The Origin of the Stick of Justice

At a church youth activity when I was in high school we had a stick pull competition. The two contestants sit on the ground with their feet together and pull on a stick between them, with the goal of pulling the other person out of their place or having them let go of the stick.

I figured I would have a go at it and sat down with a stick. The first couple of people I beat were only joking in going against me and just having a laugh in doing so. They were followed by a couple of true believers who gave it their best but didn’t last long either. I did not participate in a match that lasted longer than 2 seconds and I am very serious about that number, it is not an estimate. Then came a big fellow from a town about 20 miles from mine whom I had seen around and knew that he was a pretty strong guy. He was a linebacker for the Permian Panthers, you know the team from Friday Night Lights. I was unsure of how a contest between the two of us would go as I was the strongest basketball/track guy but did not play football in any organized way, for very long anyway. If anyone could stop my reign of terror it was him. He had defeated everyone he went against with ease as well. As he sat across from me my stomach began to churn with nervousness. I began to imagine that I would shortly be dethroned. I had actually started caring about competing somewhere around my 6th victory. Since we had both defeated everyone else this was the title match. People gathered around and one of the leaders had a stick with a leather strap through it that had some writing etched on it, which was apparently the trophy for the winner.

We each took our grips on the stick between us and waited. I was a wreck inside and felt certain that I was going to lose the 2 out of 3 matches that would be required for this title match. As we waited for the word to begin I could have quit right there as I was no longer feeling it. The word came and the instant seemed like it was longer, but it was only half a second at most, all in that short time I felt me pulling him up off the ground barely when his foot slipped. With the slippage we were stopped and reset, as it was a misfire. This time I felt much different before we began. The word came and we struggled from side to side for a few seconds before I had pulled him almost up and over the top of me. “Just one more quick one”, I thought to myself. We got set again as I was boiling over with confidence and was drunk on power. You might expect that this is the part where I was served humble pie and quickly lost a match. If you thought that then you were wrong. This match was much quicker than the first and closer to my average victory time. I was declared the winner and shook hands with my, before then, unknown competitor. I expected straightaway to be handed the trophy stick for my decisive win but I had one more challenger. The man holding the stick was from a place called Monahans and he was the guy who scared everybody. He would play with giant tarantulas and had a huge beard that you could hide all kinds of weapons in. He was also very very large. I would have put him at about 280 lbs. to my then 220 lbs. He sat down and said, “You are the winner of the competition but you still have to go against me.” If you guessed that now I was nervous, you would again be very wrong. Even though this was a full grown, bearded, scary guy I was calm like a bomb. I will save you the time and tell you that I beat him faster than the other guy. It was a breeze.

Upon receiving my award I promptly named it “The Stick of Justice”. I still have it and cherish it to this day, as it is the only trophy that I still have from anything. It has an amazing power in that it repels bad guys for some strange reason, as I will tell you about later.

There is a small and annoying shadow that hangs over this victory. It comes from a friend. This friend has been claiming that he beat me at the stick pull that day and he has been spreading his lie for years. He has tried to spread the lie to me twice in the last few years and I remind him that I have the trophy and was completely undefeated that day. It doesn’t seem to sink in and next time I see this friend I imagine he will try to bring up the lie again. It will not work though as I have a perfect recollection of that day and of course the trophy “Stick of Justice”.