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five blocks to the University United Methodist Church at the corner of Santa Fe and Kirwin in Salina, Kansas. He’d watch me open the door, and then he’d wave good-bye as I descended the stairs into the world of scouting, where the motto was “Be prepared to sell stuff.”
    â€œAll right, men,” I remember my leader saying one night as he ginned up the crowd. “Let’s get out there and sell this popcorn. It’s a good product at a good price that’s good for America!” And then we’d spontaneously burst into applause, as if we were listening to a Tony Robbins pep talk at Orville Redenbacher’s world headquarters.
    Some kids could count on their families to buy whatever the product was, but my family was always cash strapped, so I’d have to make cold calls to total strangers. We sold popcorn, candy, wrapping paper, (oddly) some wallpaper, lightbulbs, and once an artificial milk substitute from a Caribbean island that gave people intense abdominal pain. Back then nobody would have thought to sue the Scouts over any potential health hazards from shoddy products, because we were operating with the collective goodwill of a nation that believed it was buying things to finance our many good works. In fact, we were moving things that our ingenious leaders got by the gross at rock-bottom prices, resulting in a healthy profit margin. I have no doubt that if those guys were still Scout leaders, they’d have their boys selling cut-rate Botox and knock-off Kate Spade handbags.
    For two years I was one of the troop’s top salesmen, I had developed an irresistible sales pitch during our lightbulb promotion.
    â€œWould you be interested in a three-way?”
    An astonishingly high percentage answered in the affirmative before I would pull out my sales sheet, which detailed the exact specifications of our newfangled three-way intensity lightbulbs. While very successful, I never caught up to our leading salesman, who always beat me in total sales. I had no idea what he told customers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he said, “If you buy this wrapping paper, an orphan boy will finally get a much-needed Adam’s apple.”
    Our many profits were used to finance our monthly campouts and annual summer camporee. Officially the Scouts’ mission was to build young men who would be trustworthy, helpful, courteous, kind, blah, blah, blah. The real reason I joined was to be given carte blanche to do dangerous stuff involving loaded rifles and flying axes, which occurred only when responsible mothers were at least half a county away.
    This is living, I thought as I carefully trained the business end of the gun on my paper target at the base of a twenty-foot dirt hill that was the only thing stopping this pack of boys from slaughtering a herd of Holsteins.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” a Scout leader screamed at my friend Phillip, who had accidentally waved a .22 in the general direction of the quartermaster, who got us a good deal on a gross of linoleum tile squares. “If you kill somebody, I’m going to have to fill out a form, and I hate paperwork, so cut it out!”
    The guns and canoes were the two best activities and made all of my door-to-door glad-handing worthwhile; the rest of the time we did things like learn how to tie clove hitches and bowlines. The Morse code seemed useless, as we weren’t heading back to the telegraph days anytime soon, and learning semaphore was absolutely idiotic until we realized we could send dirty messages by flag. We were, however, not good at that.
    â€œAndrew just told me to ‘kiss his a-d-d ’?”
    â€œThe s is tricky…”
    Midway through our expedition they had a parents’ day. When my mother asked where the ladies’ room was located, my leader pointed in the direction of a ditch latrine. I thought she was going to cry. My father the army vet seemed satisfied that I was going two weeks