When I was teenager, I worked one summer at a church camp washing dishes. One day, after cleaning up from supper, the cook, his assistant, the groundskeeper, and I ended up out behind the dining hall where there was an old tree stump on which someone had painted a target. The cook, who was always up to trying something new, had brought with him the kitchen's meat cleaver, a hatchet-like utensil, and he suggested a contest to see which of us could throw the cleaver most squarely into the center of the target. That sounded like fun, so each of us took turns flinging that sharp-edged implement at the stump.

We were just getting into it really good, when around the corner of the dining hall came the camp manager. We immediately assumed we were all in big trouble and braced ourselves for a baw…