Whoops...

I've always thought I was good at math. So either for that reason, or because I had a P.E. teacher who liked to delegate, I was in charge of calculating a mile for the annual mile run at my elementary school.

Why?

The Presidential Challenge, that’s why!

You remember those tests.

Pull-ups, sit-ups, the mile run, the shuttle run, and the sit-and-reach. You reach one plateau, that's Presidential; a lesser plateau, that's National. You miss both plateaus, you appear on Dateline NBC as the "anonymous stomach" in the story on trans fat or the next diet craze from Dr. Atkins or his (living) surrogate.

I have six National patches in my house somewhere. Why? Because I couldn't reach my arms past my toes. This is not something that should haunt me, right?

But it does. Or it did, once, for a minute or two.

When? When during the only time in your life I had a one-on-one session with a personal trainer, I was told, "Gabe, you are the least flexible 23-year-old I have ever met!"

That was odd because, one, how many 23-year-olds does this 35-year-old personal trainer know? Is he the one taking out the girls my age? Or was he talking about the past? Didn’t people in the past have shorter legs, so that meant, they’d be better sit-and-reachers?

Back to the mile run in fifth grade.

At my elementary school in Nashville, we had four orange cones and the use of one huge park. I had to figure out how far apart to put the cones so that if we ran around them four times, we'd make a mile.

I added, multiplied and divided, and came up with answer.

Then I finished the course in 5 minutes and 49 seconds.

Whoops.

A 5:49 mile meant two things. Either I was the fastest fifth-grader in the state, or I made a math error.

I pushed my glasses up closer to my face, and thought: the latter.

But that meant 50 uncoordinated Jewish kids had to run around cones in the park...again. I was not so popular that day.

In my defense, my P.E. teacher’s method of cone-placement was based on the fact that she could stride exactly a yard 110 times in a row to place one cone, and then based on that cone, she’d figure out where to put the others.

Though I've come close, I have never to this day run a real mile in 5 minutes and 49 seconds.


(This blog is for Merav. What bettern day to give someone a shout out than his or her birthday. Happy 22, kid. I miss the way you like I miss Pedro Martinez. If you had baseball in your country, you'd understand just how much that is.)