In high school we were inflicted with Saint Joan (1923), by George Bernard Shaw, the most depressing, disheartening, soul-destroying playwright before Ionesco. In this bloodfest, peasant girl Joan Dark (John of Arc) is so adamant about her visions that she coat-tails the heir to the French throne, the Dauphin (later crowned Charles VII), in his bedchamber.
Only she calls him "Dolphin."
Yada yada yada, everybody dies, and I throw the Signet paperback across the room.
I always why Joan was stupid enough to mispronounce Dauphin as "Dolphin." Turns out that the words are identical in French. The heir of France is called Dauphin because he has a dolphin on his crest.
George Can't-Stand-Him Shaw also wrote a lot of other anti-religious, pro-anarchy, radical plays, which played havoc on my fundamentalist genes in high school, and even in college: Man and Superman; Major Barbara: Arms and the Man. I was assigned all of them at one point or another, but I only actually read Pygmalion, when we were performing My Fair Lady. Except in the George Horror-Nard Shaw version, Liza Doolittle and Henry Higgins must respect class divisions, and so dating is out of the question.
Meh. On to the beefcake.
There are actually two high schools in the district:
1. Central Dauphin East, with 1350 students. Its mascot is a black panther.
The middle school and elementary school are next door, and across the street is Bishop McDevitt High School.
Harrisburg High School and the Cougar Academy (a private 9-12 school) are less than a mile away.
