I was undefeated. Three years. UNDEFEATED in the Brunt County Fair precision stacking open division. Nobody had touched my time in the inverted configuration round. My name is on a plaque. Small plaque. Back wall of the fairground administrative building. But a plaque.
Then you showed up. No team jersey. No gloves. You walked up to Table 6 in jeans and a flannel shirt like you'd wandered in from the livestock pavilion and you put up a 14.2 in the qualifier and I actually said "what" out loud.
I'm not going to go through the whole bracket because this isn't a sports recap, but by the semifinal you were stacking with some kind of reverse-palm transition on the third tier that shouldn't work but does if your hand-to-wrist ratio is exactly right, and apparently yours is exactly right.
You beat me by 0.3 seconds in the final. I shook your hand. You said "good match." I said "thanks" when I meant to say "who ARE you and where did you learn that and can I buy you a funnel cake and also are you single."
I'm the one who was wearing too many wristbands. You know which table. If you want a rematch, name the time. If you want funnel cake, also name the time. I'm good with either but I need one or the other or I'm going to spend the rest of the year replaying my own competition footage trying to reverse-engineer your grip.