Decision Points

the previous summer. It sure was different from what I was used to. Most of the dorms were large brick buildings arranged around quads. It looked like a college. I liked Kinkaid, but the decision had been made. Andover was a family tradition. I was going.
    My first challenge was explaining Andover to my friends in Texas. In those days, most Texans who went away to high school had discipline problems. When I told a friend that I was headed to a boarding school in Massachusetts, he had only one question: “Bush, what did you do wrong?”
    When I got to Andover in the fall of 1961, I thought he might be on to something. We wore ties to class, to meals, and to the mandatory church services. In the winter months, we might as well have been in Siberia. As a Texan, I identified four new seasons: icy snow, fresh snow, melting snow, and gray snow. There were no women, aside from those who worked in the library. Over time, they began to look like movie stars to us.
    The school was a serious academic challenge. Going to Andover was the hardest thing I did until I ran for president almost forty years later. I was behind the other students academically and had to study like mad. In my first year, the lights in our dorm rooms went out at ten o’clock, and many nights I stayed up reading by the hall light that shined under the door.
    I struggled most in English. For one of my first assignments, I wrote about the sadness of losing my sister Robin. I decided I should come up with a better word than
tears
. After all, I was on the East Coast and should try to be sophisticated. So I pulled out the
Roget’s Thesaurus
Mother had slipped into my luggage and wrote, “Lacerates were flowing down my cheeks.”
    When the paper came back, it had a huge zero on the front. I was stunned and humiliated. I had always made good grades in Texas; this marked my first academic failure. I called my parents and told them I was miserable. They encouraged me to stay. I decided to tough it out. I wasn’t a quitter.

    Home in Houston on a break from Andover. Because of the age difference, I felt more like an uncle than a brother to my siblings in those days.
    My social adjustment came faster than my academic adjustment. There was a small knot of fellow Texans at Andover , including a fellow from Fort Worth named Clay Johnson . We spoke the same language and became close friends. Soon I broadened my circle. For a guy who was interested in people, Andover was good grazing.
    I discovered that I was a natural organizer. My senior year at Andover, I appointed myself commissioner of our stickball league. I called myself Tweeds Bush, a play on the famous New York political boss. I named a cabinet of aides, including a head umpire and a league psychologist. We devised elaborate rules and a play-off system. There was no wild card; I’m a purist.
    We also came up with a scheme to print league identification cards, which conveniently could double as fake IDs. The plan was uncovered by school authorities. I was instructed to cease and desist, which I did. In my final act as commissioner, I appointed my successor, my cousin Kevin Rafferty .
    That final year at Andover, I had a history teacher named Tom Lyons . He liked to grab our attention by banging one of his crutches on the blackboard. Mr. Lyons had played football at Brown University before he was stricken by polio. He was a powerful example for me. His lectures brought historical figures to life, especially President Franklin Roosevelt . Mr. Lyons loved FDR’s politics, and I suspect he found inspiration in Roosevelt’s triumph over his illness.
    Mr. Lyons pushed me hard. He challenged, yet nurtured. He hectored and he praised. He demanded a lot, and thanks to him I discovered alife-long love for history. Decades later, I invited Mr. Lyons to the Oval Office. It was a special moment for me: a student who was making history standing next to the man who had taught it to him so many years ago.

    As the days at Andover wound down, it came time to apply to college. My first thought was Yale. After all, I was born there. One time-consuming part of the application was filling out the blue card that asked you to list relatives who were alumni. There was my grandfather and my dad. And all his brothers. And my first cousins. I had to write the names of the second cousins on the back of the card.
    Despite my family ties, I doubted I would be accepted. My grades and test scores were respectable but behind many in my