Sometimes, a letter just won’t do

When I was in matric, shortly after the discovery of electricity and while some people still believed the earth was flat, we affectionately named our headmaster Bruno. No prizes for guessing why we chose that specific name.

Bruno looked very much like his pit bull’s twin brother with a personality to match. Obviously, we couldn’t compare his bark to his bite, because Bruno never barked. He did a lot of biting – figuratively speaking. Back in the day, headmasters and teachers, like parents, had carte blanche when it came to “seeing right” the naughty boys.

Bruno, and Butcher, our woodwork teacher, were experts. I clearly remember a number of occasions when I was caught bunking and having to line up outside Bruno’s office during break. While the punishment was instant, the effects usually lingered long into the afternoon, resulting in many a day’s homework being done in a standing position. One can safely say that Bruno never had a carrot-and-stick approach to enforcing discipline. With him it was almost all stick.

However, there was one other weapon in his arsenal to discipline unruly boys: mometimes he would write a letter, addressed to one’s parents, which had to be returned the next day, signed by both mother and father. Inevitably, any misdemeanour sounded a lot worse when it was typed out in capital letters and signed by Bruno.

For some boys, this was much worse. The agonising wait to deliver said letter to a father, who could very well return home in a foul mood, was pretty much the way we imagined it was like being on death row. I was reminded of this forgettable part of my school career when I read the letter our president wrote to the naughty boys and girls in the ANC.

Is it just me, or should the letter rather have been addressed to the National Prosecuting Authority? Imagine how we would have hosed ourselves if Bruno wrote letters to us when we were naughty

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