Fourteen years ago I started working at the Albuquerque Tribune, the afternoon paper. Albuquerque was one of the only cities with two papers at the time. The afternoon paper was the underdog (and, eventually, was shut down). The morning paper (which also did Sundays exclusively) dwarfed the Trib in subscriptions.

With some skills in layout from the college paper and my own magazine, I got a job as a layout jockey. We put the paper together for two editions. Being an afternoon paper, my job started early in the morning. If I'd been at the morning paper, my job would have been at night. So are the shifts of this type of work.

I became, after a while, the fastest layout guy on the desk. Stick was always acknowledged as such, and I never nominated myself to be better. But after a while, Stick even wondered aloud if, perhaps, the Mattman was the fastest.

I'd get half finished pages with minutes left to go on deadline. Editors would surround my desk, point, demand, and sigh with relief as it all got done on time and sent to the page slot.

When I began working there, the newsroom had a grace under fire award. The physical representation of this was an old grenade. I should say it was a grenade shell because the explosive part of it was not attached. You could pick these up at Army Navy stores. I'm not sure how much they cost, but I doubt if they're that much.

If you won the grace under fire award for the week, you got to put the grenade on your desk and a $5 credit for lunch. All you had to do was bring in a receipt from lunch, and you'd get your $5.

This award went to copy editors and layout jockeys. I'm sure there was a process, but I have no idea how it worked. Eventually, I won the award one week. Then, after a brief tour around the newsroom, I won it again. And a few more times.

I never took the $5. I never ate lunch, so I never had a receipt to turn in. And I guess it never really meant much to me, the money. It seemed like more of a hassle than anything. Besides, I lived on a can of Dr. Pepper and a Snickers (later, Pop Tarts) I brought from home.

Eventually the award lost its funding (even though I never even took the money!). No one wanted it after that, for some reason. And since I was the last person to win, the grenade stayed on my desk.

All I really wanted was the grenade.

I like having random totems around where I work. Even though they are, most of the time, just a bunch of clutter I barely notice.

At the Trib I accumulated a couple of things on my desk. The grenade and an action figure of a girl roller skater. Not a roller girl, but some redheaded Wendy-looking roller skater with pads and gloves. I used to point at it and say this is why today's kids are soft. They have all these protections from getting hurt that we never even thought to wear. If this roller skater had been made a few years later, she'd probably be wearing a helmet.

When I left the Trib (a little over eleven years ago), I took the grenade and roller skater girl with me.

The grenade has always been on the coffee table wherever I lived. And guests would pick it up and ask, "What happens when I pull this?" indicating the pin.

So I'd say, "You'll have to put the pin back in."

It's really hard to put the pin back in.

Matt Worley only received monetary performance bonuses for his extraordinary work in the years after the grenade. The money's gone, but he's still got the grenade.