The hotel front desk staff sent me to the bar to borrow a pair of scissors; I ended up having a conversation with the bartender about the BYU Independent Study History of Civ class I'm just finishing up. (Decided to finally finish my degree after getting sidetracked for 20 years by seven kids.) We had a long talk about Julius Caesar, the Conquest of Gaul, and the battle with Vercingetorix while I was making flash cards to study.

By way of contrast, just before I left Utah on this trip, my 17 year old son came home from school an informed me, quite disgustedly, that his U.S. History teacher couldn't remember either General Cornwallis' name or the place where he was trapped and forced to surrender by George Washington (Yorktown) and had to go look those things up in the textbook during his lecture. (Teacher, no surprise, is a recent U of U grad.)

Pretty sure the Parisian bartender would be a better history teacher than the Yewt in charge of my son's class.