Ten Quiet Minutes
Danny held his phone under the table like a man in church. His thumb never once got to rest.
Danny came into the hall every Thursday after his shift at the diner, and for a month I thought he was the politest young man in the county, because he held his phone below the table edge like a man in church. He wasn't texting anybody. He was watching a little green line go up and down, and every time it moved his whole face moved with it.
"It's not gambling, Sal," he told me when I finally asked. "It's reading the market." He said it the way a man says his own name. I let it sit. I had a name for what I did on the road too. Mine was "working the room."
What I noticed was his thumb. A shooter at a table has to wait. He chalks, he walks around, he lets the other fellow shoot. Danny's thumb never got to wait. It tapped when he was happy, tapped when he was sore, tapped when the line did nothing at all, because doing nothing was the one thing he couldn't stand. The app had bright colors and a little burst of confetti when he pressed the button. Nobody built it to help him sit on his hands.
One Thursday he missed his own break at the diner, and his boss phoned the hall. Danny stood in my office holding the receiver, sweating, and said, "I just couldn't put it down for ten minutes." Then he laughed, and it was the wrong kind of laugh, and he heard it too.
I told him what I learned the slow way. The trouble isn't the screen or the table. It's the itch to act, and the relief you feel the second you scratch it. I chased that relief for forty years and called it skill. When a fellow can't go ten minutes without it, that's not a job. That's a habit with a leash on him, and it's worth asking who is holding the other end.
Danny deleted the app that night, right there on my counter, thumb shaking. Then he sat on the stool and did nothing for ten full minutes. He said it was the longest ten minutes of his life, and the first one in a month that belonged to him.
If the itch is holding the leash, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-MY-RESET.
Ten quiet minutes are yours. Take them back.
Sal
When you cannot go ten minutes without checking a trading app, the problem is the urge to act, not the market. Trading driven by that urge is a gambling habit, and it deserves to be treated like one.