When “falling for him” isn’t as graceful as it sounds

The fact that this antidote is being filed under one of my least embarrassing stories, is, in itself, disheartening. Willing to do just about anything for a little cash in college, I volunteered to set up the gymnasium for home games. I was in season during the fall, and setting up for a tournament as the baseball team was having a practice on the other side of the gym. I got locked out of the equipment closet, which I suppose is lucky seeing as I could have been locked in, and waiting for my coach.

I don’t know if you picked up on a little word in that last paragraph spelled b-a-s-e-b-a-l-l but that is a sport where a bunch of guys get together wearing incredibly appealing pants and a nice cap over their tanned faces and hit a ball around a field. These players are one of God’s gifts to women and also men as being in even a practice uniform gives them a three point handicap on the ten point grading scale. This being said, you can’t blame me for sitting far enough up in the bleachers so that I can look onto their practice as I waited for my coach with the key.

Side note: get yourself a copy of your baseball team’s practice schedule and make yourself run around the track while they are working out. You’ll keep running because a) you have a nice view and b) they act as motivation for on the off chance they notice you, you don’t also want them to notice how you could only run a mile and a half. Plus, it’s like communicating without having to speak or even be near the person, just be careful not to fall on your face or anything.

But anyway, there I was chilling in the bleachers when a wiffle ball came my way. Now I was perfectly capable of throwing it back myself but one of the boys came hustling after it. Even though he picked up the ball two bleachers down from where I was he took the extra steps up to ask me how I was, when our game was, and to wish me luck. He then winked at me, yes you heard it, actually winked at me, and quickly returned to practice before his friends embarrassed him or something.

Flabbergasted, I finished setting up the gym and headed back to my dorm. My roommate of course was all into the idea and was determined to find him. After yelling at me for not asking his name or introducing me, we decided that roster pictures were our next bet. The wrench in this plan was that if baseball pants were a three point gain, roster pictures were a five point deficit. No guy looks good in a roster photo. Between this fact and the other little tiny one which was me being too shy to actually look up at this boy who I could only sense was incredibly adorable, we had little to nothing to go on.

The actual identity of this player was a mute subject however because whoever he was, bore witness to burying my face in the hard gym floor. That whole day I was certain that this was it: cute athlete was going to come watch the game with his friends, tell me I played well after the match, we’d run into each other walking to class and the rest would be history. Well, I got one thing right: the team did come to the game, or at least walk through our half of the gym on their way to practice. We were stretching at the time, I was in a Spiderman position stretching out my calves and trying to get a look at all their faces as they walked by to see if any sparked a memory, but just as I thought I could be falling for someone, I physically fell. Losing balance in my stretch my face smashed into the hardwood and my whole team laughed at me, as did that of the school’s baseball team. Mine did it with love, the boys probably in shock. But one thing is for certain, along with my face, I smashed my chances with that mystery player as well.