Boy Scout Troop 325
Scoutmaster Minute
The Other Larry
October 25, 2005
Larry Polyak, Scoutmaster

It's time for another story from ancient times - that's right - the 1970's. Because you have just starting a new school year, I thought I'd share a personal school story with you. Although it was just a minor event, it had a great impact on my life.

Larry is not a common name, but there was one other Larry in my high school class: Larry Peterson. Not only did we share the same first name, our last names both started with "P" so our names appeared together on lists in alphabetical order. Therefore, our lockers were next to each other and we even sat next to each other in many classes.

It was the fall of 1971, and we were in high school Chemistry class. The other Larry sat on my left. I didn't really like Chemistry but I tried to get good grades and I usually did. I liked it better than English anyway. I could never understand why I had to take four years of English when I could already speak English. Anyway.... the other Larry was a *chemical genius*, aceing almost all the tests. To this day, I don't know how he did it, but I could see the big A+ written on almost every paper that was handed back to him.

It was probably the 4th or 5th test of the year in chemistry, and I was totally stumped. I looked at the questions wondering if I was in the wrong class. I didn't know any of the answers. So I did something I had never done before. I looked over at Larry's paper and cheated. I copied his answers and put them down on my paper. I didn't get caught, at least not by the teacher or the school. But I did get caught by the fact that this was the one and only time that the other Larry didn't know what was going on either. I got my worst grade ever and so did he. As it turns out, the teacher had mistakenly tested us on something that he had not taught yet.

That incident really made me think. Why did I assume that the other Larry always knew better? And why did it matter? I resolved to always use my own best efforts, and that my best effort was as good as or better than the next guy. And even if they weren't - at least they were mine and I couldn't blame anyone else.

I finished a couple more years of high school, and seven years of college. I am not proud that I cheated, but I am proud that I never did it again.

Thank you for listening.