Oh! My “spooky dog” is afraid to come when called. “Come” is a dirty word. Yesterday he was thinking about coming to me and when I said “come” he CAME! Only took four and a half years. (He does respond to signals and even c’mon but if you say that bad word he will turn away.)
I think it was people like that singing the praises of Tolkien who persuaded me not to bother reading him. Decades later I read The Hobbit and learned I had missed an interesting and well written story.
Circa 1990 my son was trying to decide what to take in freshman year of high school. I convinced him that one year of Latin would be useful. They had to cancel the class because too few students signed up for it.
Spanish, and Science Terminology. It really cuts down on the amount of cold memorization you have to do in biology.