Lionel now shares the story of how he came to be one of the Minna Men. In 1979, when Lionel was 13, he was living at St. Vincent’s Home for Boys in Brooklyn. Although he did not know what Tourette’s syndrome was, he knew that he had an assortment of verbal tics and chaotic body movements that isolated him from the other boys. He spent long afternoons reading his way through the orphanage’s modest library. One day, for reasons Lionel never understands, Frank Minna, known then as a neighborhood entrepreneur who ran a moving company, picked Lionel and three other boys to work for him: Tony Vermonte, a brooding Italian with an unsettling sense of self-confidence and a perpetual sneer; Danny Fantl, a jock with a penchant for funk music and a lack of interest in school; and Gilbert, a bully in-the-making always looking to push a weaker kid into a risky prank (he once made Lionel break into a display case full of stuffed penguins at the Museum of Natural History). 

The four orphans quickly become a sort of street gang. Frank picks them up in his moving van, and the boys move crates in and out of buildings.