The Lawsons did Dallas!

Marathon Training: Incident #1
August 27, 2007

I was a bit of a track star in high school, and pictured to the left are the lucky shorts that won me a whole mess of titles. I wore these very shorts when I won the state championship in the two mile run during my junior year (still my only claim to fame, so deal with my showing off, ok?). I was pictured wearing these beauties in my local newspapers at least ten times during the late nineties.

Awesome.

No, I obviously never returned my uniform like I was supposed to. And yes, I actually was number sixty-nine.

I had no idea what that number implied ten years ago, but thinking back, every member of the football team seemed to understand. I was met with rounds of rousing applause from the players every time I circled the track. I thought they liked my ponytail--guess not.

Finding myself in the midst of a laundry crisis last week, I wore these shorts to the YMCA. Barring the obvious embarrassment of wearing that number on my upper left thigh, the shorts functioned just perfectly.

Once I got home I washed the shorts, put them back in my drawer and forgot about them until last night--when I faced another laundry crisis. I was meeting my friend for a run and had nothing to wear, so on went the old track shorts.

If I had to give it my best guess, these shorts are from the 80's, so they're at least twenty years old. Based on my own unscientific analysis, elastic has a shelf life that is much shorter than twenty years, so go ahead and do the math. Last week's washing must have done the old elastic in, because one mile into the run, I had some very droopy drawers.

At first I thought it was funny. The shorts would start to droop, I'd run in front of my friend, lift up my t-shirt and show her the crack of my a$$. We were having a good time--it was kind of funny.

We kept on running, and the shorts kept drooping. Actually, they were drooping to the point where I had to hold them up. Can you see where this is going? I'm sure you can.

Somewhere around mile four, I began to tell my friend a story, and before I knew it, I was talking with my hands. Just as I was all, "So the building was THIS BIG!" (holding my hands high above my head), my nether-regions began to feel rather breezy.

I slowed down the pace, turned to my friend and calmly said, "Dude. I just lost my pants." Sarah ran over to me, and for some reason she opted to lift up my t-shirt, earning herself a nice bright view of my bum cheeks.

So there we were, standing in the middle of the road, shorts around my knees and my friend laughing her oh-so-sympathetic lungs out.

Thank GOODNESS it was dark.