Ten years old among the giants: the humanities kid, the trust fund, and the campus floor-age of sincerity

pivotal · STANDING

• When: STANDING (background identity, true throughout the book; details rendered 3-11 Nov YDAU plus an undated photo).
• What: Kent Blott is ten — "Well Blott's just ten" is how Hal settles a pecking-order dispute — and the smallest of the boys the book groups him with (034's bench trio runs "twelve, eleven, ten"). He is one of Hal's Big Buddy charges for the year, with Beak and Arslanian. His father is "a cutting-edge E.N.T. oncologist" who "flew all over the world removing tumors from wealthy mucous membranes"; Blott has a trust fund, and his parents are Seventh-Day Adventists. He wears colored shoelaces with "Mr.-Bouncety-Bounce-Program"-brand bow-biters, which Hal finds extraordinarily artless and young. Athletically he is the odd boy out twice over: in the post-drill locker room, "Every jr. player presently in this room is ranked in the top 64 continentally, except Pemulis, Yardley and Blott"; and he is "ineligible for Eschaton because he's a humanities-type kid and hasn't even taken quadrivial Algebra yet, and excluded from the Club under every incarnation of the eligibility requirements thus far." Mario, thinking about why nobody at E.T.A. can stand sincerity, uses him as the cutoff: everyone over the age of about Kent Blott finds really real stuff uncomfortable. And in the trophy-case photo collage he appears mid-prank-victimhood: an athletic supporter fit over his ears and nose, mouth a horrified boomerang, Traub and Lord collapsing around him in either hilarity or horror.