One incident from my school days that has always stayed with me involved a punishment I received from the P.E. master after being caught throwing snowballs at a group of girls during a particularly snowy winter. Like many boys of that age, I thought it was harmless fun at the time, but the teachers took a much dimmer view of it. Before long, I found myself being marched off to face the consequences.
What made the episode particularly memorable was not just the punishment itself, but the reaction of a girl who lived on the same street as me. She had not been one of the girls targeted by the snowballs, yet she seemed remarkably interested in what had happened afterwards.
A few days later she approached me and began talking about the slippering as though she had witnessed the entire event. According to her, she had been in the playground beneath the stockroom window while the punishment was taking place. She claimed she had heard every stroke that the P.E. master administered. She even knew how many strokes I had received. While that might have been an educated guess, what surprised me was how much other information she appeared to know.
She confidently stated that the punishment had been carried out with the P.E. master’s plimsoll, identifying it by the distinctive sound it made. Again, perhaps she was guessing, but she also described the position I had been ordered to adopt. She knew that I had been instructed to bend over a desk and hold onto the far side while the punishment was administered. That was not something many people would have known unless they had either witnessed similar punishments before or had somehow learned details afterwards.
What embarrassed me most was when she remarked that it must have hurt a great deal because she had heard me crying out. Every detail she mentioned was accurate. The punishment had indeed been extremely painful, and despite my efforts to remain silent, I had not managed to maintain the stoicism that boys often tried to display.
In those days, when corporal punishment was administered in a mixed school, boys often felt under pressure to endure it quietly. There was an unspoken belief that showing pain in front of girls would only add to the humiliation. Most of us would grit our teeth and do our best not to react, regardless of how much it hurt. Unfortunately, some teachers had a reputation for administering particularly severe punishments, and the P.E. master was certainly among them. His slipperings were feared throughout the school, and keeping silent under his administration was far easier said than done.
The girl’s fascination with the incident left me puzzled. She seemed far more interested in the punishment than in the snowball throwing that had caused it. Curious about this, I later mentioned the conversation to my sister and asked whether girls generally took an interest in boys being punished.
My sister laughed and said that she quite enjoyed watching our father slipper me when I got into trouble at home, although I suspect she was teasing me rather than making a serious confession. She then offered another explanation. According to her, the girl was probably interested because she liked me. Whether there was any truth in that suggestion, I never discovered.
My sister also claimed that many girls enjoyed watching boys being punished at school. From her perspective, it was often one of the more dramatic interruptions to the normal routine of lessons. A boy would be called to the front of the class, made to bend over, and then receive his punishment while everyone watched. The event would command the attention of the entire room, and afterwards there would inevitably be whispers and discussion about who had been punished, why it had happened, and whether the punishment had been deserved.
Looking back, I still find it surprising how much interest that particular girl took in my slippering. At the time I found it deeply embarrassing, especially knowing that she had apparently heard everything. Yet her curiosity remains one of the most memorable aspects of the incident. While the pain faded quickly enough, the knowledge that someone had been paying such close attention to the proceedings stayed with me for far longer.
