The coaching legacy: "the all-defensive game Schtitt used to have me play"

timeline_event

texture · YG (2010) / post-YDAU, recalled by Hal

When: YG (2010), or thereabouts — Hal in the E.T.A.-admissions/interview frame that opens the novel's timeline
What: In the novel's opening scene, a shut-down, affectless Hal reaches for a coping frame from Schtitt: "The sort of all-defensive game Schtitt used to have me play: the best defense: let everything bounce off you; do nothing." The coach's imprint outlasts the coaching — Schtitt's tactics reappear, past-tense, as Hal's psychic armor when he can no longer make himself understood.