Locker-room intro: sixteen, and sitting out the talk

texture · 3 Nov YDAU, 1640h

• When: 3 Nov YDAU, ~1640h, the E.T.A. males' locker room during post-practice talk.
• What: Amid the towel-kilted locker-room banter, the narration catalogs the non-participants: Peter Beak, Evan Ingersoll, and Kent Blott — twelve, eleven, ten — "up sitting on the blond-wood benches that run in front of the lockers' rows, sitting there in towels, elbows on knees, not taking part." Then the capper: "So is Zoltan Csikzentmihalyi, who’s sixteen but speaks very little English." One clause carries his whole standing identity — nominally an upperclassman, functionally seated with the small kids, present and silent at the edge of the group's talk.