The lighter side of King David life

MIRAH LANGER

Elliot Wolf, a long-time principal of King David Linksfield High School, recalls a few lighter moments. He and his brother, Jeffrey, then the principal of King David Victory Park High School, were identical twins, but sometimes a third fictional identical brother was required.

“In the days when you went to Sun City to gamble… I had been there for a weekend,” recounts Elliot. “On Monday, I came back to school, and one of the students ran up to tell me that they had seen me playing on the ‘one-armed bandit’.”

“Playing on the one-armed bandit?” an indignant Elliot retorted to the student at the time. Somewhat chastened, the student then revised his comment, suggesting, “Well, it was either you or your twin brother.”

To save face, Elliot joked, “I’m sorry, but you are unaware of the fact that we are a triplet set. We have a third brother whose name is Simon. He is the black sheep in wolf’s clothing… It must have been Simon that you saw!”

Elliot says mistaken identity between him and Jeffrey was, in fact, a frequent source of humour.

Often, mothers would corner the wrong headmaster at Pick n Pay Hyper or the like to offer their perspective on a schooling matter or two.

Jeffrey says that until today, he is frequently mistaken for Elliot when shopping at the Norwood Hypermarket.

“Without fail, while I am there, three or four people will come up and start talking to me, or else smile at me.”

He says that he and Elliot have an agreement that when someone they don’t know is “friendly in their attitude towards us”, they will always be polite.

“So, I do stop and say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ But I can only take it up to a certain point. When they start telling me about the achievements of their children, then I have to say, ‘Look, I’m very proud of what you have been able to tell me – but you are not speaking to Elliot. You have the wrong one.’”

Elliot says he is always indignant when Jeffrey tells Linksfield parents, “I’m sorry, but you have the wrong brother.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Elliot admonishes his brother. “I’m just the other one!”

Jeffrey says Israeli military hero Moshe Dayan was one of the most famous people who found themselves perplexed over the brothers’ identity.

“He was brought out to South Africa, and he visited the schools, first going to King David Linksfield. He spent an hour there, hosted by my brother.

“Then, immediately afterwards, he came across to Victory Park. He had not been told there were twin headmasters.”

“He asked me, ‘Do you fly from one school to another by helicopter?’”

“I had to tell him, ‘No, that was my brother. I have been waiting for you patiently for some time.’”

In the past, a highlight of the Linksfield calendar was the school tradition of finding “different ways of amusing and entertaining Mr Wolf on his birthday”, says Elliot.

“Every year, they chose something different. Once, I arrived at school with a fire brigade, another time with limousine, even a tank, and once… with a Hell’s Angel motorcade.”

However, when Elliot turned 60, the school went all out.

“I was driven to the Germiston Lake to have what I thought was breakfast with a student-leader group or something.

“Instead, it was to take me to an airport to get onto a helicopter.

“I went on the most wonderful tour of the West and East Rand, and eventually landed on the rugby field with the whole school waiting for me. There was a brass band playing ‘happy birthday’.”

“It was the closest to royalty I ever got!”

Elliot also remembers a time when corporal punishment went a little awry with a previous principal. “He used to prowl around the school, and a class had been misbehaving. He told them, ‘All the boys are to go to my office’.”

About eighteen of them traipsed to his office and went in, one at a time, to receive their punishment. “The last person came in, and he wasn’t in uniform. The principal said, ‘You are going to get one extra because you are not in your uniform’.”

“He gave this man a hiding. He was actually the student teacher!”

Current Linksfield Principal Lorraine Srage recalls that the staff played a prank on one of their own. “We handed a list of serial killers to the person who read the announcements,” she says.

“At the appointed time, the staff member switched on the intercoms and began, ‘Can the following please come to the admin block.’ She read all the names: Charlie Manson, David Berkowitz [Son of Sam], Jeffrey Dahmer etc…”.

“She never knew… That was a real classic!”

Srage also remembers an occasion in the 1990s, when the valedictory medals were accidentally blown up. “A parcel arrived with a name that nobody knew. Nobody could claim it. Even the board didn’t know the recipient.

“Eventually we took the parcel, put it on the rugby field, and called in the bomb squad.”

Although it was after school, the students that were still around were shepherded off to the swimming pool. “The bomb squad brought in dogs. If a dog sat down next to the parcel, we knew there was a problem.

“The first dog disregarded the parcel, but the second hound settled down next to it. We all ran like lunatics; they blew the parcel up.

“The valedictory medals exploded all over the place. All that naches [pride] for bobbas and zaidas in smithereens!

“The worst part was that the person who had ordered them had gone to the hairdresser. She was oblivious.”

These are just a few of the many lighter moments at King David schools.

• If you have any pearlers you would like to share, send them to editorial@sajewishreport.co.za. If we accumulate enough really strong anecdotes, we will publish another piece.