Jerry (5.3)

I don’t remember his face. But I remember him. It was the 2008-2009 Texas State Finals in Academic Decathlon and 9-student teams from all across the state had convened in a non-descript high school just outside of Houston.  To properly convey the importance of what happened I have to include a few technical details. Of the ten subjects in AcDec, one of the most subjective and important is Impromptu Speech, which requires students to answer a specific question using no more or less than 3-4 minutes. By the time a student had reached state finals he would have practiced this at least two dozen times. That day, we were walking into the lobby of a cheerless cement building for the final portion of the competition. As we pushed through the door I caught a glimpse of a student (a wild tuff of brown hair, glasses, skinny, pale limbs) and fragment of a conversation:

“So… how long do we have to talk for again?”

“Come on Jerry, come on buddy. We’ve been doing this for a while.”  

And in those broken fragments of an impression I knew Jerry.  Here was this kid, his name was Jerry, he looked like a cartoon rendering of nerd, and he had made it all the way to the State Finals and still couldn’t remember the prescribed time limit.  The way his coach, a tan exasperated man in a tight white polo called him buddy, his voice overflowing with tired condescension sealed it. This kid was a fuck up. He was bad at sports and academics and being social. He was the kind of kid who tripped in the cafeteria and could never concentrate in class. That brief moment was a keyhole through which I saw his entire life. My friend, who had also witnessed the exchange, and I laughed about it for the rest of the day and still do when it’s brought up. For a split second we were violently connected to this stranger, to Jerry; we knew him. And if we hadn’t laughed I think I might have cried.