Back to School

She cooked for many people besides us kids and my “old man”. There was the old Mrs Fineberg up there in Leopard Str, old Mrs.Videgas down there at the bottom of Burger str. They used to kiss and hug me when I brought some tasty dish from Ma’s kitchen.

I can still recall the delicious soft smell of their face powder and the enticing feel of their soft fleshy bodies as they hugged me. Usually they gave me one of the tasty cakes they’d baked.

At first I delivered “Ma’s” food on my bicycle and later I used my dad’s Wolsely and later his green Chev. To this day I confess a special affection for old ladies.

I don’t fantasize over them, that activity is reserved for film stars or girls that look like film stars, like Jane Russel in that famous, classic movie “Outlaw”. Under 18’s weren’t allowed in but somehow I managed it even though I was only about 12 years old when it showed at the President Cinema.

When I was a young boy of about 14 I thought it was evil and unnatural to fantasize about girl’s legs or other parts... So it worried me no end when I spent many hours fantasizing about things like Georgina’s , lily white thighs, revealed when her blue school gym skirt lifted as she sat across the isle from me in the STD VII class at Krugersdorp High School or when Mary rubbed her firm young breasts against my back as she leaned over me to see something Mr. Matz our Hebrew teacher was showing us.

I would have learned Latin rather than Hebrew but I feared that my parents and my older brother and other members of our family, who were considered by everyone as being gifted with inherent intelligence, considered this unnecessary for me, because Latin was for people who would go on to become doctors and lawyers and my parents didn’t think that I would go on to study a profession suited only for gifted, inherently intelligent people.

I didn’t feel emotionally strong enough to fight against this negative preconception which they had of me. In any case I didn’t have grades that could show that they were wrong.

Despite all of this negativism I secretly cherished a feeling that I was intelligent but I would never dare to say this aloud in front of all the many and great people, like parents, uncles and aunts for fear of being mocked.

Both Georgina and Mary were excellent students and good at sports (something which ranked high in South African education), while I was a poor student and only played in the 4^th Rugby team (the lowest grade team), probably because of these distractions, so that eventually I failed STD VII, thereby verifying the negative opinion of my intellectual abilities and my parents took me out of school and sent me to learn to become a plumber.

I was well resigned to becoming a tradesman and even justified it by adopting the socialist ideas preached by friend Morris, who was apprenticed to become a fitter and turner. I developed great admiration for him and we, together with Ronald, also an apprenticed tradesman, became a team. We dressed and acted like working class men. We even bought identical leather windbreakers and kept them zipped up, like Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront”.

Our extended family, especially uncle Pete who, like most Jewish parents placed great emphasis on higher education, was shocked that my parents had taken me out of school, virtually ordered them to put me back in school immediately.