If a teacher tried that out now, Kelly says he or she would be sued. Back then my father would have paid to get me extra punisment in school. Yes. The punishment that brings pain to the backside. My father would want to transfer me from my school because it wasn't 'strict enough'. He wanted me to feel the pain of being in school. He probably invented some pain inducing forms of punishment in conspiracy with the teachers.
Believe me ladies and gentlemen. Some of the worst punishment was not the the kind that induced pain immediately. It was the kind of pain that grew on you. And it also embarrassed you a whole lot. A fine example is the one where a student was asked... Nay. Told. The student was told to go in front of the assembly and kneel down for the remainder of the assembly. Now there was a twist. You not only knelt for the whole duration, you also had to keep your arms raised straight out into the air. It did not have to take time to start having a toll on you. Ten minutes of this was enough to literally bring you down to your knees. Your arms were both tired and sore. Tired. And sore. Not sore like what you got out of the lashing on the posterior with a black plastic cane. That kind of pain stung for two minutes maximum. The embarassment value was a stroke of genius by the teachers. Those who felt pain for the least amount of time were the repeat offenders. The ones who were called to the front to get their lashing by default, because the teacher figured that whatever had happened, they must have had something to do with it. These repeat offenders actually wore TWO pairs of shorts. Two pairs of khaki shorts. The teachers knew this, so they just smacked them harder. Even though our teachers were violent maniacs, they stopped short of asking students to remove their shorts, just in case the student was feeling lucky and doing singles and going commando that particular day.
It would have had a more embarrassing outcome for the student. But our teachers had some sense of decency. Exposing your uncircumcised shame in front of the whole class or assembly involuntarily, would have been the teacher's most powerful weapon against truancy and the like. The returns of truancy was painful punishment. You see the vicious cycle there?
Then there were the girls who were so badass they wore two pairs of khaki pants under their tunics. And they didn't wear the regular grey school khaki shorts. They wore the scouts khakis. These khakis were military grade. They were the kind the British fought The First World War and The Second World War in. These were the same girls who had no bladder control in class. They didn't ask to be excused from class because the teacher would inflict more pain by asking whether it was a short call or a long call. What was wrong with these people?
The poor girl would pee herself sitting on the shared desk bench and immediately the deskmate would rat her out. "Please, Teacher! Nina has suusuud." And for some reason most of these girls were pointies from Eastleigh. So they peed themselves in their two layers of the most rugged of military grade khaki that only the British Army could conjure up. She peed herself and they got a thwacking. You see the vicious cycle again? Incidentally, that's where the word 'thwacking' came from. That's the sound of a black plastic pipe landing on two layers of wet khaki.
Teachers in our day were synonymous with pain. Which brings us back to the punishment of kneeling in front of the assembly with arms raised straight up for divine intervention. Your arms ached for a week or so it seemed. Woe unto you if you were your class's goalie. You wouldn't catch any balls. Your arms were just too tired. And your legs couldn't kick the ball away because of all that kneeling and shit. So basically you were buggered. Because if your team lost, you were given painful knuckle blows to the head by your whole team. The team consisted of half of the class. The boys. With the exception of Nina. Nina was one of the boys. She was more punished than half the guys and she wore two pairs of khakis. And she peed herself. The girls didn't want her. The boys didn't know whom to dump her on. The Special Class didn't want her either. Nina made up for the Indian kid from South C.
The humiliation of being chapwa'd ngoto by half your class and a chick who had peed herself was just too much. You see the vicious cycle here?
The Teachers had taught pupils how to punish their own. The teachers had invented a method of punishment that kept on giving. At the end of the day, your knees hurt, your arms ached and hurt, your head ached and hurt. And in extreme cases, your ass also hurt.
Being a goalkeeper was a punishment for being an idiot. And it all started when you made funny faces at the boy kneeling with his arms raised up in front of the assembly.
I wonder what happened to Nina.
