SCARY.

Maureen Johnson on Catholic school (which ties in to Devilish, her new book):

The class was interrupted for a week around prom, at which point we got Prom Class. The prom was a bit of a Kafkaesque mess, which will certainly be discussed in a future post. But to get ready for it, we were drilled 45 minutes a day for a week on things like: how to use a salad fork, how to wait in the car and REFUSE TO EXIT until our date came to open it for us, and the mysterious “Kleenex discussion.”

“Girls,” our teacher said to us. “Sometimes, you will be holding your boyfriend’s hand, and you’ll just . . . know. You’ll know that you shouldn’t be holding his hand. You will just know. When this happens, you need to take your hand away slowly and reach into your purse for a Kleenex. Put the purse on the other side of your body so that you have to reach across.”

She said this all with a slow, grave, literal seriousness—speaking in the same way that people do in movies when they have a gun pointed at their head by someone behind the door—and they’re trying to get out a very clear message without being shot.