My parents were dorm parents at Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, just
outside of Amarillo (only in Texas is 40 miles, “just outside of somewhere) and
that’s where I graduated. I wasn’t anything
spectacular, just average. In a class of
26, I think I was about 11th or so.
I played football for a while, but I wasn’t much more than a scrub. I was a six foot, 145 pound lineman…and a bad
one at that.
Boys’ Ranch, when I was there, did not do well in team
sports. Mostly due to the fact that most
of the boys that were there spent a lot of their lives thinking of themselves….now
don’t get me wrong. For most of them, if
they weren’t thinking of themselves….no one else was. It was a form of defense. All of this made team sports difficult, BUT
wrestling! That is where Boys Ranch tore
it up! They always had a good wrestling
team.
I say all of this to tell a little story of my experience
with a Super Ninja Tick. There was a guy
in my Dad’s dorm named Jammer (he was always getting into jams and you know how
nicknames are…). Now Jammer was probably
110 pounds soaking wet, but as I remember it he was a pretty decent wrestler.
Jammer could always talk a bunch of trash, one day I got to
the point that I had enough. I thought
he needed a good whupping and I was the one to give it to him. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Jammer, but boy
he had a mouth on him! Also consider
that with him only weighing 110 pounds I was probably 35 pounds heavier and at
least a foot taller, so I thought this would be a pretty short match….and I was
right!
As we squared off in front of the dorm in what was intended
to be a friendly little wrestling match, I was again struck by how short he was
and how much heavier I was and I thought again….this was going to be pretty
short match (again…I was right!).
We locked up and all of the sudden I was laying on the
ground with this little rascal on top of me.
In my mind this was all going pretty slow; I thought “how did that
happen? No problem, I will just muscle him
around so that I am back on top”. (Like I
had been on top at any point!) After
struggling a little more, I was laying on my belly with a terrible pain in my
leg and his foot up by my head. As I lay
there trying to catch my breath, I thought how familiar that boot looked…then
it hit me….that was my boot and somehow it was bent over my back and locked
into position by my ear! Again, I thought…”HOW
DID THAT HAPPEN?” At various times
during our match I was twisted up like a pretzel and had arms and legs bent
into positions that I had no idea they would go. At one point I was staring at my left hand
thinking that the thumb was on the wrong side…when I realized that my whole
hand was on the wrong side! How in the
world did he get my left hand into a position that if my thumb had been where
my pinky was…it would have been my right hand?
We scrambled around there for 10-15 minutes, and I say “we” very
loosely. It was mostly me gruntin’ and
strainin’….and him latched on like the Super Ninja Tick! I had no chance against Jammer. Turns out he could mostly back up his trash
talkin’…..at least when I came to me!
Because I was taller and heavier I got caught up in trash
talking with Jammer. He had all the
knowledge of what we were trash talking about….and as it turns out…I had none
of it!
Aren’t we all just a little like that? Talkin’ without thinkin’? I know I am, there are times when the Holy
Spirit is just saying, “Hey cowboy….shut your pie hole for a while, just listen!” I’m pretty sure that is why God gave us two
ear holes and one mouth hole!
“Don’t keep speaking so arrogantly, letting proud
talk come out of your mouth! For the
LORD is a God who knows; he evaluates what people do.”
1 Samuel 2:3
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