I remember when I lost my innocence

No, not that kind of innocence...Your minds are all in the gutter.

When I was around 8 I joined the Cub Scouts. I wasn't a great scout. I had no facility for tying knots, which was a big part of the skill set required for advanced scouts. But I went to the meetings and got a couple of badges and certainly wasn't the worst scout in the pack. And occasionally we'd go on an interesting field trip.

The most interesting field trip was to be part of a local New York game show called "Just For Fun." It was broadcast on Saturday mornings from 9 to 11. I loved that show. It was a game show for kids. There were two teams- Blue and Gold (Cub Scout Official Colors!). I always rooted for the Blue team. There were bleachers for each team with about 75 kids per team and some kids would get selected to do what they called "stunts" in competition. They were mostly exaggerated party games- toss this through that, climb something, do something with a blindfold on. Your team got points if you won, and winners got prizes and even losers got decent prizes.

Actually, the best thing was the blindfolded egg walk, which I'd never seen before. They covered the studio floor with plastic and put a couple of hundred eggs scattered around the floor. They picked 2 kids from each team and had them take off their shoes and blindfolded them. They then instructed the kids to walk across the studio, and that their teams would call to them to guide them across the floor. Whoever broke the fewest eggs won. And while they were explaining this, the stagehands were removing all the eggs. So you have these kids, tiptoeing across the floor, trying to avoid eggs that weren't there. Hilarious. But not the point of this.

The rule for being on Just For Fun was that you needed to be 10 years old to participate. I was almost 10, but still 9, as were several of my pack-mates. So on the bus, the Pack Leader, our paragon of honor, told us that if we were 9 and they asked us how old we were to tell them we were 10. He told us to lie. My Pack Leader told us to lie. Life would never be the same. I almost expected him to then tell us to cheat to win.

So we walk in and some woman comes over and asks me how old I am. I say "Ten." And she picks me to be in the ultimate Just For Fun event, the treasure chest. At the beginning of the show, one kid from each team would be given brought to a locked treasure chest with a bucket of 1000 keys, only one of which opened the lock. The kids would work throughout the show, trying to unlock the chest. If you succeeded, your team got a lot of points and you got a load of prizes, including a new 10-speed bicycle. There wasn't always a winner in this stunt. There's no way to get through trying 1000 keys in a lock in 2 hours.

And with about 30 minutes to go in the show, my key opened the lock. I couldn't believe it. I got all the cool prizes and my team won because of me so everyone on my team got prizes too. And all because I lied. I was not exactly wracked with guilt over this, but I clearly never forgot.