When I was thirteen, I was sent off to a New England boarding school run by monks. It was not a terrible place, by English standards, though by American a bit on the grim side. There was an old Latin teacher overly fond of beating his pupils with a wet sneaker who once told a boy he should be sent to Vietnam because he did not remember what denique ("in a nutshell") meant. Boys found smoking were expelled and assured this would end their chances of getting into a decent college and therefore of amounting to anything in life. They were taught that virtue was knowing the meaning of denique and that Hell was real. It was a good school, academically, and sent a lot of graduates to Yale and Harvard.
- From Steaming to Bamboola by Christopher Buckley
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