At one of my first Cub Scout meetings as a kid, our pack leader – known as Akela – voiced his displeasure after discovering that some of the boys had spilled paint all over the bathroom sink. Like his namesake from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Akela was a stern and grizzled man who expected both virtue and discipline from his Cubs.
When Akela demanded to know who was responsible for the mess, nobody stepped forward. It was at that point that one of the other adult leaders encouraged me to go and apologise. Although I wasn’t responsible for the spillage, I had been with the group of boys who did it.
