He'll be the odd man ow!

Although Dean and I were only in junior high school, we had already acquired hoodlum habits. We decided it was less trouble to do wrong than right, and more fun, so we devised a coin flipping scam to beat our schoolmates out of their lunch money.

Operating on the five-flip, odd-man-out-wins-all principle, we two con boys lured suckers in and contrive to have our coins land on heads and tails, insuring we’d win the third guy’s money.

We repeated this four out of five flips. On the fifth flip, we made certain both of our coins landed either tails or heads.

Dean, now a lawyer (with lawyer tendenc...