Midvale School For The Gifted

Over at One Woman’s World, Heather related an embarrassing moment and then issued a challenge – share your own embarrassing moment. So here goes:

First a little background. I went to school in the Mountain West, literally at the foot of some rather imposing mountains. The school was built on kind of a plateau and over the years had spilled over the edge and down to the “level” beneath the plateau. If you lived west of campus (or south for that matter), walking to school involved climbing stairs. Lots of stairs. Stairs fashioned after the manner of ladders. From where I lived I had two stair options. The steep, steep outdoor stairs (awfully fun when covered with ice and/or snow) and the longer, slightly less steep, but eternally-lasting indoor stairs. During inclement weather I often chose this second option. To access these stairs, you had to enter through two sets of massively heavy glass doors. You exited the building (directly at the top of the three-floors-worth-of stairs) in the same manner. Being a sea-level-type gal myself, adjusting to breathing the oxygen-thin mountain air was never an easy thing (even when I was in the best of my shape). So climbing either set of stairs usually found me gasping for air and trying not to let everyone around me know just how out-of-breath I was. Oh, the pride! Typically, I would climb these stairs when classes were letting out. The stairs would be full of people and it was impossible to go quickly. I liked this routine. I was less winded and stupid-feeling at the top of the stairs. But again with the pride thing, if I ever climbed the stairs when they were empty I felt incapable of taking them slowly. I needed to look like they didn’t bother me after all!

Alright, enough exposition – on with the embarrassment…

This particular day was an indoor stair day. And since it was close to the beginning of fall semester I was still in the gasping for air period of transition. I was also climbing during off-time. No millions of students on the stairs. So no taking them slowly, of course.

I reached the top of the stairs and pushed on the heavy glass doors as hard as I could. They didn’t move. Was this some kind of a joke? Who locks the only way off stairs and onto street level in the middle of a school day? Unable to see the humor, I continued to push. A fellow student came up behind me. He politely kept his distance as I tried the unyielding doors a third and a fourth time.

Somewhere in the midst of all that door pushing, the out-of-breath gasp of air that I desperately needed was taken. And let me tell you, when you suck in air, after a period of essentially holding your breath, in the middle of a six-story tall glass and stone atrium, it echoes. L.O.U.D.L.Y.

As the echoes of my frantic breathes were still dying away, I realized my mistake. Calmly and not without massively red cheeks (only in part due to my rapid assent of the stairs), I pulled on the glass door and it swung easily open. The poor guy who had waited the whole time hurried through the door after me and then past to open the next set of doors for me. I think he thought I needed the help.

And at that point, I probably did.

For those of you wondering where my trip update is, patience. It will come. I promise. But give me a few days to digest everything. And thanks for sticking around. It’s nice to be back.