The 10‑Second Sprint I’ll Never Live Down

I never, ever run in public. I look so silly at it that I learned long ago never to let people see me run.

However … I broke my rule once, about 15 years ago or so, and it was so bad it became legendary.

Picture a typical workday. I had to search through the warehouse to round up a stack of magazines and catalogs. I’d gotten hot and sweaty in the August heat.

What you need to know to understand this story is that the air-conditioned front half of our building was then separated from the warehouse by an enormous sliding wooden door. I hated that door! Eight feet tall, six feet wide, and so thick you felt like a Medieval peasant opening the castle door. I had to put my shoulder and hips into it at the best of times. In the middle of summer, the humidity made it swell so much that it fought you on every inch. I could never manage it alone.

So as I walked through the warehouse, a huge stack of loose papers in my hands, a good friend of mine, Jeff, happened to be standing at the door. He was starting to shut it when he noticed me and stopped to wait. This was especially nice because I was all the way down the corridor and too tired to walk quickly, so I kept him waiting a long time.

After about a minute, he got a devious glint in his eye and resumed closing the door.

Never one to let someone tease me without teasing back, I started to jog. He had to put his body weight into closing it, so we both knew he wouldn’t finish before I got there.

That is, he couldn’t have done it alone. But another guy passing by saw me coming and decided to help Jeff.

That’s when I dropped my shoulder and charged at him like a linebacker.

A number of things happened in the next few seconds, so hold that image as I hit the slow-motion button on this scene.

• Both guys were so thrown by the sight of me running at them like that, they froze. This was a blessing for me because —
• I suddenly realized there was no way I was going to be able to stop before I smashed into that door.
• And nobody ever runs in the warehouse, let alone someone as spazzy as me, so even the forklift guy had stopped to watch.
• I started trying to “put on the brakes” but have I mentioned yet that I am the least athletic person I know? Still crouched over, I brought my knees up, trying to almost run backward.
• This is the moment I realized — I was not wearing my own pants! I must have been in a hurry that morning, because instead of grabbing a pair of my own jeans, I’d put on my teen daughter’s smaller-sized low-riders.
• How did I know? Because — with all those guys staring at me in amusement — I felt the stolen jeans slipping off my hips. In another half second I was going to moon my coworkers!

I reached the door with a look of terror.

Still laughing, Jeff started to say, “I wasn’t going to leave you out there.”

But I cut him off by thrusting my entire stack of papers at him. He caught them — mostly — which freed my hand to hitch up my drawers in the nick of time.

I was too out of breath to explain myself. I don’t think anyone would have heard me over the laughter, anyway. I gathered my catalogs and walked carefully back to my desk.

To this day, I have never tried running in front of any of them again. I power-walk.

And I wear my own pants.