The initial "we" encompassed 6 lost souls. There was Steve Labovsky, the source of the Langston Duncan story. Steve was in his senior year of High School, displaced from Delaware to relocate with his dad, a chemist with Dupont, taking a position with Dupont International's headquarters in Geneva. Steve on his best day was angry. He was the first current-events freak I'd ever met. He was the smallest of the group (the rest of us were 6 feet tall or more), and had the sharpest tongue and wit. For "some" reason he also seemed to be the one who could initiate a fight with even the most mellow of folks. This was usually initiated by some current event, news-worthy or otherwise. Steve's ability to be rude and insulting was an innate trait, and soon became legend among us. (In retrospect, it is this trait that perhaps has caused us to drift apart as my perception of this social attribute has pejorated.) There were however, 5 other, equally fucked-up, ex-pat Americans, that were more than willing to take grave exception to some perceived insult that Steve had, or had not heard, much less understood, had he heard it.

The second member of the 6-pack, and these are in no particular order, was John Baldwin. Baldwin's dad was a high level exec in Ford Europe. He lived outside of London and John was sent to school at Ecolint (l'Ecole Internationale in Geneva) with the rest of us. It was never clear to me why John could not find suitable schooling in the English-speaking country where his father was plying his trade - maybe they wouldn't have him - but none of us cared. In fact, we were thrilled to have him exert his comical brand of insanity within our social sphere. John could be highly insulting and extremely funny - two attributes that complemented the overall style of the group. In fact, these were key objectives, although unstated - maybe even unrealized - at the time.

There was also Tim Miller. Tim had been in Geneva the year before with me. He, like Baldwin, was "pension"ing with a Swiss family. I recall Tim's dad was in Poland somewhere (I think State Department) and had sent Tim to Switzerland to obtain a high-level of schooling - so much for the State Department's Intelligence gathering ability in the 1960's. Tim liked to laugh and joke and with John made us almost envy their pension status. (Pension status was the middle ground between the Internat, those students who were boarding students and thereby subject to the rules and regulations of Ecolint's Boarding House rules, and the Externs, or those of us that lived in Geneva with one or more parent. The middle ground was in the land of those living with Swiss families who took in boarders for a fee. While the rules and regs governing them were supposed to be similar to those of the Internat, in practice they tended to be somewhat more lax - or at the very least more subject to avoidance.) Collectively, we sought to indoctrinate the hosting Swiss families that housed our 2 buddies with the "brighter" side of American youth. Deception and avoidance of the relative Swiss family's governance was a key objective. Moreover, we were able to test a concept with one family to later refine it with another. In this fashion, we were able to provide our colleagues with many opportunities to avoid many impediments to our "fun".