The Orin-punt diagnosis: same lob-dependency, "bad feelings about Orin's future, inside"

pivotal · ~B.S. 2001 (Orin's B.U. freshman fall), recalled

• When: ~B.S. 2001 (Orin's B.U. freshman football season; the pre-Subsidization era)
• What: After Orin Incandenza defected from E.T.A.-track tennis to B.U. football and became a punter, Schtitt and deLint watched one cartridge of a B.U. game and diagnosed the move in Schtitt's own terms: Orin "was still just only lobbing," now with the leg, having "stumbled by accident on a way, in this grotesquely physical and territorial U.S. game, to legitimate the same dependency on the one shot of lob" that had kept him from developing his weak areas — "the real herbicide on the carrot of Orin Incandenza's tennis." ("Puberty Schmüberty, as the real reason for burning down the inside fire for tennis, Schtitt knew.") Schtitt "later told deLint he had several very bad feelings about Orin's future, inside" — a self-evasion diagnosis consistent with his whole self-transcendence creed.