“I am gonna send you a Limo”

A limo? Super cool. I confirmed the time again for Saturday 11am and hung up the phone.

“Congratulations” Said David “You got yourself a paid gig”.

He offered $80 an hour, which for a 17 year old high school student who can't even locate his home country on a map… isn't too shabby.

The Limo part was a little fishy, but then again, I was working a tech support gig for CosmoWeb, one of the first Internet Service Providers in New York City and in general. What could be shady about a tech support gig?

I had been interning at Cosmoweb for the last year or so. I came here straight after school, when I wasn't hanging out with Ryan planning our next business idea or smoking weed with Oscar, at a huge artsy loft across from Fashion Institute of Technology.

I had also been spending time at PC Mania with Ryan throughout 11th grade. PC Mania sold computer books for cheap. Blake bought them in bulk by weight.

Ryan and I needed a way to get computer training books for cheap or free, since they were super expensive - an average of $50 per book. Ryan and I were getting our Microsoft Certifications. It was all David's idea in the first place.

David was working for Bnai Zion, a Jewish non-profit center on the East side. Murray Hill they called that neighborhood. He hooked up my father with a job there, one of the only jobs I remember him having. My father was the building manager. He was always managing buildings, I guess, but this was an actual job.

I did the catering every Shabbat for Bnai Zion for a while. I didn't actually prepare the food, I would just plate it and bring it out after Shabbat morning prayers and Kiddush. Me and the Shabbos Goy would smoke weed on the roof, and when they were praying “Moosaf” - which is the last section of the prayers, the Goy and I would plate everything, get the coffee going and bring it out while they did the last Kaddish. The orphan's Kaddish.

It was a fun gig. I don't remember getting paid. I do remember hitting up their Charity boxes before Yom Kippur, but I am not sure that I want to write about that. I don't.

Anyway, I would hang out with David there, learning about networking, building websites and ordering domain names by bulk.

These were the days you could order a domain name and get an invoice for it, you didn't have to pay it on the spot. I ordered hundreds.

Anyway, David was showing me how to design websites, making GIFs and basic website creation applications.

To a 17 year old who recently arrived from Israel without any knowledge of English and basic secular education- making websites and getting my super-somebody Certification seemed like a very smart thing to do.

Blake, the Canadian hothead from PC Mania, wanted an online catalog for his books so people could purchase them without having to come into the shop on 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenue.

“We'll make you a deal”, Ryan and I offered, “We'll make you a website and you give all the books we need for our studies.”

Before we knew it, we were hauling books in a truck from one computer convention to another. Selling books for $5, $10 to nerds was kind of fun. I don't remember working on the website all too much.

That enterprise didn't last long - only until Amazon came on the scene. No more books in Bulk. No more Blake.

That's when I started putting in more time at David's new gig, he was working as the tech lead and founder at Cosmoweb and I was just hanging out there and learning. I loved spending time there after school. David showed me how to operate web servers, mail servers and the basics of networking.

My mother gave me my grandmother's credit card to pay for the certifications exams. I took them one after the other. I would sit at a cafe on 107th Street and River Side - the Coffee Lounge, with a stack of books from PC Mania and would study for the next Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer exam, or A+, Network +, Cisco Network Professional.

For a while, I even worked with this Medical Student - Boris who partnered up with me to create a Community Website for the Upper West Side. We would sit at the restaurant at the 79th Street Boat Basin, drink chilled white wine at lunch and scheme the community portal launch party :)

I didn't like high school. After 15 years in Jewish Religious Schools, being in a regular high school with 3000 kids just wasn't my thing. I was very intimidated by the whole thing. I skipped school almost everyday, I wanted to get out already and become somebody. I didn't really understand anything they were teaching in school and I was terrified of going to college and all that business.

I knew that if I wanted to be somebody, I would have to skip the regular lines, not because I thought I was better, I was terrified that I had no chance the regular way, I had no clue what anyone was talking about, but I understood the computer books.

I managed to graduate high-school one semester early, don't ask me how… most the grades I got were 20's and 30's but I managed get my diploma in December, half way into 12th grade and had more time to spend with David at Cosmoweb and Boris drinking wine and eating Tacos for lunch at fancy cafes by Columbia University.

So when a call came in for David asking for weekend Tech Support, he put the client on mute and asked me if I wanted to go on my first networking support client visit.

What did they need support with?

“Well” David answered “We just installed one of the first ISDN lines ever and it keeps dropping off, maybe you can go troubleshoot it”.

An ISDN internet line is combining 2 regular dial-up lines into one connection, basically doubling the speed for the network.

So I was very happy when the client - Mike, later to be known as Tiny Mike, offered to send me a Limousine Saturday morning.

Little did I know my whole life was going to change.

Saturday morning, a regular Towncar showed up, which is like a fancy illegitimate Taxi. Not the Limo I had been fantasizing about, but that's probably a good sign.

We drove over the Brooklyn Bridge on a crisp and chilly Saturday morning. It took about 45 minutes from my father's apartment on the Upper West Side to Marine Park Brooklyn - a half Italian half Jewish Orthodox neighborhood.

We pulled in to the back parking lot of a medical center.

I walked up a long flight of stairs to get to the offices.

When Mike greeted me at the door, his smile won over my heart; I liked this guy from the second I heard his voice, but now meeting him face to face, something about his energy and presence just won me over.

I looked around; it was a big rectangle room, with seven computer desks by the walls and seven different clocks with different time zones above each computer.

Mike introduced me to five other guys, who were all young and friendly. Young meaning in their twenties. I was always the youngest, just like the clocks on the wall; almost everyone was from a different nationality. The Italian brothers. The Greek. The Russian. The Americans.

I didn't really care about their ISDN line anymore; I wanted to know what they did over there on Saturdays with all these clocks on the wall.

Later, Tiny Mike opened up a safe and took out stock certificates.

He told me that they were stock brokers, they raised money for companies.

One question led to another and he told me that they were sitting on twenty million dollars worth of stock, but they couldn't sell it for a year. Something about restricted stock. That's how it works, he explained; they had to wait a year before they, too, could sell it.

“You mean to tell me that I'm going to fix your internet line for eighty dollars an hour, while you guys are worth millions just waiting for these clock hands to move a year forward?” I said.

No f**ing way, I said, I want in. I want to be somebody. I want to skip the lines. I don't want to attend City College in the fall and be a shrink (that's what I told my guidance counselor and she recommended City College of New York).

I want to be a millionaire with Mike & the Boyz.

What do you need to raise money? I asked.

A good idea, preferably for a tech company, he replied.

I got one, I said. I have servers and plenty of ideas.