With a name like Potash, it has to be good.

Jeff asks for a colored pencil.

”Do you want orange or green?” I ask, rummaging through the drawer that holds compasses, cell phone chargers, and 1/4” scale house plan templates, in addition to numerous semi-functional writing implements.

He picks green, and proceeds to draw indecipherable markings on the pages of a book called Stikky Stock Charts. When he picked up the book at Barnes & Noble, I assumed the word “stikky” had some arcane link to stock chart interpretation, but in fact it is merely the name for a brand of books--like The Idiot’s Guide to [whatever makes you feel idiotic.] There’s the Stikky Guide to Trees, the Stikky Guide to Rock Formations, and very possibly the Stikky Guide to Scraping Gum off Your Shoe.

Jeff is trying to learn how to interpret recent performance stock graphs, and thusly buy and sell prudently. He’s taken an interest in anything that is both doing well (according to the chart gurus,) and has an unglamourous, and unlikely niche, such as scouring powders for subway tunnels, or commercial ash-tray sand embossers. I must confess, he did rather well with his small pot in the course of a week with a company that makes oil-drilling equipment. He then sold it on cue as advised by one of his book authors. Then floundering about the question of how to reinvest, he rejected an early favorite with a name that sounded like Bigfoot’s hearth-sweepings, and instead--with my backing--settled on Apple. For now. With luck I won’t be the only one waiting to make my move when they release the new Leopard operating system in October.

Due in small part to uncertainty, and large part to the capriciousness of a faulty memory, Jeff will assuredly announce a wish to sell Apple before I think the plan has had time to work. But I do serve, fortunately or not, as the gatekeeper here. We review the steps for logging onto the stock-trading website daily, but it is, for him, an utterly unacquirable skill. In truth, it would worry me if he could do it himself. I seem to have broken him of the habit of phoning the company headquarters every time--because it’s resulted, more than once, in their resetting his password to something new of his choosing which he invariably can’t remember when I go to help him the next day.

“Hey Gabe-O!” I say. (I’ve just noticed it’s 10 pm.) “I KNOW” he bellows. “Make sure you...” I say. “I KNOW” he bellows. “Brush your...” I say. “I KNOW” he bellows. “And wear rubber bands,” I say.