Note: This story is linked to the previous Story 12. It is a flashback from a couple years prior
Back in High School, Chuck played basketball as did Amber's boyfriend Doug Young. One game in the Georgia State Playoffs, Trisha and Amber went together to a game to watch their boyfriends play.
They had to sit about 15 rows up to get a good seat which put them vertically about 12 feet off the floor of the gym. Trisha wore jeans and a Sprayberry Yellow Jackets sweatshirt and gray closed-toed Birkenstocks with thin, almost hose-like, white socks.
The score of the game was close and there was a lot of cheering and talking in between cheering. Trisha was sitting with her right leg crossed over her left in front of Amber and was slightly dangling. Trisha twisted to the left to say something to Amber and just as she did , Amber noticed Doug block a shot and she raised her arms to cheer. As she did this, her hand bumped Trisha's clog off which hit the back of the person sitting in front of them, flipped back and down toward the footrest and slid off the footrest down under the bleachers.
"Oh no, what will I do now!" Trisha exclaimed.
Amber calmed her down and said, “We can look for it after the game.”
The game continued on and about 20 minutes later, Chuck made the game winning shot at the buzzer. Amber grabbed Trisha to go down to the floor to greet the team. Trisha hesitated because of her lost shoe.
Amber insisted, "It's not going anywhere."
They went down and greeted their boyfriends. Chuck happened to look down and saw Trisha was missing a clog, "Hey you must have been in a hurry to get down here; you came out of one of your shoes." Trisha did not want to tell the embarrassing truth.
Chuck and Doug told the girls, “Hey the team’s leaving in 15 minutes to go to Frankie’s Italian place over on Old Canton Road to celebrate. Meet us over there.”
Amber and Trisha replied affirmatively. After the crowd cleared a little, Trisha broke away to try to retrieve her shoe. They first went to the nearest end of the bleachers to see if they could crawl through. Instead, they realized this was the end with the panel wall installed to make entry into the gym more attractive. There was a small door in the wall so they tested it but discovered it was locked.
Next, they went across the gym to the other end where there was no panel wall, but found that the retractable seats did not offer much room to squeeze through. Trisha tried to get in but there was no way, “What am I going to do?"
They realized that their only two ways for immediate hope were one, to get a very long stick and hook it, or two, retract the adjacent section of bleachers and reach in for the shoe.
Looking around for a maintenance worker, they saw no one. Finally they went out of the gym near the outside entrance found someone.
Trisha tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Sir, excuse me, but I have a problem. I lost my shoe under the bleachers tonight. Can you help me get it out?”
His reply was not good for her, “I don't know what we can do. We don't normally clean the gym until morning and the guy with that key to unlock the door to get under the retractable bleachers called in sick tonight. How far above the ground were you sitting?”
“We were on about the fifteenth row.”
“Oh, I don’t know if we have a pole long enough to reach it, but I can look around,”
“Trisha replied, “Can we retract the row of seats next to that one we were sitting in to get a close reach.”
“The problem is that we have to release some things underneath before the seats can be moved and again no key. The best I can tell you is that I'll make sure this message gets to the cleanup crew tomorrow and this shoe gets back to you on Monday AM.”
“But...”
Amber interrupted, “We have to meet the guys, that's the best we can do. What do you want to do? Do you want to go by your house?”
“That will take 20 more minutes! We’re supposed to be there in about 5! I guess we just go like this and hope everyone's too excited to notice.”
Amber an Trisha got in Amber’s Honda Civic and made the short drive to Frankie’s where the team had a table set up in the back room just for them complete with balloons and pizzas already on the table. It was as if they were confident of a victory or at least willing to chow down on pizza even in defeat to celebrate a good season.
When they arrived, the parking lot was pretty full so they had to park a little distance from the entrance. Trisha worked hard to maneuver around oil spots, dirt and gravel with her one sock-clad foot. They went inside and told the host that they were part of the Sprayberry basketball party -they were directed to the back room.
The restaurant was pretty crowded so Trisha’s problem went unnoticed while walking through the main seating area toward the back room. She did feel pretty self-conscious, however. Amber led the way into the back room and Trisha followed behind, hoping to masquerade her missing clog from the group. There were about 30 people in the room, player, friends and coaches mostly and a few parents. All were joyously celebrating their advancement to the “Elite Eight” in their state basketball classification.
When the girls entered the room, Doug and Chuck came over to welcome them with hugs of joy. It was only a few moments before Chuck asked half-jokingly, “I guess you got your shoe back?” As he said this, he looked down and saw Trisha was still missing a shoe and by now her sock was in pretty bad shape. “Hey so what happened to your other shoe?”
“I’ll tell you over pizza, where can we sit?”
Trisha recounted the whole situation of how she lost the shoe and the why the maintenance worker was not able to get it out. Chuck encouraged her that it would all be okay Monday and to just enjoy the pizza and their victory. By now a couple of other guys on the team noticed she was missing a shoe and began to say, ‘Hey Cinderella, where’s your other shoe?”
“It’s under the gym bleachers, you want to be my Prince Charming!” This quick witty reply silenced the jokesters and everyone soon forgot her missing shoe.
Monday morning came and Trisha received a note in Home Room to come by the Administration Office. She did so and her missing clog had been successfully retrieved and placed on the front desk. After dropping it by her locker (where it stayed for a couple of weeks before she remembered to take it home) she continued on the rest of her day.
NOTE: This story can also be found at Dangling.Com.
