“Cross-face cradle, Zim!” Coach Dearborn barked. That’s what I’d been thinking, but Zimmermann was a little frustrated. He was on his toes, his chest on the guy’s back, slapping the guy with the cross face—first one side of his face, then the other.

When the ref blew his whistle, he penalized Zim for unnecessary roughness—one point for the staller. Zimmer was still ahead, 4–2.

“Zim!” Coach Dearborn said sharply. “Let him go. Take him down again.” Zimmer gave the guy the escape. It was 4–3 at the end of the first period. Sometimes the crowd quieted down between periods. There was some murmuring on our team bench—to the effect that penalizing Zimmermann for unnecessary roughness missed the whole point about him.

“Zim is more of an insufficient roughness guy,” one of my teammates said.

Then Little Ray jumped to her feet and shouted point-blank at the bald ref. “Not even a zebra would fuck you!” my mom told him.

Yes, the zebra-fucking idea had a context—not that everyone who heard her knew the context, and everyone had heard her. I was sitting next to Coach Dearborn, who quietly said, “That pretty much sums it up, Adam—not even a zebra.”

“Not even a zebra,” the snowshoer said, so softly that it sounded reverential.

We could all see that Molly had her arm around my mother. The trail groomer was guiding my mom toward the exit. I would only later consider that the night groomer knew something about the nature of competition. Molly didn’t want to leave anything in the hands of a bad official. The ref couldn’t throw out Little Ray if she was already leaving.

“Not even a zebra!” some students in the crowd were shouting.

“We’re witnessing the birth of a mantra,” Elliot Barlow said, as Zimmer built a lead against his flagging opponent. Zim just kept taking the guy down and letting him go. Two points for a takedown, one point for an escape—you can build a lead fairly fast.

I was warming up for my match when Zimmermann spotted my mother and Molly. Zim had taken my seat on the team bench, where he’d been looking all around for my mom. Little Ray and the trail groomer were sitting with the students on the board track above us—“the outfield seats,” my mother called them. She’d told me she liked being at mat-side, where she could see the wrestlers sweat and hear them breathing.

I’ll always remember that day. Seconds before I stepped out on the mat, I saw Zimmer wave to my mom, who waved back. Molly still had her arm around her. It was the day Not even a zebra started gaining momentum. Among my teammates, it would one day acquire the status of a sacred chant.