After Slacking Off for Over a Decade, Dad Carried Me to a Winning Life

On the day my high school entrance exams ended, I squatted at the mouth of an alley, eating instant noodles. The kid next door had gotten into the county's best high school, so his mom bought him a new phone. I asked my dad, “When is our family going to amount to something?” My dad sat with one leg crossed over the other, cracking sunflower seeds without even looking up. “Amount to something? We already have.” “What do we have?” He flicked his ash, as casually as if he were talking about the weather. “Son, let me tell you a secret. I'm actually a stock market genius. Our family achieved financial freedom ages ago.” “???” I nearly dropped my noodles. My dad? The man who slept until noon every day, wore flip-flops to the market, and was called “the neighborhood's biggest deadbeat” by the neighbors? He said he'd achieved financial freedom? It wasn't until he pulled out his phone and opened an account I'd never seen before that I stared at the endless string of digits and began to wonder for the first time: Had I spent all these years living through some fake version of poverty?