My high school French class bored me because my parents are French and I’d spoken and written it since I could remember. But I took it because it was an easy “A”.

However, that left the problem of what to do during those endless French classes.

My girlfriends and I solved this problem neatly by creating a complex system of note passing which kept us amused during those long afternoons.

Notes passed back and forth constantly during class, covering such critical issues as the best acne treatment, whether or not blue mascara was OK, and who that dreamy boy in World Civ was dating.

You could say that class was wasted time. I just thought of it as an intelligence gathering session.