of papers and laid them out in front of us. The pages were covered in many extremely experimental drawings of monsters and buildings and logos.

    He pointed to one and excitedly said, “That horned one with six arms is the Techlead mascot!”

    “Those are arms… Okay, I see now,” I replied with dignified reservation.

    “So what do you think?” he asked with the excitement of a puppy.

Now I will not burden you with the details of how I rejected his work as it will leave you with the weight of regret for the rest of your life, but I will say it did not bother me at the time to see his crestfallen expression or how he walked away with his precious drawings clutched to his chest. Only later in my life, once I was done being a CEO, could I feel terrible for the passion that I had extinguished.

But not then. Then I was like a king in the court. I had everything. This is the part of the story where I tell you about how one of my closest friends betrayed me and took the company, or how the feds discovered the blatant tax evasion we had all been committing. But none of that happened. There is no sad ending where I am left destitute amid a life crisis so profound that I run into the middle of the street, look into the sky, and shout, “Who am I?!”  TechLead thrives and there is nothing to stop it. So how did my empire fall? 

Imagine how a celebrity is unable to live their life without being mobbed by paparazzi and adoring fans. That was my existence. I was constantly accosted by my employees, and my beloved Star Wars game had fallen by the wayside. No one was interested in being Darth Bane or Count Dooku and debating with me for an hour about who would win the fight while we jumped around the wooden playground.

I was happy for a time. The power I had was enough to temporarily stop up the holes left by the absence of the Star Wars game—and the absence of something else, something I couldn't name. But as with any ship, eventually enough water had flooded in so that I could not ignore the fact that I missed something. It would be all too easy to clutch that empty power tight and let its artificial light bathe my life in hollow joys.

But I had a gift, something special that could set me apart from the other corporate billionaires who had chosen that path. I had that fearless joy that too few carry into adulthood. I had that childhood ability to look down an uncertain path and see not despair, but possibility. 

I called all of my employees (the whole class) to the steps. They gathered around, and one final rush of power gripped me as I, standing above all of them, looked soberly down on their upturned faces. I paused. 

Then, with all the projection a tiny seven-year-old can muster, I said, “I am liquidating Tech Lead.” 

The world began to roar with the malice of a crowd that had rapidly turned against me. 

But even with the chaos around me, it was as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I could finally stand up. Slowly, with all the dignity in the world, I walked to the Star Wars spot and waited.