Those were The Days
Original Fiction – for adult eyes only
I had a curious talk with my grandson Zach
the other day. He told me he had seen a news report online about some
footballers who got paddled at school in the US South – somewhere like Oklahoma
– because they went drinking after a game.
Zach went off on one and said how this was
against the kids’ human rights and the rest of it. When I told Zach we got the
cane all the time when I was at school and I didn’t think it did me any harm, he
was truly dumbfounded and he questioned me like I’d told him I was some kind of
alien and had been raised by wolves in the forest.
It was true, we did get the cane at school.
Not all the time but it was a traditional school and we did Latin, played rugby
and had an Army cadet corp. There were other punishments like lines, extra work,
or detentions but the cane was always standing in the corner as it were.
Zach’s eighteen years old and when I told
him the last time I’d got the cane I was his age he almost dissolved in front
of me. He could not compute, as they say. He said they’d never stand for it
today and I had to remind him that it’s against the law now but when I was at
school it was pretty much taken for granted.
I remembered the last time I got the cane.
It was the summer just before we left and for some reason I forget, some of us brought
cans of beer into the sixth-form common room. We got found out, of course, and
ended up in the headmaster’s study. There’s not much more to report after that.
He questioned us, we confessed our crime, he lectured us and then he got up
from his seat, crossed the study and fetched up at a tall, narrow cupboard. We
watched in keen anticipation as he delved his hand into his trouser pocket,
found a small key and opened the cupboard. We weren’t daft we knew what was
inside and the rattle of rattan against the inside of the wooden cabinet
quickly confirmed our suspicions.
He faced us with a stout, but whippy,
rattan rod. It was typical of its type, a little over three feet long, as thick
as a pencil and with a curve handle at one end. The headmaster flexed the cane
between his hands as headmasters in cartoons or comedies on television were
wont to do.
We didn’t argue about our human rights, as
soon as we had been sent to the headmaster’s study we expected this outcome. We
weren’t about to refuse to take our punishment. We’d broken the rules, been
found out and had to suffer the consequences. In any case, to refuse to be caned
would have meant suspension or expulsion from school and with the final exams
imminent we weren’t about to jeopardize our entire futures over a sore bum.
There was an armless chair that stood
against one wall and the form was that the boy to be punished would be ordered
to pick it up and manhandle it into the centre of the room. Clark, one of my
fellow culprits, was given the honour of performing this part of the ceremony.
‘Stand and face the wall,’ the headmaster told the other three of us and we
duly did this. ‘Put your hands on your heads,’ the headmaster ordered and we
stood there eighteen years old and all the world looking like we were ten.
I heard the headmaster say, ‘Stand there
Clark,’ and knew that Pete, my friend was being prepared for his ordeal. I
wasn’t about to miss the pleasure of seeing a friend caned so I turned my head
around to witness the fun.
There’s nothing complicated about a
headmaster’s caning. I suppose some might get very pompous and lecture a lad to
within an inch of his life, but Dr Gordon, our tormentor, wasn’t one of these.
I saw him flex the cane once more, then he swished it about a bit before taping
the end against the back of the chair. ‘Bend over, lad.’ It was a calm command;
Gordon wasn’t one for amateur theatricals. He had a job to do and he was going
to complete it with efficiency. We boys were all dressed in mauve blazers, white
shirts (with mauve-and-white-striped ties) and pale grey trousers. Pete was a fit lad (a star of the athletic
track) and when so ordered he stepped forward and dived over the back of the
chair. Immediately the grey trousers tightened across his muscular buttocks and
I got the sight of two round cheeks lifted and separated by the cloth. He
offered a tremendous target.
Dr Gordon must have thought the same
because he spent a moment sawing the cane across the peak of Pete’s mounds,
then he tap-tap-tapped until he got his aim and then he let fly like he was
teeing off at the first hole at the golf club. The crack of cane across
stretched bottom bounced off the walls of the study. Pete’s body quivered, his
legs buckled and the sound of air escaping through his clenched teeth reminded
me of an old steam engine settling down.
Dr Gordon gave him six absolute stingers,
then he said, ‘That will do, stand up Clark.’ Pete hauled himself to his feet
and turned to face the headmaster, I could see Pete’s face was deathly white
and he looked in severe pain. He offered his hand to the headmaster, as was the
ritual at the school, ‘Thank you, sir,’ Pete said before hobbling to stand next
to me by the wall.
I was last to go that afternoon. We all
took our caning well and I was proud of that. When Gordon let us go we went to
the sixth-form bogs, lowered trousers and underpants and inspected the damage.
The headmaster had done a good job (he always did) and we were very pleased
with the thick red lines displayed across our naked buttocks.
I told Zach I didn’t think those canings
did me any harm, but I can’t be sure they did me much good, either. We were
caned for having beer, but later that night we went down the pub and toasted
our toasted buns. I have been a drinker all my life and when I raised a glass
to my lips I didn’t once think about that caning.
I doubt if any of us at that school thought
too much of the canings we received. Yes, they hurt – a lot – at the time but
the pain quickly dissolved and we then got on with our lives. Maybe one or two
boys felt ashamed, embarrassed or even humiliated by being compelled to submit
their bottoms over the back of chair to an older man who would then proceed to
cause them as much pain as possible. I really don’t know.
I asked Zach how his headteacher (as we
must call them these days) would react if he brought beer into school. He laughed
and told me they often went to the pub at lunchtime with the school’s knowledge.
Now it was my time to look at my grandson as if he were an alien who had just
stepped from a spaceship.
Picture credit: Generated by Artificial
Intelligence (A.I.)
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
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