“What’s in a name?”
I don’t know, but in high school, I was pretty impressed by Brother Frederick Anthony. “FA” had taught school on the south side of Philly and apparently in a reform school, too. He was an RN, so he knew just how long and hard to hold onto your nose until it got black & blue without any residual gangrene. He whacked me in the head a time or two with one of those huge Biology books when I wasn’t paying attention.
“Isn’t that right?”
“Yes”
“What’s right?”
“What you said.”
WHACK
He was proud of showing off his Bermuda shorts under his cassock (?), sort of a plaid pattern.
I was just thinking yesterday when I read a thread about Fred Phelps brutality on his older sons. They a little younger than I am and times were different. I know so many fathers who whacked the heck out of their kids and no one thought a thing of it.
My father only spanked me once and it didn’t hurt anything but my feelings but my mother could get brutal, she wanted to hurt you and I wasn’t about to act like I was hurt so she whacked on some mmore.
My first grade teacher was always whacking people with rulers but I got nothing compared to what my husband got in a little rural school, they were torturers. He always swore that when he was grown he was going to kill his former principal and the only thing that kept him from, at least, beating him to a pulp was decorum and reputation because he was an old man already.
Those people would be in jail today and I’m not upset that there is little corporal punishment in schools. They’ve gone to far, as usual, but there was no need for all of that.