Harley Finkelstein

And my mom said, we can't afford it.

It was like $30,000 a year, which was an insane amount of money for my parents at that point.

And I think that's actually around when I began to get my first chip on my shoulder.

Something didn't sit fully well with me.

And I think the way it manifested was

ambition, competitiveness, some insecurity.

So, I mean, there I was going to a public high school in South Florida.

I was a, you know, I was a short Jewish kid from Montreal, Canada, moved to South Florida, had no friends or family.

There were 4,000 students at the school.

And there were students from all different backgrounds.

Some live in Boca.

Some were being bused in from Delray, a much lower income community.

There were police officers because that's what you had in big American public high schools.

And

I was scared shitless.

I don't know sort of what drove me then, but within a year, I was president of student council.

I was wrestling varsity because I figured out actually one of the advantages of being short and kind of stocky was I was a pretty good wrestler.

And so I was able to change my circumstances by sheer will.

at that point.

The second thing that happened around that same period of time was that I really, I was 13.