Special knowledge

When I was in my early teens, my friends and I used to play a board game called “Diplomacy”, which is kind of like “Risk”. In both games, you wage long imaginary wars over Europe.

This became significant in the 8th grade, when our entire class was given a surprise spot quiz to see whether we could identify the locations of the countries on a map of Europe. Those who got the answers right could opt out of needing to take a class on European geography.

Everyone in my circle of friends got all of the answers right. Everyone in the rest of the class flunked the test, except for the Catholic kids. They had apparently learned the same thing in their weekly after-school parochial school.

It seems that these two very different groups shared the same special knowledge.

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