" "How do I make money?" I asked. "Well, use your head, son," he said, smiling. Which re- ally meant, "That's all I'm going to tell you," or "I don't know the answer, so don't embarrass me." A Partnership Is Formed The next morning, I told my best friend, Mike, what my dad had said. As best I could tell, Mike and I were the only poor kids in this school. Mike was like me in that he was in this school by a twist of fate. Someone had drawn a jog in the line for the school district, and we wound up in school with the rich kids. We weren't really poor, but we felt as if we were because all the other boys had new base- ball gloves, new bicycles, new everything. Mom and dad provided us with the basics, like food, shelter, clothes. But that was about it. My dad used to say, "If you want something, work for it." We wanted things, but there was not much work available for 9-year-old boys. "So what do we do to make money?" Mike asked. "I don't know," I said. "But do you want to be my part- ner?" He agreed and so on that Saturday morning, Mike be- came my first business partner. We spent all morning com- ing up with ideas on how to make money. Occasionally we talked about all the "cool guys" at Jimmy's beach house having fun. It hurt a little, but that hurt was good, for it in- spired us to keep thinking of a way to make money. Fi- nally, that afternoon, a bolt ofJjghtning camejhrough our heads. It was an idea Mike had gotten from a science book heTiad read. Excitedly, we shook hands, and the partner- ship now had a business. For the next several weeks, Mike and I ran around our neighborhood, knocking on doors and asking our neigh- bors if they would save their toothpaste tubes for us. With puzzled looks, most adults consented with a smile. Some asked us what we were doing. To which we replied, "We can't tell you. It's a business secret." My mom grew distressed as the weeks wore on. We had selected a site next to her washing machine as the place we would stockpile our raw materials. In a brown card- board box that one time held catsup bottles, our little pile of used toothpaste tubes began to grow. Finally my mom put her foot down. The sight of her neighbors' messy, crumpled used toothpaste tubes had gotten to her. "What are you boys doing?" she asked. "And I don't want to hear again that it's a business secret. Do something with this mess or I'm going to throw it out." Mike and I pleaded and begged, explaining that we would soon have enough and then we would begin pro- duction. We informed her that we were waiting on a cou- ple of neighbors to finish using up their toothpaste so we could have their tubes. Mom granted us a one-week ex- tension. The date to begin production was moved up. The pres- sure was on. My first partnership was already being threat- ened with an eviction notice from our warehouse space by my own mom. It became Mike's job to tell the neighbors to quickly use up their toothpaste, saying their dentist wanted them to brush more often anyway.