Saturday, July 14, 2012

An Unexpected Adventure

I work at the county Sheriff's Office, and for the last several months the building has been renovated with a large addition on one end. We are getting close to everything being finished, and one of the last steps has been the laying of the carpet in the downstairs hallway.

On Thursday I opened the door to step out of the large room where I work into the hallway. I saw a man from the left winding up a string and another man rolling up the same string from the right. No carpet had yet been laid.

After the man from the right passed by me, I stepped out into the hall to cross over to the restroom which was only a couple of feet to the left of the door to my work area. As soon as my feet hit the hall floor, they both stuck firm to the floor--the carpet glue had already been put down, but I didn't see it.

I tugged hard on my left foot and it came loose with some effort, and then I turned it partly around to face the other direction. When I pulled on my right shoe, my foot started to come out of it. A woman I didn't know who was standing halfway down the hall where it was already carpeted hollered, "You'll have to leave your shoes there!" Well, I didn't plan to do that, so I pulled harder.

About that time I realized I was in a precarious position and in danger of falling. The carpet man meanwhile had moved closer to me while saying, "The floor is sticky." Oh, really? He held out his hands and I took hold of him and was able to finally to move off the glue and back to the ungluey part of the floor.

I think the moral of this story could be it's good to look before you leap. Or all's well that ends well. Or holding hands with a stranger isn't all bad.

When I told some of my co-workers this story, one said she was laughing with me, not at me. I must have been laughing very quietly.

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