@Shambles, the Swiss boarding school(s) were a complete and utter anomaly in an otherwise ordinary middle class life. It's what used to happen (probably still does, I guess) when your Dad's company transfers him to a third world country. The first was in fact a "finishing school" of sorts. I got kicked out for standing up for a friend. Then I went to a crazy man's "school" (7 students from god knows where)in the mountains. He was a British idealist in love with the original alternative school that spawned many copycats back in the 70's:
Summerhill (do young people even know about this school now? Oh, guess so, just looked it up and it still exists!). He was my math teacher at the finishing school where I finished his 7am geometry class that I had slept through the entire semester by writing a heartfelt essay, in lieu of his final exam, on why it was very unlikely that I would ever need these skills in my well-planned out future. I got an F but he felt sorry for me once I was expelled as I was forbidden from going to class while they waited for word from my Dad in Africa as to what to do with me and all I did was roam the halls instigating rebellion as I was now freed (shunned) from being "finished". As I remember it (good thing there are no siblings to weigh in on this one) he said, "I have a school in the mountains." And I said, "OK. What train should I take?" That little experiment lasted for the following two months (poor Mr Farrow--his heart was in the right place even if his mind was in outer space) and then I attended what was officially called the American School at Leysin but should have been called the International Drug Emporium of Diplomatically Immune Offspring of Clueless Parents hailing from Afghanistan to Ethiopia to NYC. Then I got kicked out of that one as well.I do believe that LSD was involved at that point. That led to the infamous hippie school in the Appalachians, better known as Last Resort for Merry Pranksters where everything was decided by consensus of the entire faculty and student body (60 of us), including
my expulsion (yet again

) for quite obviously having broken one of the only
two rules the school imposed by turning up pregnant. The two rules were: No drugs. No sex.
And now I will stop derailing the thread which is supposed to be about actual autobiographies lol.