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George H. W. was not the only member of the family to play around. His only sister, Nancy Bush Ellis, had a torrid affair with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. of Camelot (Kennedy) fame.
George H. W. and his son George W. excelled in athletics (although the latter was considered a "bully boy"), but were mediocre students at the elite Andover Academy and the Ivy League Yale University. George W., in fact, finished at the bottom of his class.
At Andover, George W.'s first assignment in English was to write an essay on an emotional experience. Since he had written the word tears several times, he scouted around for a synonym in the thesaurus his mother had given him. And thus he wrote: "And the lacerates (italics mine) ran down my cheeks."
It turned out that lacerates was not a noun at all but the verb for tears (as in "tearing apart"), a different meaning altogether. The teacher gave him "a big red zero" and scrawled a note: "DISGRACEFUL (all caps the teacher's). See me immediately."
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