I recently stopped at the post office to mail a few packets. This is something that would normally take only a few minutes, but it consumed nearly half an hour and caused my wife to suffer some undue alarm.

It wasn’t the post office’s fault. As I approached its exit, a vaguely familiar face hovered before me.

It took a moment for the memory synapses to click. “Mr. Schrader?” I asked. “Is that you?”

It was. Mel Schrader taught science class when I was in seventh grade. We chatted amiably for several minutes when a particular memory percolated up.

“I remember in science class that someone was looking for something, and you said, ‘It’s in drawer 26. There are only two things in this room that are 26, that drawer and me!'”

Mr. Schrader considered this a moment. “That sounds about right,” he said. “Because I was 26 when I got drafted.”

I had forgotten about Mr. Schrader serving in the Army, so I asked him about it. He had been deployed to Germany where, he said, there lots of good beer and some ancestral family ties. It sounded like it wasn’t bad, all things considered.

I told Mr. Schrader that what stood out for me other than his science class — the IKI solution, the Goldbeater’s membrane, the principles of osmosis — was the seventh-grade basketball team.

Like many young guys, I aspired to become a star athlete, the sort of studly stud who everyone — especially girls — looked up to and admired. It didn’t pass my notice that the cutest girls tended to be the ones who became cheerleaders.

When Mr. Schrader announced that he was forming a basketball team, I was among the first to sign up.

But alas. In a cruel twist of fate, my 13-year-old physique wasn’t suited to the game of basketball. My arms were like ropes and barely had enough power to pass the ball, let alone shoot a basket from “downtown.” In addition to being skinny and scrawny, I was also short. Some of my teammates, such as Al and Kevin, were already more than 6 feet tall. Were I to get into a jump ball with them, all they had to do was reach up and grab the ball while I flailed in a failed effort to leap a few inches off the floor.

I related this to Mr. Schrader who said, “Yeah, I remember Al. I could never get him to jump. He was so tall, he felt that he didn’t have to.”

I rode the bench the entire season. My chance for athletic glory finally came when, in the last five seconds of our last game, Mr. Schrader turned to me and barked, “Nelson, get in there!”

I somehow found the ball in my hands. I glanced at the hoop, which was at such a lofty altitude that it was partially obscured by low clouds. I saw my chance and… choked. Instead of taking a shot, I passed the ball to my teammate Wes. Wes made a graceful jump shot and the ball pranged off the rim. The buzzer sounded and that was the end of my hardcourt glory. I never tried out for basketball again.

Mr. Schrader listened to my account and said, “I loved coaching basketball, but I hated it when we had to play. There was just too much pressure on me as a coach and you guys as players.”

I could empathize with the pressure part. I had choked under pressure and thus forfeited my chance to be adored by and fawned over by pretty cheerleaders. Failing to take that shot set back my love life by at least decade.

We chatted a bit about my family, and Mr. Schrader recalled, correctly, that I have two younger sisters. “I was even out to your farm once,” he said. “I gave you a ride home after practice.”

I had no recollection of that event. But Mr. Shrader accurately recalled the directions to our farm. I guess he was the kind of coach who would go an extra mile to bestow a small kindness on one of his smaller players.

My wife burst into the post office just then, a worried look painting her face. She didn’t know what was taking me so long, and an ambulance had rushed by moments earlier. She had assumed the worst when I was actually having one of the best times.

I thought about how Mr. Schrader had kept me on the bench all season, and it dawned on me that he had done me a favor. Because he must have known that choking on one just shot at glory would be enough to last a lifetime.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.comand in bookstores nationwide.