Young Hal the show-off prodigy at the Incandenza Thanksgiving

timeline_event

texture · ~Nov B.S. 2001, last pre-Subsidized Thanksgiving

When: last pre-Subsidized Thanksgiving (~Nov B.S. 2001; Hal "maybe ten")
What: In Joelle's memory of her first Incandenza family Thanksgiving (Headmaster's House; the family in-joke of no turkey; dinner at 2300h), a roughly-ten-year-old Hal is the insufferable lexical/scientific prodigy: he announces unprompted that the basic unit of luminous intensity is the Candela and defines it, "kept asking wasn't anybody going to ask him the freezing-temperature of platinum," requests examples of "Haplology," puns on "deconstruction," and argues fine points of usage (whether "circa" can modify an interval, whether "misspoke" is a word) with Avril. Later he summons the cab company's phone number from memory. Establishes the childhood prodigy and the family's Avril-centered dynamic (Hal wipes Mario's continuously-running snout). Joelle "wasn't crazy about" him.