don't eat mothballs is the lesson here

When I was a young lad, I gathered with my mates under a large spruce like tree and smashed bricks on cinder blocks with rocks crushing them into powder. It was one of my original work camp efforts where I crafted my skills as a leader.

Perhaps I was a little on the draconian side on occasion like the time I grabbed a large box (from a washing machine) and called it a penalty box. If somebody wasn't working hard enough, or say started chatting unnecessarily they got put in the box for 10 minutes... there were no 2 minute penalties. I recall one time when everybody was in the box, and I, there to set an example diligently crushed a brick into a fine powder all the time looking down with intense focus.

The product was crushed red or yellow brick in fine or lumpy. You could buy a small yoghart container for 50 cents, take it home, grab some paper, make a design with glue, and then dust the rock crushing on the glue to make some fine art. Yes, we were in the business of art supply and there was no time to look ahead now because there were rocks to crush... I mean bricks.

We pillaged the bricks from some known supplies, Schofield's garden, U of T Scarborough campus, and other various construction sites in the neighborhood.

I guess on of my first "leadership mistakes" was forcing somebody to stand guard over the "product" while we went an pillaged bricks... surly the act of going out and collecting bricks could have been a chance to hang... nobody could talk though... it might have blown our cover.

Later when it looked like I was losing control of the group I developed an initiation ritual that involved putting some crushed mothballs on your tongue. Only young Chris Wolfe would go for that, and of course myself.

Later when Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe called me over to their house to talk to me about feeding their son mothballs, my insanity began to occur to me.

the Wolfe's "so why did you make Chris eat moth balls?"

me "he wanted to"

their oldest son Richard (wild laughter) "He wanted to!"

Then they found out that I had also placed mothballs on my tongue and saw my sincerity that the ritual was indeed important. They began to see that I wasn't mean and malicious but rather blindly obsessive and rather prone to really dunm ideas... we were all relieved.