Re: remeber back when we prayed at school
Posted by:
Scholar
()
Date: July 01, 2017 10:23AM
In the part of California where I lived, they did not pray in the public schools, at least not in the mid 1960s. In Catholic schools, we did pray. In fact, we prayed several times daily.
The Principal of public elementary school to which I went had a ping pong paddle he used to give spankings. It had tacks in it. The heads spelled out "MR. G". Anyhow, since I was a fuck up in elementary school, the Principal finally decided I was going to get a spanking. He picked up the paddle, pushed back his chair and motioned for me to come to him. I got up, bolted out of the office, had the key to my bicycle lock in hand, opened the lock, jumped on my bicycle and rode off, still holding the lock in my hand. I went home. My mother asked me why I had come home so early.
I told her the truth, since I knew that she would call the school, anyhow. I told her I did not want to get spanked at all, but it was unfair to use a pointy-tack paddle on me. I reminded her that even my father did not do that. She dragged me out of the house, into the car and drove to the school. She ushered me into the Principal's office. She told me to wait while she talked to the Principal. Finally, the Principal called me into his office. My mother explained to me that the Principal would not punish me if I did not follow the rules. Instead, he would call my father, who would take care of the matter.
Other kids later told me what this Principal did was put you over his knee, raise the paddle as if he intended to paddle you with the side with the tacks sticking out, but flip it at the last minute. The whole thing with the tacks was simply to induce terror into children. In the end, I suppose that the ping pong paddle would have been much less than what my father did.
There was a gym teacher at my Junior High School who had a prison strap. If you got into trouble, he would take you into the ball room during calisthenics. Everybody paid half attention to the boys who were leading calisthenics, but every once in a while, everyone looked toward the ball room and kept one ear cocked to it. You heard the Coach's loud command DROP EM! (that meant pull down your PE shorts), then BEND OVER AND GRAB YOUR ANKLES! Suddenly you heard a crack, a loud scream and in less than thirty seconds, this kid would come flying out of the ball room, red faced, holding his posterior and running a lap as he screamed. A more accurate description might be he half ran and half danced in pain as he took the lap. He held his posterior the whole time.
The funny thing was that in the Catholic High School, which was run by the Jesuits, it was rare that the priests or scholastics struck a student. You did sometimes get calisthenics, picking up trash or other work assignments as punishment (called JUG, in Jesuit institutions), but sometimes you got writing or memory assignments. A priest or scholastic who was teaching a class might slam a pointer on your desk or smack you lightly with it if you were sleeping in class, but even that was rare.