I don't know anyone who went to boarding school (hell, I only knew, like, two people who even went to private school) but boarding school has always fascinated me. I loved The New Girls by Beth Gutcheon, which was set at a girls' school in the late '60s.

I edited out the more personal stuff above since googling led immediately to my sister NYT wedding announcement.

I have a distinct memory of having squash explained to me for the first time (in 8th grade, when we moved to Choate). It still strikes me as hilarious, even when Nutty and a cheetah are not involved.

And of course when I went to college most people made the assumption boarding school = punitive military school for delinquents.

There we are lot of people with interesting stories - including a fellow named Alvaro de Orleans-Bourbon who was supposed to be a m,ember of the Spanish royal family - but also a lot of boring preppy assholes who are now investment bankers.

but also a lot of boring preppy assholes who are now investment bankers

OH OH OH I know this one. who are all the people msbelle hated in college.

My boarding school experience was odd because I was a fac brat, so I lived at home, but on campus. And many of my teachers had seen me grow up.

However, when I was down in LA a couple of months ago, a friend from high school was expressing a certain sadness that, in the age of cell phones and email, no one would be able to have anything close to the boarding school experience that he had had.

There we are lot of people with interesting stories - including a fellow named Alvaro de Orleans-Bourbon who was supposed to be a member of the Spanish royal family - but also a lot of boring preppy assholes who are now investment bankers.

It was an interesting mix that's for sure. My oldest friend, who I met at the orientation dance, was the stepdaughter of the Shah's right-hand man who got out just before the Iranian revolution. Her roommate was a humble girl from Queens whose mother had abandoned her to the care of her grandparents.

ETA: My university seemed much more homogeneous upper-middle class.

Of course, because Choate (or Coke Rosemary Hall as we called it for years due to said drug bust) is one of the Select Sixteen! I'm sure it was a great blow to his ego.

Heh. No, he just thought I was terribly low-class. Which was fine.

OH OH OH I know this one. who are all the people msbelle hated in college.

Hah! Those are a lot of the people I went to college with too! Except I was annoyed by all the people who had just gotten there from boarding school, cause they were already jaded. I was all "OMG! I'm at college! Away from my parents! WHOOOT!" and they were like "Tcha, whatever, bitches. We've been at boarding school the past four years, drinking up a storm and lying and sneaking around and doing all this shit and hating on our roommates already. We're OVER IT. Go to hell. We're sooooo much cooler than you people"

Which they were. But STILL. Annoying snots in their J Crew uniforms. Hrmph.

And then they all went on to become I-bankers and shit, and are rolling in the dough somewhere. Ay.

Shocking, somehow, that I was friends with all the theater students who were on financial aid and are now, um, working for nonprofits and academia and shit?

[EDIT: Which is to say, I was always jealous in high school of people who got to go to boarding school. And then I went to college, and met them, and decided I probably wouldn't send my kids to boarding school ever]

My nephew is about to go off to boarding school and I think we are both thrilled that at least this way he will be away from his mother.

There are also a lot of flavors of boarding school. I spent some time up at Cate School while Drew was installing a system for them, and that's definitely not what I used to think of when I thought boarding school.

I've been there on a long ago trip. Friends of my parents left Suffield to go teach there and we visited them. It was one of the few CA schools that were on the prep radar.