My Car Was In Danger

I'd been at work for an hour or so last Friday when I got a call from our department receptionist.

"The telephone pole you parked next to is about to fall over."

Yeah, baby.

For the record, that's pretty much a direct quote. Who needs coffee when you can have soul-crushing panic?

The parking lot at work is about 5 blocks away, which is a good 5 blocks more than I'm capable of running. I ran anyway. It nearly killed me.

The base of the pole literally looked like somebody had crashed into it. They hadn't... it was just the extreme age of the pole. But it was shattered, splintered, severed. It was bad. The only reason the pole hadn't fallen yet was that the wires up top were still attached.

But none of this is the funny part of the story. The funny part of this story is Shaggy.

Shaggy was on the fourth floor near the receptionist when she called me. "I'm gonna go down there and give Jeff a ride out to his car," he said. He immediately went down the stairs to my office on the second floor, but I had already started running.

Shaggy got in his truck and drove to the parking lot. Even though he was driving, I still beat him there.

Shaggy rolled down his window and waved at me. He was offering to give me a ride back once I'd moved my car, but there were two problems. I had already decided to move my car to an entirely different lot, and I was too oxygen-starved / freaked-out to realize what he was offering.

"Oh look, [gasp][pant]... Shaggy's here [gasp][pant]... doesn't have anything to do with me!"

I nearly burned rubber leaving the parking lot while Shaggy sat and watched.

Shaggy made it back to work before I did and told everybody the story. I was the talk of the office for hours.

It took longer than that to get my breathing back under control.

I should take up jogging.