Bread and Bread

Dear Cheryl, This story takes place thirty years from now. Can you believe you'll ever be 41? You sort of almost didn't make it to that birthday, but that's another story. In this one, two board members at the organization you work for are Hillary Toomey . They think of you as a well-intentioned flea who is not great at gala event seating. They're not really concerned with you one way or another, but in their wake you feel small and frumpy and rejected. This is how you feel every day in sixth grade. You are too tall and have bangs that don't cooperate. You make jokes that fall flat. You are gay and trying not to be, because gay is just another way of doing everything wrong. The Hillary Toomeys of your future like your coworkers, who are Bonnie in this story. Two different coworkers represent Bonnie--both the conscientious, imaginative Bonnie who will be your lifelong friend, and the sixth-grade Bonnie, who is wooed by the opinions and charms of the mean, popular...

I’m a believer in the close read—in getting to know a book, play or film so intimately that you can consider the meaning of every detail—but I’m not much of a practitioner. It’s true what librarians’ bumper stickers say: So many books, so little time. But if you want to study every nuance of a thing, I highly recommend hanging out with a toddler. The catch is that the thing in question will probably be the Minions movie or a picture book about construction vehicles (ask me about the difference between a front-end loader and an excavator). Boat! It’s a little embarrassing how excited I was when Moana appeared on Netflix one day recently. Finally, a movie we could both get into watching 17,000 times! I hadn’t seen it, but I listen to the soundtrack a lot, and I sneaked in a couple of songs between “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on the Tidal playlist I created for Dash. Toddler criteria for liking something seems to be “Do I already like it?” When the...