It was fifty years ago …
Original Fiction – for adult eyes only
I can’t believe it’s almost fifty years
since I graduated school. Except in England, we didn’t call it ‘graduating’
back then (we just ‘left’). Nor did we go to Graduation Proms; we simply had
school discos. When did we all become American?
My school was a grammar. It might have
been the 1970s but it had pretentions that it was an elite ‘public’ school and
was still in the 1930s. They still taught Greek for pity’s sake.
When I close my eyes to think back I
inevitably remember Pongo Wareing. He was the headmaster and he also taught the
senior sixth-formers A-level English. Everyone called him Pongo, but nobody
could remember why.
It’s spring 1974 and we’re in the
classroom, but before Pongo bores us for an hour-and-a-half of Thomas Hardy,
there is a little sport to be had. And I’m the butt of attention. Well, me and
Pete both. We’d skipped school the day before. A band were coming to town and
we just had to buy tickets. Was it the Apeshits? I really can’t remember. They
were big at the time anyway. Naturally, our absence was discovered.
It hadn’t helped that Pongo had arranged a
special class on Wildred Owen which we missed. So, now we were in our English
class and Pongo was determined that we should suffer. He was a pompous pillock.
He called Pete and me out and then in front
of the sixth-form class he lectured us on ‘responsibility’ ‘duty’ ‘effort.’ For
goodness’ sake he said, ‘You have brought shame upon yourselves and upon this
institution.’ We stood, hands clasped, eyes downcast. We might have been
eighteen-years-old but we knew what was coming next.
The rest of the class knew too and lapped
it up. We were an all-boys school and discipline was tough. They all knew we
were for the high jump and each and every one of them was settling back to
enjoy the show. To be fair, if the roles had been reversed and it was someone
else there blushing to the roots as the headmaster lambasted them, Pete and me
would be enjoying it too.
Eventually Pongo sighed, sounding like the
heavens were raining down on him. He was a terrible ham actor. You should have
heard him when he read Shakespeare to us. ‘You leave me no alternative,’ he
intoned. It was a lie of course he had a lot of choices and one of them was not
to do anything about our truancy.
Well, there was a fat chance of him doing
that. He tutted loudly and trudged across the classroom to the teacher’s desk.
A dozen or more pairs of eyes followed him around the room. I don’t know about
Pete, but I wasn’t scared. Embarrassed, certainly; and also a little
contemptuous of Pongo who seemed to enjoy being in the limelight.
He paused at the desk, delved into his
trouser pocket, and took out a key. He unlocked the drawer and like a magician
pulling a rabbit from a hat he brandished a size-12 plimsoll. He paused,
holding it in mid-air as if expecting a round of applause from his audience. No
chance. This was a repeat performance of a repeat performance: the lads had
seen it all before. They knew what was coming, but that didn’t mean they didn’t
intend to enjoy themselves thoroughly.
Pongo scrunched the slipper in his fist.
It had seen better days once as a gym shoe; now it wasn’t much more than a
strip of rubber topped by off-white decaying canvas. It was useless for running
in but perfect for Pongo’s needs. In his oak-panelled study he had a vast
collection of whippy rattan canes. A boy summoned to him in there would expect
to leave throbbing and hopping from foot to foot in agony after one of his rods
had been administered with terrific energy six time across his stretched
trousers.
But in the classroom, the plimsoll was
Pongo’s weapon of choice. Who knew why? ‘You,’ he waved the slipper at me,
‘Stand by the wall. Clarke,’ he addressed Pete, ‘Stand with your back to the
class.’ Poor Pete shuffled forward his eyes glued to the lino-covered floor.
Pongo watched carefully as my mate took up position. ‘Bend over. Touch toes.’ I
saw several boys in the class wriggle in their seats in anticipation.
We wore pale trousers and white shirts and
black shoes. Pete’s trousers were a bit tight; many of us were growing out of
our uniforms and mothers had no intentions of buying new school clothes when we
were so close to leaving. It was common to see boys bursting out of their
blazers.
I stared as Pete, his face burning
brightly, reached down. Pongo knew that with his back to the class Pete would
give the other boys a perfect view of his backside. It was difficult to hold a
‘touch toes’ position because it puts a tremendous strain on the calves, but we
all knew that when Pongo told us to ‘touch your toes,’ he meant toes and not
ankles or shins.
The already snug trousers stretched even
tighter and I reckon every boy in the class could see the outline of Pete’s
underpants through his trousers. He was a thin lad (we all were, not like the
tubs of lard you see in schools today) and his bottom looked like two pips
resting on top of a couple of pipe cleaners.
Pongo took a step or two until he was
standing to Pete’s left. Pongo checked to see that he wasn’t obscuring anyone’s
view and then, although there was no need to do so, he took hold of the tail of
Pete’s shirt and tugged it so that it came out of the waistband of the boy’s
trousers and he left an inch or two of his back exposed. Satisfied that Pete
was positioned to perfection, Pongo scrunched up the plimsoll once more. I
guess Pongo was in his fifties at the time but he still had muscles and I could
see the ones in his arm ripple as he prepared to land the first whack. I also
saw Pete’s buttocks clench. His bum looked like one of those hard rubber balls
we used to play with as kids. Pete closed his eyes; Pongo raised the slipper
and brought it crashing down across Pete’s bum. A large slipper crashing into a
small bottom generated a lot of noise and the crack of rubber on trouser seat
reverberated around the room. Specs of dust rose from Pete’s seat and hung in
the beams of afternoon sun in the classroom.
Pete’s face reddened, but he stayed still
anxiously awaiting the next whack. Pongo liked to take his time (as I said he
was a ham actor) and he probably thought he was raising the level of tension in
the room. He was probably right in that. Whack! the second slap sank into
Pete’s left cheek. His body moved and his fingertips momentarily rose from his
black polished shoes but I could see he was in no danger of jumping up and
howling with pain.
Maybe that lack of reaction annoyed Pongo
because he really let fly with the remaining wallops until he had scorched
Pete’s behind six time. ‘Stand up,’ Pongo said curtly. He looked at me, ‘Change
places.’ Pete’s face was bright red and I knew his bum was too. There was
perspiration on his shirt collar and he looked very sheepish as he walked
towards the wall.
I stood in front of the class and making
sure Pongo couldn’t see me I grinned widely. It was my way of saying ‘Stuff
Pongo’ or some such. I had contempt for him then and now, fifty years later,
long after Pongo is dead and gone I still have contempt. What did he think he
was doing slippering two eighteen-year-old lads? Could you imagine that today?
It wouldn’t occur to anyone to do such a thing. And if some idiot government
did try to bring back corporal punishment which boy would submissively bend
over to receive it?
But we were different people at that
grammar school back in 1974. We did as we were told. Rules were rules and if
they were broken there had to be consequences. And if one of those consequences
was a dose of the slipper then so be it. We boys knew no better (so much for
giving us a top-class education as Pongo and the school claimed.)
So, submissively I bent over and touched
my toes, thereby offering the sight of my stretched backside to my classmate (I
hope they liked it and that one or two later wanked while recalling the memory
later). I also gave Pongo the opportunity to lay his rubber slipper across
another senior boy’s backside. A chance he took with much gusto.
Six whacks of the slipper across a
stretched bottom makes an awesome sound in a small classroom and Pongo worked
up a bit of a sweat beating the pair of us. But truth be told although our
bottoms were hot for a moment the rubber slipper had no real effect on
eighteen-year-old schoolboys. And Pongo must have known that. He could have
taken our arses off with one of his canes. He could have done that publicly in
front of the rest of the Sixth if he wanted to make examples of us. I wonder
looking back fifty years with a little more experience of life, if he did it
simply because he could and because he enjoyed it.
I will never know since Pongo long ago
went to great headmaster’s study in the sky (or I hope, the one down below). We
lads left school a few weeks later and went our separate ways. I haven’t heard
from Pete in forty years. What became of my other classmates? Should I get on
social media to see who I can find?
Picture credit: Generated by
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
For more Original Fiction, click here
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
Comments
Post a Comment