Als dit verhaaltje waar is (en waarom zou het niet zo zijn), worden op Amerikaanse High Schools die lijfstraf toepassen, meiden die vervelend zijn in de les ook regelmatig apart genomen en over de knie gelegd.

Op deze manier wordt het meisje gematst, omdat een officiële bestraffing met de paddle vastgelegd moet worden en ook leidt tot een briefje dat mee naar huis moet. Daarmee wordt een extra pak slaag thuis vermeden.

Bovendien komt dit natuurlijk ook niet in de statistieken terecht.

This takes me back to being 15 and having a totally smart mouth one day.  Our teacher kept shushing us while we were supposed to be doing in class word problems in algebra (my worst subject then).  I was very frustrated and said out loud, to my instant regret, what I was thinking:  ”Well if you taught it better we wouldn’t have to keep asking each other for help!”  Immediate dead silence and I thought I was going to be sick.  She grabbed my arm and took me out of the classroom down the hall to a instructor work room, which was empty thank God.  It sucked having everyone in the hallway stare at me.  They were guessing something bad was about to happen and they were right.    She took me to a chair and pulled me over her knee and lifted my skirt over my back and spanked me for what seemed like forever but was probably only a minute or two, saying absolutely nothing.  Having just gotten myself totally in trouble, I was resolved not to say a word until I was spoken to.   I’m starting to cry because I can’t do the math problems, can’t ask my classmates for help, and now I’m catching a humiliating smacking for it.

Then she stopped and said “You know, Claire, all you had to do was tell me you didn’t understand.  What you said was totally disrespectful and uncalled for.  The next time, I WILL paddle you and send a note home for your parents.”  More spanks and I’m crying because I’m embarrassed and relieved that I wasn’t in the classroom bent over her desk for swats with the board.  That would really have been the worst.

Some teachers thought they were cutting us a “break” by spanking us in private, away from anyone else and not using the paddle, which by rules would have required a note being sent to your parents for review and signature and returned to the office the next day because it got reported to the office and was part of your term report.  [Memo to teachers:  even if you don’t get paddled, its awful getting spanked at school]

In our house, the corporal punishment equation was:  paddled at school = father’s belt on your butt after he got home from work times X times Y, where X = just how pissed he was that you had misbehaved in school (again) and Y equals how many strokes he thought it was going to take to drill home that:  a) disobedience to any adult authority figure was absolutely forbidden by any of his girls; b) education was a privilege; and c) that you had better never ever ever get in trouble at school again.  He never got to go to school as much as he wanted growing up so he made darn sure we appreciated it.

So she gives me a little push to get off her lap and I stand up, wipe the tears and pull down my skirt. “Look at me.  We are going back to the room and after I apologize to everyone for not explaining it very well you are going to apologize to me for what you said.”  ”Yes, ma’am” I said and we walked back to the room.

You might think everyone was chit-chatting a storm while we were gone.  Nope.  We get back and it’s dead silence like when we left.  You know how people try to act like someone didn’t just burp or pass gas?   That’s about what it was like.

Everyone’s staring at me, some in pity, and 2 girls I hated probably gleeful that I had just caught a spanking but disappointed it wasn’t a paddling.

My teacher said she was sorry if we were having problems and if she could have explained it better.  She said we would go over it again after I said what I needed to say to the class.  That was my cue to apologize to her and the class for being rude and disrespectful so I did because she told me to but I also really did want to apologize.  We liked her because she was funny even if she did push us too hard and not explain things well at times.  The good part was that she explained it much better on the second go-around and that I didn’t have to face taking a note home saying I had been paddled for being disrespectful.

(Bron plaatje: realspankingsinstitute)

Eerder gepubliceerd op het Daphne Fotoblog op 25 november 2014.