The professional conversationalist — "I tend to get beat up…"
‘I tend to get beat up, sometimes, at the Academy, for stuff like that. Does this bear on why I’m here? That I’m a continentally ranked junior tennis player who can also recite great chunks of the dictionary, verbatim, at will, and tends to get beat up, and wears a bow tie? Are you like a specialist for gifted kids? Does this mean they think I’m gifted?’
Context
Right after the implore recitation, Hal self-describes: the dictionary-reciting is already, at ten, both his defining trick and what he gets beat up for. The verbatim-recall gift the whole book will torque — the same eidetic equipment that "sees the page all yellowed up" in the locker-room quiz (p. 97, below) — introduced in his own words, bundled with the bow tie.