Kevin Brown Stickman
I found the stick the day of the locker incident. You have to remember that we didn’t talk about bullying in those days. We didn’t have a word for it. To us, it was what happened every day of our lives. I mean, we had bullies, and, if anything, we were told that we needed to stand up to them, fight them, if necessary, to make them leave us alone. My father told me that almost as soon as I could walk, in fact, but that was back when he talked to me. I thought that stick would be like Excalibur—you know Excalibur, right?— and I would see it held aloft by the lady of the lake, or something like that. At least I thought that it would be evident where it was and what I was supposed to do. In all honesty, I wasn’t even sure I wanted a stick; I just knew I needed something that day. I watched a number of shows and movies with ninjas, and some of them used sticks (bow staffs, I think), so maybe I thought a stick would make me more like a ninja. When I was a few years younger, I owned a few Chinese throwing stars, bought them at flea markets and such, but I knew better than to carry those around with me. I eventually lost them all by trying to throw them at trees or propped-up plywood, only to see them go sailing past, lost in pine needles or grass. I wondered what would happen when someone mowed over them, but I never heard of any injuries. I always wanted to be a hero in some way. Obviously I read the King Arthur stories, Excalibur and all, and I went through a serious superhero phase, spurred on by my cousin. He went to comics conventions, back before