I went to a Jewish High School in Calgary.  Actually, Henry Wise Wood wasn't technically Jewish, but many teens of Jewish extraction attended.  They were from Eagle Ridge, children of doctors and dentists, lawyers and accountants, and while they were definitely a minority in the school, they owned it in decisive ways.  They drove better cars than the teachers, and made the parking lot look high class.  They attended the Calgary Jewish Academy--most likely on weekends, and were therefore better educated than the rest of us non-Jewish boys, we Goyim.  Through their intervention on student council, there was a delivery of enormous honey glazed Texas Donuts on Friday at lunch. We Goyim mimicked Yiddish expressions--calling each other schmuks and schmendricks, schlemiels and shiksas, without knowing anything at all about what those words means.  And they brought Hewlett-Packard programmable calculators to school for use in Chem and Physics and Math--when the ...

It seems to be an occupational hazard of teaching maths that you become slightly potty.  Who could teach trig without being eccentric, or logs without the occasional twitch, or ruffle.  Few remember John Napier, but everybody is grateful for the Texas Instruments programmable calculator (cooler than the Hewlett-Packard, which indicated your dad was probably an accountant), with the vinyl case you could loop through your belt and look like a NASA engineer. But the maths teacher I'm thinking of could give any quirky person a run for his money.  Henry Wise Wood\s Mr. Turley was obvious as an odd duck. It was 1977, and Mr Turley wore a full length fur to class.  His wife, he told us, was a real estate agent, and, in Calgary in a boom time, realtors made good money.  But his wardrobe was not limited to opulence.  He wore a different three piece suit every day--the colours were always pastel--and the fabrics were more than likely fake.  He drove a Caddy...