The punctured football signed "for her Own Personal Daddy" — and the e-mailed sarcasm from home

texture · Oct, last B.S. year (Columbus Day)

• When: Columbus Day of Orin's freshman fall at B.U. — October of the last pre-Subsidized year
• What: The Daddy is the stated reason for the approach that starts the novel's great courtship: at a Columbus Day Major Sport function Joelle asks Orin to autograph a practice-punctured football "for her Own Personal Daddy, one Joe Lon van Dyne of Shiny Prize KY" (scene 068 — noting that per n.307 Joelle and Orin "each remember themselves as the original approachee," a dispute recorded as printed). Notkin's account carries the sequel at the Kentucky end: the "major-sport-star son's autograph on a punctured football inspired more e-mailed suspicion and sarcasm than gratitude from home in KY" — in her telling, the first datum that set Joelle re-reading her adolescence (event 5). Father's reaction to the gift attested only through Notkin; the gift itself only through the narrated frame.