SCHONDORF AM AMMERSEE, Germany – Most teachers have amusing – sometimes even hilarious – stories about their adventures.

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Such as one time when an American was teaching at a Bavarian boarding school.

At this time in history, Libya and the United States weren’t on the best of terms.

On one Saturday evening, the teacher, who lived in a dorm with pupils, forgot to lock the door to his dorm room.

In the middle of the night, one of the pupils decided to try to scare their American guest.

So he opened the door to his dorm room while he was sound asleep and said, “Long live Qaddafi!”

Few secrets exist in a school with about 200 pupils. The teacher managed to find out by the middle of the next day who the amusing “visitor” was.

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The other stunt that pupils pulled on the teacher was more clever.

The teacher was taking piano lessons during his year at the school.

Knowing that the teacher often practiced late in the day, a pupil of his once asked him at dinner, “Herr Elf, ueben Sie heute Abend Klavier?” (Mr. Elf, are you practicing piano this evening?)

“Ja. Wieso?” (Yes. Why?)

“Um 7,00 Uhr ist Atomkrieg.” (Nuclear war is at 7:00.)

The teacher knew that this boy, for whatever reason, had an intense interest in ambulances and alarms, and was amusingly given to talking obvious nonsense.

So the teacher laughed.

“Es stimmt doch, Herr Elf.” (It’s really true, Mr. Elf.)

Yeah, right. Even the boy couldn’t keep a straight face while insisting it was true.

Besides, “Es stimmt doch, Herr Elf” was always the “reassurance” that his obvious nonsense was true. Again and again and again.

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After dinner, the teacher returned to his dorm room, retrieved his piano music, and headed off to the music rooms in the basement of the science-laboratory building, where one could play piano.

Little did the teacher know what he was in for.

The dorm room of the boy and his roommate was next to the teacher’s dorm room. So the boy and his roommate knew when the teacher had left.

At this hour, the teacher was often the only person not just in the music rooms but anywhere in the lab building.

Which made it especially easy to sit down at a grand piano and fully immerse oneself into music.

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What the teacher didn’t know on this evening was that he wasn’t alone in the building.

The boy had a tiny yet very loud and moderately high-pitched portable alarm, which he and his roommate quietly set up near the closed door of the room where the teacher was practicing.

For the teacher, it was a normal evening practice session.

Until.

Until suddenly a piercing alarm unexpectedly went off.

All within a few seconds, the teacher went from:

¯ Playing piano, to

¯ Being startled, to

¯ Wondering what the alarm was for, to

¯ Wondering if the building was on fire, to

¯ Recalling the obvious nonsense about a nuclear war, to

¯ Dashing breathlessly out the door into the anteroom of the music rooms.

And there stood the two boys.

Doubled over laughing.

Doubled over laughing so hard that they could hardly stand.

When the teacher caught his breath, he smiled and shook his head at what the two boys had pulled off.

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The teacher never told anyone else in the school, or even in the country, this story.

Until.

Until years later when – during an all-school reunion weekend – he was having dinner with a group of faculty members and their wives and husbands.

They, too, doubled over laughing.

Randy Elf was Duke University’s first guest teacher at Landheim Schondorf, a Bavarian school in Schondorf am Ammersee.

ç 2022 BY RANDY ELF