“I taggled my own quartermack”

“I taggled my own quartermack” is Kyra’s playful phrase for a fall during a game, but its recurrence carries a more consequential meaning: she uses it to connect an ordinary present-day moment with the uncanny events she and Mike experienced at the Fryeburg Fair. The phrase becomes a small, memorable test of whether that shared journey really happened.

The Phrase in Play

During a game in the noon light, Kyra proudly says, “I taggled my own quartermack.” The remark follows a chaotic tumble: Rommie Bissonette has gone head over heels, scattering the change from his pockets, and John Storrow has laughed so hard he has to sit down. Kyra runs over and lands on John’s lap, abruptly ending his laughter with a painful impact. He confirms her boast and jokes that the referee has called a fifteen-yard penalty for squashing.

The phrase’s humor rests on its exuberant, childlike distortion of football language. It is not an abstract catchphrase introduced for explanation; it belongs to a physical scene of play, tumbling, laughter, and embarrassment. Kyra’s proud repetition gives the words the force of a personal signature.

Return from the Fair

The expression returns in a telephone conversation about the earlier trip to the Fryeburg Fair. When Mike reminds Kyra that she had said she “taggled” him there, she recalls details from their journey: the snake-dance ladies, the pole with a bell on top, the spookyhouse, and Mike falling into a barrel. Her recollection is specific, while the adults’ understanding remains uncertain. Mike had called the experience a dream; Kyra asks whether it was one, then insists that he was there too.

That exchange changes the phrase’s significance. What first sounded like a child’s playful account of a mishap becomes part of Kyra’s evidence that the fair experience was shared rather than private or invented. The line does not settle the question by itself, but its return gives the earlier event a witness: Kyra remembers the same place, attractions, and comic fall that Mike does.

Repetition and Recognition

The wording shifts slightly across the two occasions. At the game, Kyra says she “taggled my own quartermack”; recalling the fair, she tells Mike, “I taggled you at the Fair!” The repeated, distinctive verb ties together two falls and two moments of play, while the changed object of the action marks the difference between them. In one scene she knocks herself down; in the remembered fair episode, she says she knocked Mike down.

The phrase therefore works as a verbal link across time and uncertainty. Its comic sound keeps the recollection grounded in Kyra’s voice, even as the remembered details point toward the extraordinary. The joke survives the shift in context, but the repetition makes it more than a joke: it is the recognizable trace by which Kyra returns to an experience Mike has tried to name as a dream.