Mr Wolf taught me Latin, taught me Life

 I recall as a fresh primary school leaver visiting King David High School on a Sunday, Mr Wolf got up to the lectern and began speaking glowingly of Latin.  He told us that should we choose Latin we would be considered elite. What he didn’t tell us was the abuse we’d be subjected to, the ridicule and the insults.
I chose art.
But soon enough yearning to be like my brother I chucked the charcoal, punched a hole in the palette and joined the Latin class. Being elite trumped abuse.
There in that class, I made sure I sat front centre, conjugating, doing declensions and sipping the suds of Mr Wolf's far-from lugubrious Latin lessons. I didn’t care much for any other subject but for this most archaic of languages. I went on to do Latin for matric and I got a ‘B’ for Blah!

But more than letter’s, Mr Wolf, through his passion as a teacher, through his caring demeanor and love for the language of Latin he helped to open my eyes to a new, different type of world beyond the walls of suburbia. His teachings exposed me to architecture through learning about the Coliseum, Roman baths and ova’s; personalities, through his translations of Caesar; poetry through Homer’s Iliad; endurance, stamina and hard work, through Hannibal’s marches; and political structure through the senate, and the people of Rome.

I managed to pass school after Mr Wolf bludgeoned me with fierce words, jolting me into ‘picking up my socks’. Since then, I hadn’t seen Mr Wolf.

Until some twenty years later…Scouring through the dairy section of the local Pick n Pay, trying to find myself the densest thickest fullest creamiest cream I could find, suffering chilblains from everything I touched and seeing my extremities turn blue from the icy coolness of the refrigeration, my attention now diverted, I caught glimpse of ay Mr Wolf. With a bright luminescent light reflecting off the linoleum, skewing my vision, I couldn’t make out whether it was Jeffrey or Elliot. But I didn’t care, cos I ‘knew’ it was my Mr Wolf. Like two gunslingers, he, at the bottom of the aisle in the yoghurt section, and me, at the top end in the cream section, we stood stuck.

Gaining composure, my excitement grew like a fat boy’s seeing a sticky sausage. Dragging my tongue across the store, racing towards him, I caught the Wolf’s attention. ‘Mr Wolf, Mr Wolf’, I yoddled.  Stopping me dead like a harpooned whale, he responded, “It’s Jeffrey’, you’re looking for Elliot’.

I needn’t have seen my Mr Wolf in the 20 odd years I’ve left school, but his impact on me and the memories I harbor are branded onto my cerebellum, never to be erased.  I recall him as though it was just yesterday that I sat in that science lab conjugating verbs.

His lankiness and his length, he towered physically, he towered emotionally. What a giant of a man.