I Have Some Questions For You

by Rebecca Makkai

The need to keep busy is both a symptom of high-functioning anxiety and the key to my success.

I was torn. Teach Leo independence and thereby give the middle finger to a school that demanded this, in addition to Heritage Week and Crazy Hair Day and Historical Figure Day and Cupcake Day and Funky Socks Day—or let Leo’s artist father spectacularly outdo the Pinterest moms. We tended to vacillate between the two responses, our kids sometimes walking masterpieces, sometimes DIY messes. I wrote back: Your call.

Just as the only sporting events with full stands were for boys’ teams. At the time, what rankled was the idea that we were supposed to see these boys as the stars, to fall at their sweaty feet. What bothers me now is those boys internalizing girls as audience, there only to act as mirrors, to make their accomplishments realer.)

club.” I rambled about Geoff Richler introducing Bringing Up Baby to the handful of us assembled, how he explained that no one had dovetailed their lines like this, like Hepburn and Grant did, before Howard Hawks—who’d also directed the 1932 Scarface we were about to screen—whipped them into overlapping comedic frenzy. It was the first time I’d watched a movie for anything other than plot. It wasn’t long before I was interested in the camera work and the history and, eventually, the theory of film.

Something I wish I’d figured out earlier in life: Walk into any place like you belong, and you will.