The Hype Up

I go to a pretty small high school in North Jersey where I am on the wrestling team. Everyday in the winter before practice, (the winter is key to this debacle) we warm up by doing stair runs and hallway runs. It was an ordinary Tuesday if I remember correctly and we were in the middle of our second set of stair runs before we moved on to another round of hallways which consists of sprinting up and down a hallway about 80 to 90 yards long. Right as the timer was nearing zero, a friend on the team was like, "Hey, Auston is pretty fast." I was just doing my thing on the stairs in peace and listening and another guy on the team says, "I'm pretty sure I'm faster." Now me being me, I instantly responded, "We're racing." We discussed it shortly with the other guys and it was from one end of the hallway to the other with people on both sides to judge who won.

Race Time

As the title suggests, I'm a competitive guy. Stair runs end and we line up at the beginning of the hallway and get ready. I am wiping the bottom of my shoes with my hands to get more grip, I'm trying to get every edge I can. Another guy says go and we take off in full sprint down the hall. At this point, I'm not even worrying about my challenger, I'm focused on running and reaching top speed. Quicker than I anticipated, we are at the ending point. What I didn't account for was how much space I would need to stop. I won the race by 10 feet or more and turned to face the main office that contains the principle, vice-principle, and guidance counselor's offices. As luck would have it, both of the glass doors leading into the main office have been closed and I have 10 feet to stop. Most people would agree 10 feet is a lot of stoppage space. They'd be wrong in this case. I started slowing down, dug my heels into the floor, ended up sliding on my heels down to my butt. Then I proceeded to slide the other 6 feet right into the door where my feet hit the wood border, and my knee swung up and smashed into the glass center. I had just shattered the main office glass door. I freakin panicked. I just got up and had the dumbest look on my face like I had just failed the biggest test of my life. I stood there paralyzed and then the vice-principle came out and just started laughing. I was about to break mentally and the vice-principle just cracked a one-liner and laughed off a thousand dollars worth of damage. He told me he'd check the tapes to make sure it was an accident but he was pretty sure I wouldn't break the door on purpose. 

The Aftermath

I continued on with practice after I came to terms with what just happened, finished and went home. The next day, I arrived at school and every teacher I had tossed out a comment or joke about breaking the doors and everybody was really cool about it. I stopped by the office to see what administration was doing, and they and other teachers were huddled around a computer watching me slide into those doors over and over again. Everybody was laughing it off and I was completely off the hook. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world. Word spread around school too and all I got was, "That was you!" 

For anybody out there that read my buddy aaronburts articles, we go to the same school and hang out. He can vouch for me that this happened. And I guess if I get a following, we'll maybe do some joint articles and stuff.