By B. P. Gibson
Emily Updegraff was the smartest person at our high school. She was also the most athletic. Her whole family was like that. Her father, a doctor, won golf titles repeatedly. Her older twin sisters were rumoured to make straight A’s like Emily. I knew I didn’t have a chance of matching, much less excelling, academically against Emily. I was a nobody, an average kid with no accolades for which I could boast. I did have a few attributes, one of them was that I could run fast.
I knew I could run fast because when I was in junior high school, I met a boy who boasted of winning the state junior high school track record. I challenged him to a race, and much to his chagrin, I beat him easily. Also, when being tested for the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in high school, Mrs. Patterson, our PE teacher, told me I had one of the fastest times for the 50-yard dash.
It happened that year they combined classes for the Presidential Physical Fitness Test’s one-mile run, and wouldn’t you know it, Emily Updegraff was in a PE class that was combined with my PE class. We would be running at the same time! I knew this was my opportunity to make a name for myself.
People would point across campus at me and say things like, “There is the girl who outran Emily Updegraff,” and “There is the girl who beat Emily Updegraff’s time in the one-mile run!” Of course, the 50-yard dash is not nearly the beast of the one-mile run, but I didn’t know that. To sweeten the pot, Mrs. Patterson offered an A in PE that semester to the first girl to cross the finish line. This was going to be my moment of fame, my mark on the world, my chance to be somebody instead of nobody. I knew I could do it ― oh, poor naïve me.
The run began. Emily commenced with the speed and grace of a gazelle. I took off sprinting, trying to catch up to her.
Emily ― taking long, quick, even-paced strides.
Me ― struggling to close the gap between us.
Emily ― breathing even breaths while pacing herself.
Me ― huffing and puffing, sprinting as quickly as I was able, eyes on Emily.
Emily ― oblivious to my existence, eyes on the finish line.
Me ― trying my best to catch up to Emily, still hoping to beat her in our race.
Emily ― unaware we were racing, preparing for the final stretch burst of speed.
Me ― gasping for air, running as fast as I could.
Emily ― swiftly crossing the finish line first.
Me ― plodding across the finish line second, about twenty to thirty feet behind Emily.
Okay, so it wasn’t Emily Updegraff who nearly killed me that day. It was my stupidity, my vanity, my delusion. However, the part about nearly dying is not a hyperbole. When we finished that run, I felt like my chest was going to explode. More than fifty years later when I had an angiogram an unusual discovery was made: I don’t have a left main coronary artery! Ninety percent of babies born without a left main coronary artery die in the first year of life. Most of the rest succumb during their school years. Only a rare few survive beyond that. I am an anomaly, and I may very well have come within an iota of death that day, but here I am in my seventies and still alive.
So, whatever became of Emily Updegraff? I did some research utilizing Newspapers.com. Emily married a man with the last name Smart. Yes, that’s right. The smartest girl in school no longer goes by Emily Updegraff, but appropriately is now named Emily Smart, which is so much better than if she acquired the name Emily Fast.