Fun & Games

Adaptation

Katharine Hepburn and friend in Bringing Up Baby

We had our big pizza party this week. One student suggested that we play a game in which the class picks a character from one of the books or movies we've studied this semester and then a student who has been kept in a sound-proof booth (i.e., outside the classroom) tries to guess who that is by asking yes-or-no questions. So the first student up got the leopard, Baby, in Bringing Up Baby. Somehow -- and I still don't know how -- he guessed it in just three tries! At the class' insistence, I played, too. I got the weird waiter in Ghost World. That took me 11 guesses. But, hey, that's a tough one, right? I mean, a waiter! Why not the bus driver or an extra in the art-gallery scene? You know, I really ought to be a better sport about these things...