At 8:06, Pritikin rolled up on his GT Compe. He performed a triple bunnyhop at 0 MPH, then dismounted into a kind of handstand with his legs like an L; its horizontal bar propped the bike from falling sideways. It made me admire Pritikin more and wish I was good at bike-tricks. He clamped the Compe to the rack and came over. He walked like he always walked, and didn’t make any extra eye-contact. To me this proved Pritikin wasn’t a show-off. He’d done the bike-trick for the beauty of the bike-trick, not so kids would admire him. The thought of that led to my seeing the single problem with our plan. To surprise Pritikin with my challenge in front of fifty people, while it wasn’t just unnecessary to secure his defeat, might later provide him with an excuse for having been defeated. For the longevity of real slapslap’s imminent reign, it was important he and everyone else knew I beat him fair and square. So I took him aside and let him know I’d challenge him publicly, as soon as fifty kids got there. He said he’d accept the challenge, then paced by the wacky wall, waiting.
By the time fifty kids showed, it was twenty after eight. Though usually there were fifty by 8:15, none of us thought twice about it. We didn’t think twice about Sheldon Markowitz, either. At twelve after eight, he got out of his mom’s car. He took a few steps toward us, then his mom yelled his name. He got back in the car, and they drove away. We just figured he’d forgotten something at his house. Maybe his lunch, maybe his gymshorts. (Sheldon was heavy and hated Gym, which was probably why his mom always drove him to school even though they lived only a few blocks away.) It wasn’t til nearly a half hour later, when everyone was gathered inside the multipurpose room, that Emmanuel offered a stronger hypothesis: between the time Sheldon opened the passenger-side door and the time his mother called his name out, NPR, to which Mrs. Markowitz — if she was anything like the rest of our mothers — was listening, received word on the second plane and announced it.
At 8:20, I explained the challenge to the crowd. I told them Pritikin had already accepted it, but it was open to the rest of them as well. Shmooly, as predicted, was the only one who stepped up.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 3.
Gurion 21, Shmooly 19.
Everyone agreed the territory was a real-only zone. Everyone agreed on the exception for Shmooly. Then the first bell rang. We went to Assembly.
Surrounded by Underdogs
During Announcements, moms appeared in the doorway. Not one or two, but ten or eleven. They took away their children, and news started spreading. From radios in cars and TVs at breakfast, some kids had learned some things about a plane and a building. Or planes and buildings. The center of the world. It wasn’t very clear. At first everyone had thought whatever’d happened was an accident, but why were all these moms showing? Take a look around. Teachers chewed hangnails, pulled tieknots, were quiet.
After Attendance, before morning prayer, Rabbi Unger said everything was fine. Most of us knew then for sure: not everything.
We started to daven. More kids’ moms came. Most were in and out in under thirty seconds, but one started crying, another arguing with a teacher. The arguer wanted to take her daughter’s best friend home with them, claimed the girl’s mother had asked her to. The teacher wouldn’t budge without written permission; but if written permission were gettable, explained the arguer, the best friend’s mom would have shown up herself.
“But yet nonetheless—”
“But yet nonetheless nothing! Today of all days is no day to play the bureaucrat.”
Rabbi Salt went over and whispered to the teacher. The mom left the school with both girls.
The news, spreading fast, became rumors faster. A plane had hit the Sears Tower, it was said. Later that day, I’d wonder which schmuck had spread that, but it was probably no schmuck, just some kid who mis-heard the message he’d been passed. If between mouth and ear the World Trade Center could so quickly become the center of the world, it only followed that the tallest building in the country would get confused for the one that used to be.
A couple syllables into the Shemoneh Esreh, everyone but Solomon Schenk had stopped praying. Schenk’s bar-mitzvah had happened the previous Saturday. At Schechter that meant he’d lead prayers all week. Schenk was the boy whose mother was crying. His eyes were on scripture and he’d failed to see her. She was slouched on the opposite side of the multipurpose room, waiting politely for Solomon to finish. When finally he noticed that no one else was praying, he lifted his head, and there she was. Through the mike on the podium, he said, “Where’s Aba? What happened to Aba? Where is my aba?”
“Your aba is fine,” she yelled back to her son, then from the same kind concern for decorum that had caused her to wait in the corner, crying, she incited a panic she’d intended to cull. “Everyone’s parents are fine,” she said.
And we knew what that meant. We thought we did.
“Sears Tower’s destroyed!” “And the center of the world.” “Planes are missing.” “Planes are missiles.” “Where’s our parents?” “We want our parents.”
Rabbi Salt took the podium and told us what he knew. Two planes had hit a building in New York. The building was called the World Trade Center. Nothing bad had happened in Chicago. It was alright to weep, even he felt like weeping, weeping made sense, but we should know, he told us, what exactly it was that we wept for. It wasn’t our parents, it wasn’t our parents. “Please sit back down and we’ll continue to daven.”
“How do you know?” “How does he know what’s happening?”
“Keep down your voices,” we were told by Rabbi Unger. “Sit down in your seats and we’ll continue the service.”
No one sat down in his seat. Kids with cellies******** called home, checked in, then passed the cellies on to kids without them.
Rabbi Salt, wise, buzzed the media-tech. A few minutes later, CNN was on the wall-screen. We sat on the floor in front of it. Towers were burning, people were falling, no few planes were still in the sky. Most of us began to enjoy ourselves. That might sound cold, even arch, to a moron. Our parents were fine, though, and plus we had enemies.
Just minutes earlier, when the possibility that our parents were dead had seemed, for the first time ever, real, we’d discovered we were not as bad as we’d suspected. Who among us hadn’t, at one point or many, entertained reluctant fantasies of being orphaned — all those guys you’d know more than, all those girls who’d notice, all those good reasons to cry and lash out, the allowances granted you for all of it, the admiration you’d get for having overcome? And who of us hadn’t wondered what was wrong with himself for having entertained such fantasies? Who hadn’t worried that in his heart of hearts he was selfish and guilty, a wishful parricide? And now we knew we weren’t, that we hadn’t ever been. During those couple minutes in which we feared our parents’ deaths, we learned their deaths were the last things we wanted; that those fantasies, like nightmares, said nothing true about us. We were good after all, we’d been good all along, our dreams of orphanage the outcome of frustrated longings we hadn’t known we’d had, longings for actual, unadulterated enmity = It turned out we’d just always wanted enemies. Worthy enemies. Materially demonstrable injustice to (after some struggle) beat. Explicit threats to rise above. Good reasons to dominate, a righteous path of conquest, the chance to exhibit strength without being a show-off. Ways to do violence while remaining a mensch. The need to do violence to remain a mensch.