“And if you guys think THAT sounds good,” the guy in the grey suit said with slightly more enthusiasm than the youthful and exuberant 4th graders he addressed, “If you sell 300 items, you get...”

Everyone in the room leaned forward and opened their ears and eyes wide in anticipation of the big news that awaited...

“... A brand new ten-speed bicycle!” His face contorted into a wide, fake smile and his eyes opened wide as the entire room erupted in a wave of excitement and anticipation. Clearly, he had been right the entire time regarding the initiative that we’d been asked to undertake - this was definitely more than a fundraiser - it was a FUN-Raiser! Because what’s not fun about selling rolls of wrapping paper at eight bucks a piece or cans of cashew brittle for fifteen dollars - and all the while, earning credits toward a yellow AM/FM radio or a remote controlled dune buggy or the Grand Pubah Of All Awards, a ten-speed Huffy? Am I right?

“Dude, you are definitely right,” my bestest friend in the whole wide world, Jay (yes, this Jay), whispered back to me as I showed him the simple math I’d produced during the suited man’s speech. “This could totally work! If we teamed up, we could definitely sell enough to get that bad boy!”

“I know!” I replied with an excited whisper, showing him how simple it would be for the two of us to divide territory, pool our resources, and work our asses off to hit the numbers. “I mean, between both of us, we could easily get 25 sales!”

“Man... That radio sure is sweet,” he said, sharing my feelings on the bright yellow box of transistors with a dial that had ALL the stations on it - not just the crappy AM talk and sports ones, but the totally badass FM ones as well! And with our proposed sharing system, every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, I could listen to the Top 9 at 9 on Power 99.7 FM! I would only get to listen to Casey Kasum’s top 40 on every other Sunday, but heck - I couldn’t argue! That’s two more Sundays filled with blissful tune-filled comic book reading than I had now - and I’d be doing it with HEADPHONES!

And if the mood struck - and I knew it would - I could go for a stroll around my neighborhood with my bright yellow headphones and rock out while all the other kids watched out of their bedroom windows or rolled by on their bikes and just stared at me, riddled with jealousy - except the special chosen few who I’d forgive for all their transgressions and allow to be my friend now that I was the coolest kid in the whole neighborhood with my portable radio. A smile grew on my face about as wide as Jay’s (since he was clearly daydreaming the exact same scenario) when a thought fluttered into my mind.

“Dude...” I whispered as I poked him, snapping him out of the mini movie staring himself that was running through his head, “If we branched out... You know... Moved over into King Road and all the houses there...”

His eyes lit up. “Yeah... YEAH!” He exclaimed, interrupting the man in the grey suit with the yellow smile.

“Jay Elliot!” yelled a shrill, decrepit old voice from the front of the room. It was Mrs. Vinson, the oldest, meanest bag of bones I’d ever seen in my life - and unfortunately for me, she happened to be the only teacher with room in her class when I moved to that school after my mom and dad got married.

“Yes, ma’am?” He replied.

“Do I need to seperate the two of you...” She said, pointing a bony, wrinkled finger in our direction. “...AGAIN?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered wisely. The last time we were split up, we spent nearly a week in misery as we suffered the whispered slings and arrows of the other kids in the class who all clearly knew and liked one another. As it stood, Jay and I were the only kids who hadn’t grown up in that school their entire lives, and regardless of the fact that we stayed friends for almost eight years afterward, the core of our friendship was based on the fact that we would actually talk to one another.

“Okay, then, hush up and pay attention!” Mrs. Vinson demanded. “You need to hear this if you plan on participating in the fundraiser.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Vinson,” the suited dude said. “Now, where was I... Oh, yes, the order form.” He picked up a gloss piece of paper adorned with an extremely large grid. “You see, you put your customer’s name here on the side, and then up here along the top are the names of all the items in your catalog... You just put the quantity they order of each item in the box that lines up with their name, then total the price over here on the right side, and...”

He went on for a few more paragraphs explaining how simple it was to keep track of who ordered what. I couldn’t care less about any of that - I could figure it out pretty easily... After all, it’s just a matrix of names and goods. I had more important things to think about - things like how cool it would be to have that radio, and how it would be doubly cool if Jay and I could work together to get TWO of them.

“...And when the items come in, you deliver them to your customers,” Mr. Gary continued. “It couldn’t be simpler!”

Apparently, Jay was paying more attention than I was, because his hand shot up immediately after Mr. Gary completed that sentence. “Yes, young man?” The suit said.

“Uh... So we, like... Get the money when they place their order?” Jay asked.

“Yes, that’s correct. Cash or check, but no money ord-”

“And then, it’s going to be, like... A month before the stuff shows up?” Jay interrupted.

“Well, four to six weeks... But yes, at least a month,” Mr. Gary answered.

Jay smiled a smile that I’d eventually learn to recognize before it even adorned his face. Mr. Gary wrapped up his presentation and handed out catalogs and order forms to all the students in the room, who were slowly erupting with glee over all the exciting and cool items that they could sell to their potential customers. Murmurs of how many cans of cashew brittle a certain grandmother might buy or how much wrapping paper someone’s father could sell at his job echoed between the walls of the classroom. Plans were being formulated and targets were being set by everyone in the room, except for Jay and I, who’d done all that busy work during the actual presentation.

The bus ride home was excruciating - Jay and I were both bustling with excitement to get the hell off that yellow kid carriage and begin the eventual conquest of our entire neighborhood. We hopped off at his bus stop (a scant 10 houses north of mine) and ran into his house to grab his skateboard and scooter. A small argument ensued over who got which, but given that I’d just broken my skateboard a week previous, my position was pretty weak to begin with...

We ran out of the house with our catalogs, order forms and about two hours of daylight left to get stuff done. I immediately began down the driveway of his neighbor’s house when he yelled for me to stop.

“Dude... No...” He said.

“What?” I replied. “Why not?”

“Because,” he whispered as he waved me back to his position on the road.

“Because WHY?” I demanded as I kicked the ground and scooted back to him. “Mr. Thompson is nice, he’d probably order a lot!”

“We can’t hit Mr. Thompson,” he said. “He’s friends with my dad.”

“SO?” I stated. “That’s even better, isn’t it?”

“Not for what we’re going to do,” he said, wielding the smile I’d seen a few hours earlier.

Now, only being in fourth grade, and having only known Jay for about two months at that point, I hadn’t yet developed the skill of reading into the context behind the things that Jay asked, said and thought. It would be at least two years before I was able to follow where Jay led without having to be told what was going on in his devilish little mind... But at that point, I was still pretty clueless. So he had to explain it to me.

“Wait...” I replied, “We KEEP the money?!?”

“SHHHH!” He said, slapping his hand over my mouth. “Don’t be so loud about it!”

He lifted his hand from my mouth and I lowered my volume a bit. “How the heck are we going to get away with that?” I asked. “I mean... Like... How?”

“Well, the way I figure it...” He began as he explained that there were a ton of neighborhoods near us that we didn’t live in, which means that there were a bunch of people we could hit that would never know who the hell we were. And given how good the quality of their candy had been at Halloween - especially in comparison to the stuff we got from our neighborhood - this could end up being quite lucrative for us.

For a fourth grader, Jay had quite the criminal mind.

So we skated and scooted a little over a quarter mile to the King Road area of our town. We hit the very first house we came to - a veritable castle compared to the houses Jay and I lived in - and rang the doorbell.

“Hello,” Jay began as a kind older woman opened the door. “We’re from Swint Elementary and we’re doing a fundraiser. Would you like to look at our catalog?” I was a bit taken aback as the lady agreed and took our catalog. We weren’t from Swint - we went to Kilpatrick! Why did he say Swint? Why, who knows if Swint is even doing a fundraiser! I didn’t even know any kids from... Oh.

Now THAT is clever.

We rocked back and forth on our heels as the lady looked over the goods and items we had for sale. She slowly paroused the swatches of wrapping paper that split the catalog down the middle, when suddenly her eyes lit up. “Oh, my,” she said aloud, “Cashew brittle! Now that does sound lovely!”

“Yes, ma’am, it is,” Jay agreed.

“It’s my favorite thing in there,” I stated. “My mom ordered twenty of them.”

“Well,” the old lady said with a chuckle and a smile, “I’m not going to order THAT many of them, but I’ll certainly take one of them... And maybe one of the tins of peanut butter balls.”

We snickered. She said “balls.”

“Okay,” Jay said as he scribbled on the order form, “We have you down for cashew brittle and peanut butter balls...” Of course, we snickered again. “That’ll be twenty three dollars.”

“Oh, okay...” She said, handing back the catalog. “Is a check okay?”

I began to say “Sure,” but was cut off by Jay who immediately stated that we were a cash-only establishment.

I looked at him strangely as the woman left to get her purse. “Dude,” I whispered, “The guy in the suit said that you could take cash OR check...”

“Yeah,” Jay responded, “But WE only take cash.”

“Oh,” I said as I pondered that one a bit.

“Here you go,” the elder lady said as she handed us a twenty and three ones.

“Thanks!” Jay said, reaching out to grab the money.

“When will my items arrive?” she asked.

“Um, like, four to six weeks,” I responded.

“But sometimes it takes, like, eight weeks or even two months,” Jay added as he turned to leave. “We'll bring it to you when it arrives!”

“Oh, well... Okay! Good luck then!” The lady said.

And so it went at ten other houses that afternoon. By the end of the day, we had in our pockets one hundred twenty seven dollars, two quarters, a dime, a nickel, and a couple of peppermints that the couple in New Haven Courts had sitting in a dish by the door. By the end of the week, we were sitting on a little over six hundred dollars, a wallet Jay felt the need to lift off the kitchen counter of one guy’s apartment, two Nintendo games belonging to some kids who actually WENT to Swint Elementary, a pack of Marlboro Lights and some silverware. We’d eaten the peppermints, though.

“Dude... This is seriously awesome,” Jay said as we counted our cash. “We can buy, like... Twenty radios if we wanted!”

“Yeah!” I agreed. I’d love to tell you that I was guilt-ridden and filled with anxiety as I pondered my fate over the larceny that had taken place, but I didn’t. I was happy as HELL. I’d never even seen one hundred dollars in cash in my life, much less six times that. I was wearing shoes that were one size too small for me and had holes in the toe and sole. I bounced between two pairs of jeans that might or might not be washed between wearings. My house held six people in two bedrooms, and the closest I’d come to owning a Nintendo at that point was borrowing Jay’s when he went to visit his grandmother for a week. So yeah... At that point in my life, I felt perfectly justified in taking twenty to fifty bucks in cash from people who lived in much nicer neighborhoods than mine.

Well, no... That’s me as an adult trying to reason it out. At the time, I didn’t feel any sort of justification at all - I didn’t even know I should. I just felt happy to have a ton of money I could go spend on stuff. And that’s precisely what we did. We skated and scooted up to Southlake Mall and bought all the stuff we could only dream of having. Magazines, candy, Transformers, GI Joe... We reveled in gluttonous materialism as we acquired the toys and trinkets we’d been lusting over for weeks and months.

And that’s precisely how we got caught.

It was the Friday before Christmas. I’d been on vacation from school that entire week, and as such, my father had given me a few chores he wanted me to get done that week. However, I’d spent the whole of my week going up to the mall and spending my booty, so I’d done very little in the way of getting anything done around the house. My mother, being the wonderful woman she was, knew that my father was going to put me on restriction for not cleaning my room as he requested, so she decided to help me stay out of trouble by taking on that task.

She was digging through my closet to gather my dirty laundry when she found the box filled with crap I’d bought that week. At first, she thought I was shoplifting (a crime I wasn’t yet adept at, but a few years later...) so I vehemently defended my good reputation by explaining that, no, I didn’t steal ANY of that stuff - I bought it all with my own money!

“What money?” she inquired.

I began to weave a tapestry of lies and untruths that, for a very short time, formed a picture of a stalwart eagle, or a proud giraffe or some other noble creature that would never, ever think of doing an untoward thing to any living being. But my mom, being the clever lady she is, saw the nits and holes in my story and one by one, began pulling at the frayed ends until the entire thing unravelled.

“What about that... That “friend” of yours, Jay?” She said with a face full of fire. “Was HE involved in all of this?”

“Uh...” I stammered.

“I bet he was... Ohhhhh, boy, I bet he was!” She said while looking through me; through the wall behind me; all the way up the street to where his house would approximately be if her coordinates were correct (and I think they were). “He’s trouble! That boy... He’s nothing but trouble!”

“No!” I stated. “He had nothing to do with this... He wasn’t involved.”

She looked deep into my eyes, searching for the lie. “You sure he wasn’t involved?”

“I promise you, mama,” I said with an earnest look and my hand over my heart, “He’s not part of this. I did this by myself.”

I knew precious little when I was 10 years old, but one thing I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt - you don’t rat out your friends. Sure, they may rat YOU out... But you don’t ever, EVER rat on them.

She cocked her head and squinted one eye. “If you’re lying to me... God help me, I’ll...”

“I’m not lying, mama,” I replied. “I swear.”

That night, my mother told my father, and my father told... Well, damn near anyone within earshot. Not that he went knocking on doors to let our neighbors know that I was a crooked little shyster who couldn’t be trusted - it’s just that his voice boomed when he was mad (and, often, even when he wasn’t). Anyone within a five block radius couldn’t help but hear how evil I was that night.

Because all of the things I'd bought couldn’t easily be returned, my dad made me dig a pit in the back yard and burn every single one of them. He then drove me around the following weekend to every single neighborhood I’d confessed to spreading my graft into, so that I could face my victims and atone for my sins. But it wasn’t enough that I go knock on a few doors and tell them I was sorry...

Oh, no. He walked my ass up to the door, made me tell them what I did, and then asked them specifically if they were one of my hapless victims. Naturally, the majority of them said no, and even some of the houses we did hit happened to be inhabited by the husband instead of the wife or vice versa... However, more than one asked where “the other little boy” was. The first time, my dad looked at me and demanded to know who they were talking about. I told them that sometimes, a few kids from the neighborhood I was in walked with me and asked me what I was doing. I never mentioned that Jay was involved.

As repayment for my deed, I was forced to offer to mow lawns, trim hedges and volunteer for other forms of manual labor at half the normal rate it’d cost them, until I paid off my debt to them. Almost every single person declined, and hoped that the guilt that was presumably coursing through me was already punishment enough. But a few did take me up on the offer - which, oddly enough, led to a very profitable series of summers from yard work from those neighborhoods.

But not as profitable as imaginary cashew brittle.