Adam Levin - The Instructions

Busdrivers honked and I turned a little, saw Nakamook looking at me through his buswindow. I thought: You have failed your friend, listening willfully to this kingly basketballer’s monologue.

“Bus can’t leave without you,” Bam said. “Not as long as you’re standing here.”

I said, I know.

He said, “Ah, right. Nakamook. I see him. He sees me seeing him. He saw you seeing him. Everyone’s seeing everyone see everyone and it’s twisting you up in the face because you think you’ve gotta do something to slight me to show him you’re loyal. It’s always loyalty with that kid, right? Loyalty this and loyalty that. Thing is though, Gurion, your buddy Nakamook knows me, studies me, is on the edge of his seat in terms of when he’s gonna try to end me, and it’s because he thinks I’m his enemy, and maybe I am, but why should you be worried about what he’s thinking right now? Why is it your loyalty getting tested and not his? He hates me so much? He thinks I’m so dangerous, so untrustworthy and dangerous — why isn’t he rushing out here to protect you from me, understand? There’s two possible answers. One, is that he is testing your loyalty — and that ain’t a very loyal thing to do to a friend, ain’t a very friendly thing to do to someone to whom you claim loyalty; and the other possibility is he’s scared. But if he’s so scared then what does he expect of you here? Bravery? These questions are rhetorical. What I’m getting at is that’s no dumb guy, Nakamook. He’s sharp, right? Knows himself. Knows it’s either he’s testing you or he’s scared, knows the implications of each, so how can he fault you for having a conversation with me? He can’t. Not if he’s your friend. And so how can you fault yourself? You can’t help it that you like me. People like me. Even people I’ve hurt. Not while I’ve hurt them, but after, see. And I’m not hurting you right now. So what are you supposed to do?”

Someone honked a car-horn then. It felt like a rimshot. I revolved. The car was a Jeep. A Cherokee in Aptakisic’s parking lot. Another rimshot. Behind the wheel: a high-school blonde guy, snowboarder sunglasses. He reached a bulgey arm out the window and smacked the fender. “Bam!” he shouted.

“That’s Claymore,” said Slokum.

Geoff Claymore? I said.

“Bam Slokum!” shouted Claymore from his Jeep.

“You want to meet him? We’ll give you a ride. Tell you some stories about your pyro friend over there.” He pointed at Nakamook. Nakamook looked puzzled and off-guard. His eyes looked glassy, but it might have been the bus window. “Look!” Bam shouted to Claymore. “It’s Benji Nakamook.”

“I thought that smell I smelled was pussy, not gasoline!” Claymore shouted back.

“Turned out it was both!” Slokum yelled. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said as he walked away from me. “Don’t look at me all stunned. I’m exactly what’s called for, kid, at all times, and wide open as your mouth may be, you’re not calling for anything. You’re just standing there, a little boy. Have fun on the bus.”

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Intramural Bus — Bedtime

MIDTERM ESSAY (TAKE-HOME)

7TH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES (CAGE)

MR. BEAGLE

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION IN 1–2 PAGES. BE SURE TO HAVE A CLEAR THESIS STATEMENT, CLEAR TOPIC SENTENCES THAT SUPPORT THE THESIS STATEMENT, AND SUPPORTING EVIDENCE FROM THE TEXTBOOK TO SUPPORT YOUR TOPIC SENTENCES.

THIS ESSAY IS DUE ON OCTOBER 31.

QUESTION

HOW DID THE EVENTS OF 9/11 CHANGE

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AMERICAN?

9-1-1 Is a Joke

or

How We Did It at the

Solomon Schechter School of Chicago

Gurion Maccabee

10/31/06

Ancient/Prehistoric

Slapslap is older than giving the swearfinger. It is probably the oldest game human beings still play. The slappee holds his hands out, knuckles-up, above the held-out, knuckles-down hands of the slapper; the slapper tries to slap the tops of the hands of the slappee, and the slappee tries not to get slapped. Some slapslappers play a flirty, unscored form of which the object is only to play the game, but most play to win. You win when you score a previously agreed-on number of points — usually 13 or 21.

Scoring

It is always the case in scored slapslap that if the slapper attempts to slap one of the slappee’s hands and connects, the slapper gets a point. Apart from that, however, the way the game is scored can vary. Whether the slapper gets one or two points if he slaps both hands, or no points if he only slaps one while trying to slap both; whether when he serves but fails to slap he loses a point, the slappee gains a point, or the failed serve is point-neutral (though never turn-neutral); whether flinching at a fake loses the slappee a point or gains the slapper a point, or balking on a serve loses the slapper a point or gains the slappee a point — all of these rules depend on what has been negotiated by the players prior to the game. And the same goes for when the players switch roles. It is most common for the slapper to become the slappee as soon as he misses. In some games, though, players switch roles after every point scored regardless of who scored it, and in other games a player plays his role for a fixed number of turns (usually 3 or 5), as in ping-pong.

Agreement and Disagreement

It is not uncommon for a slapper to slap so fast that a slappee doesn’t see the slapper’s hand make contact with his own, but the slap will always leave a tactile trace — usually the kind that stings. Therefore, when the honorable slapper correctly declares that he has scored, the honorable slappee won’t doubt or deny it, for even if he failed to see it, he’ll have felt it. Yet even between two honorable slapslappers who have agreed beforehand on a given set of rules, disagreements are bound to come up. The disagreements will not be concerned with slapping itself, but with flinching vs. twitching, and balking vs. faking, which, because they involve no physical contact, can only be perceived (or mispercieved) visually. Though never quite resolved , these disagreements are dealt with practically via one of two means: do-overs or rotating gimmes. Both options are problematic for the same reason: it is in the slappee’s best scoring interests to claim that all flinches are twitches and all fakes balks; it is in the slapper’s best scoring interests to claim the opposite (that balks are fakes, and twitches flinches). And even among the honorable, who, by definition, do not make claims they believe to be false, self-doubt arises. How couldn’t it? How couldn’t an honorable slapslapper allow for the possibility that he saw what he wanted to see rather than what he should have seen (i.e. what truly happened)? And how could an honorable slapslapper with any bent toward rigor whatsoever fail to question whether his opponent’s ability to see what truly happened isn’t complicated by motives similar to those of which he suspects himself?

One Solution

Most great and honorable slapslappers eventually end up playing a form of slapslap in which the only way to score is by slapping, and the only time a turn is counted is when a serve has been attempted. In other words: balking and flinching are considered both turn- and point-neutral actions, thereby making it irrelevant to distinguish a flinch from a twitch or a balk from a fake.

This newer form of slapslap, which everyone initially referred to as simple slapslap , has become so dominant in the past few years that a great number of its adherents have seen fit to forsake the modifier; these days they refer to the form, simply, as slapslap . And the name they give to the original slapslap is olden slapslap .