The 1965 Bi-Annual Argumentavists Conference

Two days. That’s all Patrick Tolle has left. Two days to convince the world of something. He knows he can do it. He’s going to do it.

Sitting on a Peter Pan bus headed for Boston, Massachusetts, by way of a connection at Chicago, Illinois after a trek from Boise, Idaho. Crossing the country, Patrick feels poised and ready to drop bombs from his subconscious this weekend. The bus smells like old ketchup and whenever he moves his left foot he is reminded that there is something just sticky enough to create a little bit of resistance against lifting the sole of his shoe away from the floor. An elderly man sat, hunched over slightly, in the next seat. He looks like he is in constant pain but has been nothing but kind the whole trip. Behind his ears, he could hear a whiny teenager. One who’d spent the extent of the trip misunderstanding the proper placement of his knees so thoroughly that Patrick has been able to feel them in his lower back since Springfield.

But he can’t bring himself to notice any of these negativities. The time has finally come for the 1965 Bi-Annual Argumentavists Conference and Patrick had been preparing for years. He has all his arguments prepared and written down. Every argument has been made ready for every possible counter-argument, fully prepared. He fully intends to be the winner of the Bi-Annual Argumentavists Laude and its twenty thousand dollar prize.

Finally, pulling into Boston’s South Station, Patrick Tolle took in the strange sight of the tall buildings of a small major city. Boise was so different, being that it was a major small city. The difference felt enormous and a bit overwhelming truly but he soon recalibrates his grip, recenters his focus, and remembers where he is. As well as what he is here to do.

Upon arriving at the convention center, he walks as fast as he can without breaking into a full run. Never show them you feel too confident in yourself! AN ARGUMENTAVIST KNOWS HIS ARGUMENT MUST STAND ON THE MERIT OF HIS ANGER ALONE. That was what Patrick read in the correspondence course he’d taken. It was taught by Professor Von Hardwick. Professor Chadwick Von Hardwick, the greatest mind in the argumentavist world.

He finally arrives at the check-in booth, a little sweaty from the summer heat and, truly, the general excitement. He labors not to show it. The time between walking in the door and getting to the booth feels unnaturally long. Behind the simple cloth-covered counter, a young lady in a green dress looks up from his driver’s license and asks, while mispronouncing his name, “May we have all your arguments for the registry, Mr. Toles? It’s regulation that you register all arguments and that they are verified to be your own creations or you forfeit all the conferences’ activities.” Patrick is aware of this step of the registration, he is aware this is a preparation in the name of fairness and equanimity. But she got no response.

“Mr. Toles?” the pretty young volunteer says again (mispronouncing his name again) beginning to become impatient. What she couldn’t know is that for the past eleven months, Patrick had been keeping the entirety of his argument research in a little black moleskin notebook with a sticker of a yellow daisy and keeping that little black moleskin notebook in the inside pocket of his jacket. A spot that Patrick has just touched and found empty and hollow. A feeling of chaos overcomes Patrick Tolle’s usually very orderly mind as he retraces his steps in his mind’s eye: he is wearing the jacket, it was with him the whole trip, he put it on when he left his house on Haggard Street... didn’t he put the moleskin in that inside pocket like he always did? What happened?

AN ARGUMENTAVIST IS ALWAYS PREPARED. He could almost hear Hardwick’s voice from the tapes in his head. Patrick has a problem. “Mr. Toles? Mr Toles, are you quite alright?” He is not.

The next few hours are a blur of panic. He walks back out of the convention center. Gets back on the green line of the T. He returns to the bus station. Finally, with adrenaline drained out of his innards with only exhaustion left to him, he checks himself into a hotel near South Station.

Patrick does not sleep well this night. The night before the Bi-Annual Argumentavists’ Laude. The debate, the battle, the crown event of the conference. The room’s broken heater meant outrageous temperatures all night. Laying in his underwear on a strange bed, he continues to imagine all the places he had been and all the things he had done the past three days. Alternate possibilities branch out and fill his imagination. He’d left the little black moleskin with the sticker of a yellow daisy on the dresser of his room, his childhood bedroom... He’d been pick-pocketed by some extremely brilliant child-thief... He carelessly left his coat upside down at some point he doesn’t remember on the bus...

Returning to the center in the morning, he walks back up the counter. Thankfully, the pretty young volunteer is not there. She’s been replaced with an old woman in red spectacles. Trembling, he hands her a single sheet of typewriter paper borrowed from the hotel lobby concierge. On it Patrick has written everything he could remember by habit. Everything he’d been practising daily. Double-sided. “That’s it?” she asks kindly but with a hint of a motherly fear. “That’s all,” he replies with a tiny dry spot at the center of his throat.

Slick with sweat thicker than he felt even in the hotel room with the broken heater, he steps out into the ring. All he was, had ever been, or could ever hope to be has become squashed into this moment. Like an entire platter of his mother’s potato salad forced into a single mason jar. His opponent is the famous Anton Grigor. The Russian Goat. Eastern Bloc Annual Argumentavist champion for the past five years. He looks collegiate in a tweed suit-jacket. Like he’s walked over from Harvard University itself.

AN ARGUMENTAVIST DOES NOT BACK DOWN! At first, he thought this was another echo of his memory but he soon realized it was his far-away teacher Professor Hardwick in the crowd admonishing a young student. He began to feel even hotter. He was sure his face was as red as a wheelbarrow.

He didn’t travel two thousand miles just to boomerang back home. He knows what to do, even if he will be a spectacular failure while doing it. Moving forward toward the Russian Goat, he stretches out his hand to be the gentleman he was raised to be and offers Grigor a handshake. As Grigor stretches out his own arm, that brown tweed jacket flaps in the breeze. In shame and fear, Patrick looks down and to the left. But as he does, he recognizes his little black moleskin book with the sticker of a yellow daisy in the inside pocket of Anton Grigor’s tweed suit-jacket.

For the first time in years, Patrick smiles.