Billy and Johnny were playground buddies, at least they were at the beginning of the school year. It seems that Billy decided to increase his influence on the playground by gathering about ten other boys into what could loosely be called a gang.

Every playground has at least one or two of them. I can still recall with clarity when I was a member of a playground gang--about the age of 9 or 10 I believe. It was a small rural school, so all we did was tease the girls, pull their ponytails, and chase boys we didn't like :-).

Anyway, it appears that Johnny didn't want to go along with the gang idea, for his father--a policeman--had warned him about gangs. In fact, Johnny decided to tell their teacher about what Billy was doing.

After denying Johnny's allegation, and after several days had passed, Billy decided to regroup his small gang. The first order of business was to deal harshly with Johnny, who had turned against his friend by turning them in to the teacher.

Word of the meeting got around and it wasn't long until someone told Johnny what Billy intended to do to him. In the mean time, several gang members had beaten up several boys who had refused to join them. Something had to be done to protect the kids on the playground.

Since Johnny's father was a policeman, he decided that the best thing to do was to deputize a number of other boys for the purpose of stopping Billy's gang. To do this, Johnny decided to police the playground.

The first thing that Johnny did was to organize his band of junior police into groups, which would travel from one end of the playground to the other keeping the peace. Most of them carried a short tree branch or a rock. Johnny knew that doing this in numbers would lessen the likelihood that any of his boys would be caught unaware or alone.

After several minor altercations between the playground police and Bill's gang, Billy decided that it was best to disband his renegade group. Several of his members had been roughed up by Johnny's boys and they clearly outnumbered them by more than two to one. What he figured would happen is that when he broke up his gang, Johnny would do so likewise. Perhaps they could even become friends again--but that's not what happened.

Escalation

Through many months of policing the playground, Johnny became acustomed to the respect and admiration he received from everyone. In fact, he decided to expand his prestige by escalating the role of his playground police.

He assigned patrols that walked the sidewalks leading away from the school into the surrounding neighborhoods. One of their favorite things was escorting the girls who walked to their homes nearby. No one dared go against Johnny's playground police and their numbers continued to grow, as so did Johnny's ego.

It wasn't long until Johnny's playground police began to look for ways to turn their new found power into a way to make spare change. Why not? After all, they were providing a service. They decided to ask each kid on the playground to pay a nickel each week--a small price to pay for protection, Johnny reasoned. Most of the kids could afford it and those who couldn't would not receive any playground protection.

It wasn't long until the amount of protection money required grew to a dime, then fifteen cents, then a quarter. By that time, however, many of the kids who played on the playground decided that a quarter per week was too much money to pay.

Consequently, many of them decided to go without Johnny's protection. Since Billy's gang had disbanded, and there were no other gangs on the playground, it wasn't long until very few were paying for playground protection.

Johnny didn't know what to do. He called his boys together asked what they thought he should do to get more kids to pay for the gang's police protection. Without hesitation, one of them replied,

"Maybe if Billy's gang hadn't broken up, the other kids would be quite willing to pay a quarter a week for protection. If only Billy's gang werer still together."

"That's it!" shouted Johnny. "I'll talk to Billy and see if we can get him to get his gang together again."

"But what would that do?" asked the boy.

"It would give others the idea that they need us, which they really do anyway; and they'd be more likely to pay us the quarter. And, if they don't, then we'll let Billy know and he can have his guys rough them up a little, just enough to get the rest of the kids to pay. They'll think it's better to pay us the money then to face Billy's gang."

"But will Billy do this while we collect the money?"

"Oh, that's easy. We'll cut him in for half of whatever we collect."