My father built the deck on the back of our house the summer I turned eleven, and he built it the way he built everything, which was carefully and without haste and with the understanding that what he was making was going to outlast the making of it.
He spent three weekends on the foundation alone.
I remember this because I was his assistant, which meant I handed him things and held boards in place while he measured and remeasured, and I asked questions that he answered with the patience of someone who understood that a child’s curiosity about how things were built was not an interruption but an opportunity.
He said: you build the part you can’t see the same as the part you can.
He meant the posts in the concrete, the joists under the decking, the work that would be hidden from view once the surface was laid.
He said: if you know the foundation is right, you can trust everything above it.
I have thought about this many times since. About how the deck lasted thirty years and was still solid when we finally sold the house after my father died. About what it means to build something you can trust. About the specific relationship between the work that no one sees and the surface that everyone does.
My name is Patricia Hollis, and I am fifty-seven years old, and I have been a high school chemistry teacher for twenty-nine of those years, and the thing I am about to tell you is about a parent named Diana Mercer and a boy named Tyler and what happened when a person who had decided I was wrong refused to believe that I might not be.
But it is also about foundations.
Tyler Mercer came into my AP Chemistry class in September of his junior year.
I noticed him in the way I noticed all students in the first week, which was systematically, the specific observation of a teacher who has learned that the first week tells you things about a student that later weeks may obscure, the way that people present themselves before the performance of the school year takes over from the actual self.
Tyler was quiet in a particular way.
Not shy quiet, not the quiet of someone who was afraid to speak. The quiet of someone who was conserving something, whose attention was directed inward rather than outward, whose questions when they came were formed carefully rather than produced spontaneously.
He sat in the third row, center seat, which is where students with genuine interest in the material tend to sit, close enough to see clearly and centrally enough to see the whole board.
He had the look of someone for whom the world of ideas was more interesting than the social world around it, which is a quality I had come to recognize over twenty-nine years, the specific internal orientation of a student who was going to either thrive or struggle depending on whether the classroom gave him what he needed.
I watched him through September.
The work he turned in was careful. Not flashy, not the kind of work that announces its intelligence through complexity or stylistic flourish. Careful. The kind of work that had been thought through before it was written down, that had a structure underneath the surface.
I thought of my father’s deck.
In October, I gave a unit assessment on thermodynamics.
Tyler’s test came back to me, after I had graded it, with a score that surprised me not because it was high but because of the specific form it was high. He had gotten several problems conventionally correct and several unconventionally correct, the unconventional answers arriving at the right place through a different route, a route that was actually more elegant than the standard one.
I called him over after class.
I said: I want to talk about problems eight and eleven.
He looked at the test.
He said: I know they look different.
I said: they look different because they are different. Walk me through your reasoning.
He did.
He talked for six minutes without prompting, explaining the conceptual path he had taken, the way he had thought about the problem from the underlying principle rather than from the formula, which was the thing most students did first.
I listened.
When he finished I said: this is right. It’s also a more interesting way to arrive at it.
He said: I thought about the formula first. But it felt like.
He stopped.
I said: like what.
He said: like memorizing the answer without understanding the question.
I said: yes.
I said: that’s exactly right.
I told him about a summer research program at the state university that took high school juniors and seniors who had shown specific aptitude in science.
It was called the STEM Scholars Program, and it was competitive and it was the kind of thing that could open doors that were not otherwise available, the specific doors of early exposure to real research, to the way science was actually done rather than the way it was performed in a high school laboratory.
I said: I think you should apply.
He said: my mom would want to know about it.
I said: of course.
He said: she likes to be involved in decisions.
I said: I’ll send her an email with the program information.
He said: okay.
He gathered his things.
At the door he turned.
He said: thank you, Mrs. Hollis.
I said: for what.
He said: for explaining the problems instead of just marking them right.
I said: that’s what teaching is.
He went out.
I sat at my desk for a moment after he was gone.
I thought: this one is going to be something.
Diana Mercer called me two days after I sent the email.
I had sent a brief email explaining the STEM Scholars Program, attaching the program description, noting that Tyler had shown the kind of analytical thinking it was designed for, and suggesting she look it over and contact me with any questions.
She called rather than emailing back.
I noticed this.
She said: I wanted to talk about what you said about Tyler.
I said: of course. He’s a strong student. I think the program would be a good fit.
She said: he’s not applying.
I said: oh. May I ask why?
She said: Tyler has a plan for his junior and senior years. We’ve been working on it since he was in eighth grade. College essays, extracurriculars, the specific profile we’re building for admissions.
I said: the STEM Scholars Program would add considerably to that profile.
She said: we have the activities selected.
I said: I understand you have a plan. I’m simply suggesting that this program might enhance it.
She said: I appreciate that. But I know my son.
I said: I’m sure you do.
There was a pause.
She said: Mrs. Hollis, I don’t mean to be blunt.
I said: please be blunt.
She said: Tyler does well in chemistry because he works hard. He works very hard. But the description of him as having exceptional aptitude in the way you’re suggesting.
She said: I just want to make sure your enthusiasm isn’t outpacing the evidence.
I said: the evidence is in his work.
She said: he gets good grades.
I said: he thinks differently than most students. That’s not a grade.
She said: I’ve had other teachers tell me Tyler was exceptional and then the results didn’t bear it out.
I said: I can only speak to what I observe in my class.
She said: and I can speak to seventeen years of knowing my son.
I said: yes. You know your son.
She said: thank you for the suggestion. Tyler won’t be applying.
She ended the call.
I sat with the phone in my hand.
I thought about the way she had said I know my son.
It was not a wrong thing to say. Parents know their children. Seventeen years of daily proximity produces a knowledge that a September and October of classroom observation cannot replicate.
But there are different kinds of knowing.
There is the knowing of a parent who watches a child grow and worries for them and advocates for them and builds plans around who they believe the child to be.
And there is the knowing of a teacher who sees what a student does with something they have not been given by their parents, who observes what happens when a child encounters an idea in the particular privacy of their own mind.
These are different things.
I thought about what Tyler had said about the formula feeling like memorizing the answer without understanding the question.
I thought: no one taught him that.
That was his.
I let it go.
Or tried to.
December was the application deadline for the STEM Scholars Program.
In November, Tyler came in early one morning before first period.
He said: can I talk to you?
I said: yes.
He said: about the program.
I said: your mother said you weren’t applying.
He said: I know.
He was quiet for a moment.
He said: she doesn’t think I’m the right kind of smart.
I said: Tyler.
He said: not in a mean way. She just has a specific idea of what genius looks like and she doesn’t think that’s me.
I said: what do you think?
He said: I think I understand things in my own way.
He said: I think the way I understand them might be worth something.
I said: yes. It is.
He said: if I applied.
He stopped.
He said: if I applied without telling her first.
I said: I wouldn’t recommend that.
He said: would you write the recommendation?
I said: Tyler.
He said: yes?
I said: I will write you the strongest recommendation I have ever written if you apply to this program. But I want you to tell your mother first.
He said: what if she says no again.
I said: then you’ll need to decide how much this matters to you.
He said: it matters.
I said: then have the conversation.
He said: she’s pretty set.
I said: I know.
I said: Tyler. You’re seventeen. The decisions that are most important for your life are starting to be yours to make. Not without consideration for your family, not without conversation, but yours.
He said: that’s scary.
I said: yes. It is.
He said: what if she’s right? What if I’m not exceptional?
I said: exceptional is a word that gets in the way.
He said: what do you mean?
I said: I don’t think you’re exceptional. I think you’re specific. I think you have a specific way of understanding the world that is yours and that chemistry happens to be a place where that way of understanding produces work I have not seen from most students in twenty-nine years.
He said: twenty-nine years.
I said: yes.
He said: and you’ve seen a lot of students.
I said: many.
He sat with this.
He said: I’ll talk to her.
He went to class.
He came back two days later.
He said: I told her.
I said: and?
He said: she was upset. She said I was being influenced.
I said: influenced by whom.
He said: you.
He said: she thinks you’ve gotten an idea about me that isn’t accurate and that I’m getting caught up in it.
I said: what do you think?
He said: I think I want to apply.
I said: then apply.
He said: she’s going to call you.
I said: that’s fine.
Diana Mercer called the next afternoon.
She was measured. Professional. She said she wanted to understand my assessment of Tyler’s abilities and she said it in the tone of someone who had already concluded that the assessment was incorrect and was offering me the opportunity to demonstrate this.
I told her what I had told her in October, but in more specific terms.
I described the thermodynamics problems. I described the six-minute explanation. I described the specific quality of his analysis, the way he arrived at conclusions through principle rather than formula.
She said: chemistry is one subject.
I said: it is. And it’s the one I can speak to.
She said: Tyler has strong grades but he’s not top of his class.
I said: the STEM Scholars Program is not for the top of the class. It’s for students with specific aptitude in scientific thinking.
She said: I’ve read the materials.
I said: then you know that it’s been the launchpad for several significant careers in the sciences.
She said: I know what the brochure says.
She paused.
She said: Mrs. Hollis, I want to say something and I want you to hear it without taking offense.
I said: all right.
She said: teachers develop enthusiasms. They see something they like in a student and they project onto it. They want to believe they’ve found something special. I’ve seen it before. A teacher gets excited and the student gets built up and then the result doesn’t match the expectation and the student is worse off than before.
She said: Tyler has had enough of that.
I said: what do you mean?
She said: in middle school. A math teacher who told him he was gifted. We redirected our whole approach based on that. And then the advanced math program in ninth grade was a disaster.
I said: I’m sorry that happened.
She said: I’m not saying it as a criticism. I’m saying it because I am protecting my son.
I said: I understand.
She said: and I’m telling you that I don’t think your enthusiasm is a reliable guide to Tyler’s future.
I said: I hear you.
She said: so I’m asking you to step back.
I said: I can’t do that.
She said: excuse me?
I said: I can’t step back from giving Tyler an accurate assessment of his work. That’s my job.
She said: he’s going to be disappointed.
I said: he might be. That’s different from being wrong about him.
She said: if he applies and doesn’t get in.
I said: then he’ll learn something about the process. And he’ll try again.
She said: you sound very certain.
I said: I am certain about what I observe in my classroom.
She said: and I’m certain about what I’ve observed in seventeen years of being his mother.
I said: Diana.
I used her first name and I heard her register this.
I said: you are not wrong about Tyler. You know things about him that I don’t. But what I see in chemistry is something that happens in a specific context, when a student is alone with an idea and has to figure it out themselves. That context shows you things that other contexts don’t.
She said: I understand what you’re saying.
She said: I still don’t think he should apply.
I said: Tyler is seventeen. It’s his decision.
She said: he’s a minor.
I said: at seventeen.
She said: at seventeen his decisions are still mine to guide.
I said: to guide. Yes.
I paused.
I said: will you tell me what the specific fear is?
She was quiet.
I said: not about chemistry. About Tyler. What are you afraid will happen?
Another silence.
She said: I’m afraid he’ll be built up and knocked down again. I’m afraid he’ll be told he’s exceptional and then find out he isn’t and lose confidence in the abilities he actually has.
She said: I’m afraid I’ll have let someone else’s idea of my son replace my own and then discover too late that my own was right.
I said: yes.
I said: that’s a real fear.
She said: it happened before.
I said: in ninth grade.
She said: yes.
I said: was that a teacher recommendation or a standardized test result?
She said: a teacher. Very enthusiastic.
I said: and Tyler tried the advanced program.
She said: he was miserable. He felt like he’d failed at something he’d been told was his destiny.
I said: I understand.
I said: Diana, I want to tell you something about how I teach.
She said: yes?
I said: I have been wrong about students before. I have had students I thought were remarkable who were not remarkable in the way I thought. I have had students I underestimated who surprised me. I have been teaching for twenty-nine years and I have made wrong calls.
She said: then why should I trust this one?
I said: because of how I’m saying it.
She said: what do you mean?
I said: I’m not telling you Tyler is a genius. I’m not telling you he’s going to cure something or discover something or be famous. I’m telling you that in the specific context of analytical chemistry at the AP level, he has shown me a quality of thinking that is specific and real and that I think would be valuable to develop.
I said: I’m not asking you to change your idea of who he is. I’m asking you to add one piece of information to the picture.
She said: the program.
I said: yes. It’s six weeks over the summer. It’s designed exactly for this. And if he goes and it turns out I was wrong, he comes home with an experience and a recommendation letter and he moves on.
She said: and if you’re right?
I said: then a door opens.
She was quiet.
I said: Diana. He wants to apply. That matters.
She said: yes.
She said: I know it does.
She was quiet for a long time.
She said: I’ll talk to him.
I said: that’s all I’m asking.
She said: I’m not promising anything.
I said: I know.
Tyler applied in December.
He applied with my recommendation letter, which I wrote carefully and specifically, not in the language of superlatives but in the language of particulars, the specific things I had observed, the specific quality of his thinking, the problems on the thermodynamics assessment with their unconventional routes.
He told me he had applied the day he submitted.
He came in before class.
He said: I did it.
I said: good.
He said: she helped me with the application.
I said: your mother helped you?
He said: she read it over and helped me with the essay.
He said: she didn’t say she thought I’d get in.
He said: but she helped.
I said: that’s what a good parent does.
He said: yeah.
He said: she said if I don’t get in it’s not because I’m not smart.
I said: she’s right.
He said: she said it’s because these things are competitive and you can be exactly the right person and not be chosen.
I said: she’s right about that too.
He said: she said she was proud of me for applying.
He said it the way a seventeen-year-old says something important, which is with the deliberate casualness of someone who does not want to reveal how much it matters.
I said: yes.
I said: she should be.
February.
The letter came in February, though in the contemporary form that letters come, which is to say as an email, a subject line that could go either way, the specific few seconds of not knowing before the opening.
Tyler appeared at my classroom door at 7:14 in the morning.
He was grinning in the way that is difficult to contain.
He said: I got in.
I said: yes. I know.
He said: you know?
I said: the program director sends notifications to recommenders at the same time as applicants. I got mine late last night.
He said: and you didn’t.
I said: it wasn’t my news to share.
He stood in the doorway.
He said: I got in.
I said: yes. You did.
He said: she cried.
I said: your mother?
He said: she called me at seven this morning. She was crying.
I said: good tears or bad tears.
He said: good. I think. She said she was sorry she hadn’t believed me.
I said: she believed you. She was afraid.
He said: yeah.
He said: she wants to talk to you.
I said: I’ll call her today.
He said: she said she was wrong.
I said: she wasn’t entirely wrong.
He looked at me.
I said: she wasn’t wrong to be careful. She wasn’t wrong to know her son. She was wrong about this specific thing.
I said: she protected you from the ninth-grade situation. That was real. The fear came from a real place.
He said: she still should have let me apply.
I said: yes. She should have.
He said: but.
I said: but the whole picture is more complicated than either of us being right.
He said: that’s a teacher answer.
I said: yes.
I said: Tyler.
He said: yeah?
I said: go to class.
He grinned again.
He went.
Diana Mercer called me at twelve-thirty that afternoon, during my lunch period.
She said: Mrs. Hollis.
I said: Patricia.
She said: Patricia. I wanted to call you.
I said: I’m glad.
She said: I want to apologize.
I said: Diana.
She said: no. Let me say it. I was wrong about what you observed. I didn’t trust your professional judgment and I put my own fear in the way.
I said: your fear was reasonable.
She said: it wasn’t relevant.
I said: it was entirely relevant. You had a reason to be cautious.
She said: I think I also didn’t want to be wrong.
She said it with the specific honesty of someone who has been sitting with this for a while and has arrived at the part that was hardest.
I said: yes.
She said: I was so sure.
I said: I know.
She said: I’ve been sure about Tyler for seventeen years. I’ve been so close to it that.
She stopped.
She said: you could see something I couldn’t. Because you weren’t inside it.
I said: that’s the thing about teaching. I see hundreds of students. I have a comparison.
She said: and I have only him.
I said: yes.
She said: it’s very disorienting.
I said: it would be.
She said: he’s going to be wonderful, isn’t he.
She said it not as a question exactly but as something between a question and an understanding.
I said: I think he is.
I said: I think he already is.
She said: thank you. For not letting it go.
I said: I nearly let it go.
She said: what stopped you?
I said: he came to me.
She said: yes. He did.
She said: he’s braver than I give him credit for.
I said: they often are.
She was quiet for a moment.
She said: Patricia.
I said: yes.
She said: what you said about the context. Where you can see things that other contexts don’t show.
I said: yes.
She said: I’d like to see that too.
I said: what do you mean?
She said: I’d like to understand more about what you see. Not to second-guess you. Just to understand him in that context.
She said: is there a way for me to observe? A class?
I said: parents can observe. I’d need to clear it with the administration and Tyler would need to know.
She said: would Tyler be all right with it?
I said: ask him.
She said: I’m going to try something different.
She said: I’m going to ask him what he wants instead of telling him what I think.
I said: that sounds like a good idea.
She said: it sounds harder than it sounds, if that makes sense.
I said: yes. It always does.
She laughed.
It was the first time in our conversations that she had laughed.
It was the laugh of someone who has put something down.
Tyler went to the STEM Scholars Program that summer.
He came back changed in the specific way that people come back from experiences that have given them a new category for themselves. Not transformed, not unrecognizable. Himself, but with an added dimension, the dimension of someone who now knows something about what they can do in the right environment.
He said, on the first day back in September of his senior year: it was like someone turned a light on.
I said: yes.
He said: I kept waiting to feel like I didn’t belong.
I said: and?
He said: I never felt that.
He said: I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I said: yes. That’s the feeling.
He said: my mom came and picked me up at the end. She talked to the program director for forty minutes.
I said: was that good?
He said: she was taking notes.
He said it in the way of a child who has seen his parent do something unexpected and who has not fully classified what he saw.
I said: she was learning.
He said: yeah.
He said: I think she was.
His senior year was the specific kind of senior year that happens when a student knows where they are going and why, when the work has a direction and the direction is one they chose.
He applied to three universities with strong chemistry programs.
He got into all three.
He chose the one with the research opportunity that most resembled the work he had done in the summer program.
Diana Mercer came to see me in April, about a month before graduation.
She knocked on my classroom door during my free period.
She said: is this a bad time?
I said: not at all.
She came in and sat in the student chair at the front.
It was strange to see her there, in the chair where her son had sat, in the room where the conversation about Tyler had become a kind of ongoing negotiation over the course of a year and a half.
She said: he committed to the university.
I said: I know. He told me.
She said: he asked me not to come with him when he visited.
I said: the visit?
She said: when he visited the campus in March. He wanted to go alone.
She said: I was hurt.
She said: and then I thought about what you said.
I said: which thing.
She said: about the context where you can see things that other contexts don’t show.
She said: I think that’s what he was protecting. His own context.
I said: yes.
She said: I was hurt and then I was proud.
She said: that’s a strange combination.
I said: that’s parenting, I think.
She said: yes.
She said: I’ve been thinking about the ninth-grade situation.
I said: the math program.
She said: yes.
She said: I’ve been thinking about why that was different.
I said: from this.
She said: yes.
She said: and I think the difference was that in ninth grade, Tyler wanted to please the teacher. He wanted to live up to what the teacher saw.
She said: this time he wanted to apply. He wanted to go. He went to you.
I said: yes.
She said: the desire was his.
I said: yes.
She said: I should have paid attention to that.
I said: you paid attention when it mattered.
She said: I got out of the way.
I said: yes.
She said: barely in time.
I said: in time.
She said: Patricia.
I said: yes.
She said: what you said about the foundation.
I said: I said that?
She said: yes. On the phone. In November. You said that what you observed was like the foundation, the part no one could see.
I said: I think I was talking about the way he builds his understanding.
She said: you said if the foundation is right you can trust what’s above it.
I said: my father said that.
She said: who was your father?
I said: a carpenter. Sort of. He built things.
She said: did he teach you that?
I said: he taught me by doing it. I handed him things.
She said: Tyler’s going to be a chemist.
I said: yes. Or something adjacent to it.
She said: and I almost.
She stopped.
She said: I almost prevented that.
I said: Diana.
She said: yes.
I said: you were a mother who had been hurt before and who was trying to protect her child. There is nothing wrong in the world with that.
She said: except that I was wrong.
I said: yes. This time.
She said: I need to get better at knowing when I’m wrong.
I said: yes. So do I.
She looked at me.
I said: I told you I’ve made wrong calls about students. I meant it.
I said: every year I try to calibrate better. Every year I get some of it right and some of it wrong.
She said: how do you know the difference?
I said: sometimes I don’t until later. Sometimes much later.
She said: that’s uncomfortable.
I said: yes. It is.
She said: how do you live with it?
I said: I remember the ones I got right.
She said: and the ones you got wrong?
I said: I try to understand what I missed. So I miss it less the next time.
She said: that sounds like science.
I said: it’s supposed to.
She almost smiled.
She said: I’m going to let him go in September without calling for two weeks.
I said: two whole weeks.
She said: it’s going to be very hard.
I said: yes.
She said: but he needs the context.
I said: yes.
She said: where he can see himself the way you see your students.
I said: where he can see what he does with ideas when he’s alone with them.
She said: he’s going to be remarkable.
I said: he already is.
She said: thank you.
She stood up.
She gathered her bag.
She said: I’m going to miss having you as his teacher.
I said: I’ll miss having him as my student.
She stopped at the door.
She said: do you know what I remember from our first conversation?
I said: which part?
She said: you said that grades were different from the way he thought.
She said: I had never thought about those as separate things.
I said: most people think about them together.
She said: yes. And he got good grades.
She said: so I thought I was seeing everything.
I said: you were seeing one thing.
She said: and you were seeing another.
I said: yes.
She said: two angles to the same structure.
I said: yes.
She said: it took us a while to compare them.
I said: yes.
She said: I’m glad we did.
She left.
I sat at my desk.
The classroom was quiet in the way classrooms are quiet when they are empty, the specific quiet of a space designed for activity that is temporarily still, the chairs in their rows, the board with the equations from last period, the smell of chalk and industrial cleaner and the particular ambient quality of a room that has been used for thinking for many years.
I thought about Tyler in nine months, in a university chemistry lab, with an idea and time to think about it.
I thought about what he would do with it.
I thought about what Diana would do with the two weeks without calling.
I thought about the program director’s email, which had been enthusiastic in the specific language of a person who had seen something specific rather than something generally promising.
I thought about my father’s deck.
You build the part you can’t see the same as the part you can.
If you know the foundation is right, you can trust everything above it.
I had not known Tyler’s foundation when September started.
I had only seen the surface, the test results and the equations and the careful handwriting and the quiet attention.
But the surface had told me about the foundation.
That was the thing.
You could read the surface if you knew what to look for.
Twenty-nine years of looking had taught me what to look for.
Graduation was on a Thursday evening in June.
I watched the students cross the stage.
When Tyler’s name was called, I looked at where his family was sitting, the section I had identified from the program, and I saw Diana stand slightly before she was supposed to, the involuntary rise of a person whose body has moved before the social calculation has been made.
She sat back down immediately.
She was smiling.
Tyler crossed the stage and collected his diploma and shook the principal’s hand and he looked, in that moment, like someone who knew something about himself that he had not known a year and a half ago, which was not everything but was something specific and true.
He looked like someone whose foundation had been found and found solid.
That was enough.
That was the whole thing.
I have been a teacher for twenty-nine years.
I will teach for perhaps another eight or ten, if my body holds and the work keeps feeling like what it feels like, which is the specific daily engagement of someone who is doing what they are supposed to be doing.
In those twenty-nine years I have made calls that were wrong and calls that were right and calls I still am not sure about.
I have had parents who trusted me and parents who didn’t and parents who started in one place and ended in another.
Diana Mercer ended up somewhere she had not started.
So did I.
That is the thing I carry from it, not the victory of being right about Tyler, which feels cheap when I turn it over, but the fact of two people who disagreed about a child and who kept talking until they understood each other.
She was protecting him.
I was advocating for him.
Both of those things were true.
Both of those things were necessary.
And between them, in the space where two different ways of seeing the same person could coexist long enough to produce a clearer picture, something happened that was better than either of us alone could have produced.
He is in his first year of the university program now.
He sent me an email in October.
It said: I wanted to tell you that the research group accepted me. I’m going to be working on reaction kinetics with one of the senior faculty.
He said: I thought about problems eight and eleven.
He said: I still do that. Come at things through the principle instead of the formula.
He said: the professor said it’s unusual.
He said: I told her I learned it from you.
I wrote back.
I said: you learned it from yourself. I just noticed.
He wrote back: my mom is doing better. She calls on Sundays and asks about the work.
He wrote: she asks good questions.
He wrote: I think she’s learning.
I said: so are you.
He said: yes.
He said: that’s the point, right?
I said: that’s exactly the point.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.