Two deputies on the night shift decide to practice their quick-draw skills. They figure "it’s the middle of the night and who’s to know?"

Their first mistake is practicing a quick-draw at all. But even more importantly is the place they’ve chosen for this exercise. They are in the sheriff’s private office. Try not to get ahead of me.

The first deputy draws. Of course he doesn’t fire. The point is the quick draw. Anyway, only an idiot would fire a gun in the sheriff’s private office. Right? Then the second deputy draws.

Now they decide to draw at the same time to test who is the fastest gun. "On three," says one deputy. One, two, three — BLAM!

Both deputies look startled that a single shot is fired — into the sheriff’s locked filing cabinet. It never occurs to the deputies that it’d be a good idea to unload their pistols before testing Hollywood fast-draw skills.

Late Monday morning the deputies get phone calls from the sheriff’s secretary. "The sheriff would like to see you in his office — ASAP."

The sheriff says only that he wants each deputy to take a week’s vacation, "but don’t you worry, I’ll know who to fire by the time you get back!"

Some vacation! A week later the boys report back for duty. Both deputies know the boss had plenty of time to run a ballistics test on the slug from his filing cabinet. If this is a "mind game," clearly the sheriff is ahead on points. Amazingly, nobody gets fired. The truth is, the sheriff had a hunch about these two deputies. He decided to invest some training time in them as they grew into law enforcement.

The sheriff was right. A dozen or so years later both of these "fast draw" deputies had been steadily promoted until they reached senior staff positions — working for the same sheriff.