voices - The Commons

18 VOICES The Commons • October 2008 The Commons • October 2008 VOICES 19
the strap
Author recounts the wacky world of corporal punishment
Putney
IF YOU THINK torture
went out with the spanish
Inquisition, you have no experience
with the public school
system in southern Ontario in
the ‘50s and early ‘60s.
Child abuse was as kosher
as gefilte fish at King edward
public school in Windsor. I was
press-ganged into the place by
my parents. at least I think they
were my parents. Would my biological
mother and father allow
the fruit of their loins to be abandoned
to the faculty-fiends at
King eddie?
King edward was four stories
of red brick with concrete
scrolls over the lintels and two
Board of education–issue gargoyles
perched above the front
entrance. On each floor were
classrooms, one the same as the
next, with five rows of standardissue
desks bolted to the floor
with flip tops and inkwells on the
upper right.
Miss Cumafort, a rare woman
whose head had been marinated
in vinegar during her formative
years, staffed the library
and could give you a rash with
just one piercing hiss for silence.
Our sports program was
a leather soccer ball lobbed into
the playing field and monopolized
by the toughest boys in
school. Fists rather than finesse
generally decided changes in
possession.
pUBLIC sCHOOL was the Cold
War in microcosm. The teachers
had various warring factions
united only in their contempt for
the student body. The students
divided themselves into cliques
by age, sex, and ability to fight.
The glue that held the entire
system together was rules, and
the bottom line was “the strap.”
going to the principal’s office
to get the strap — a 1½-by-12inch,
stiff leather quirt lashed
across the palms of malefactors
regularly in the 1950s — was
an integral part of the educational
process for nihilists, petty
thieves, ruffians, blasphemers,
and any others whose behavior
10% OFF WITH THIS AD
or academics were considered
outside the Beaver Cleaver
norm.
My association with the strap
was vigorous and frequent in
those less-than-halcyon days.
Not only was I considered lazy,
irresponsible, and combative,
but I was also cursed with an attitude
problem.
Rules governed both strapper
and victim. Crying was out. You
just didn’t cry; it was unmanly,
and it let the strapper know that
he had broken your will. The
second rule was more practical.
It called for a motionless presentation
of the hand. If you resisted
and only tasted a partial cut of
the leather, you would receive it
again. The victim was much better
off not to flinch, but to stand
(like a man) rock steady to take
his licks.
I would like to apologize to
female readers for my lack of
feminine pronouns and references.
at this stage of Canadian
educational development, girls
did not get the strap. If they behaved
in the same philistine
manner as the boys, they were
removed from school and sent
to convents or put on a program
of Thorazine-based narcotics.
The master of the strap at
King edward was peter Miller
Mitchell, the principal, a mildlooking
man resembling a bank
vice-president, but who was lethal
and legendary in strapping
circles and proud of it. I know
his middle name from frequent
readings of a framed copy of his
degree from the University of
Toronto which hung in the anteroom
of his lashing chamber.
Mr. Mitchell, roundish but
not obese, stood about 5’5” and
had thin brown hair heavily brilliantined
and plastered to an
unblemished cueball-shaped
The Good Buy Store
JIm
AuSTIn
Clothing, household, furniture, antiques and collectibles.
We pick up furniture donations — call for details
10% OFF WITH THIS AD
P.O. B
skull. Imagine an adult Charlie
Brown with the eyes of a cobra
and the voice of Basil Rathbone.
THe MOsT DRaMaTIC strapping
in King edward history did
not happen to me, but it was an
event I will never forget.
It all began with a schoolyard
scuffle between myself
and another boy, Big Mike,
who weighed about 175 pounds
and stood all of 4 feet tall lying
down. Big Mike remarked that
Mary Kay Boyd, the young lady
with whom I was in love, had
“boobs like mosquito bites.”
While this was accurate it was
not a statement that could go
unchallenged.
after the obligatory name-calling
we set about pushing, which
led to rolling on the ground and
culminated in Big Mike squatting
like a prepubescent Buddha
on my xiphoid process. at this
juncture Howard Weeks, my
best friend and a consummate
dweeb, committed the one aggressive
act of his 11-year-old
life. Howard, a young Barney
Fife but without Barney’s prickly
hostility, reached down, grabbed
a handful of Big Mike’s hair, and
pulled.
at this moment Mr. Thomas,
our reptilian playground monitor
and homeroom teacher,
glanced over at us. His mouth
drew back toward his ears, exposing
an overlapping jumble of
lunch-laden teeth in a murderous
scowl. Dandruff the size of
corn flakes avalanched to his
shoulders as he trembled with
righteous indignation, choosing
to see two boys beating on one.
Never mind that the one made
three of the two or that the one
was winning. It was two against
one — the code had been broken.
It was the strap for Howard
and me.
Now I could accept this verdict,
unfair though it was; my
personal ledger in crimes
against humanity for the month
showed a credit balance. This
strapping would just about balance
the books.
Howard, on the other hand,
was a boy of an entirely different
stripe. all of our playground
ethics and “be-a-man” mentality
meant nothing to him. He
begged, groveled, and wheedled
like a child possessed. He
blamed everything on me, then
everything on Mike and finally
on fate for casting him into this
desperate situation.
How little he knew of the
psychology of playground
monitors and principals. Both
Mr. Thomas and Mr. Mitchell
endured Howie’s tirade with
ill-disguised expressions of disgust.
all he accomplished by
spilling his guts was the dubious
honor of being first under
the lash.
THe pRINCIpaL made a few
cursory remarks about the evils
of fighting but concentrated
mainly on the drama of removing
the strap from his desk
drawer and lashing a few practice
swings in the air before a
thoroughly blanched Howard.
Mr. Mitchell encircled Howard’s
quivering wrist with his left hand
and reared back for stroke number
one.
Don’t flinch, Howie, I
thought, as the strap descended.
at that moment, in an act
of appalling cowardice, Howard
jerked his hand free of the
principal’s grip. The strap whistled
by his withdrawn mitt and
landed with a crack like a pistol
shot on Mr. Mitchell’s knee. Our
fuehrer’s eyes bugged out like
organ stops from the exquisite
pain of his tortured patella.
Mr. Thomas stared at the
overhead light fixture as if it
held great significance. Immediately
his face cleared of all
emotion and resumed a newtlike
malevolence. Without a
word he garroted Howard’s
wrist in a grip that made his fingers
balloon with trapped fluids.
Don’t cry, Howard, I thought,
but the chances of that were nil.
at this point I could only hope
that Howie’s sphincters would
hold up.
Mr. Mitchell fairly came off
the ground delivering that first
THE PUTNEY FOOD COOP
Full Grocery Store
ORGANIC PRODUCE
Sandwiches Daily Hot Bar Salad Bar
main street, putney vt
(802) 387-5866 www.putneycoop.com
stroke to Howard’s bloodless
palm. Before the nerves in Howard’s
hand had even registered
the excruciating pain they were
about to receive, he burst into
tears. That initial burst launched
a mortar shell of verdant snot
across the span between victim
and disciplinarian.
Time seemed suspended as
the mucus blob tumbled in slow
motion and landed squarely on
the principal’s pin-striped lapel,
where it lodged, glistening
contemptuously.
Mr. Mitchell glanced down,
face ashen, lips working feverishly,
gibbering inaudible oaths.
a glare of unimaginable loathing
passed palpably between
him and the slobbering cur that
was Howard Weeks. To clean
off the snotball would be to acknowledge
that this atrocity had
indeed happened. It stayed to
bear witness.
Mr. Mitchell’s face assumed
a greasy, gray quality not unlike
liver left for hours in a tropical
sun. Like a Cronenberg metamorphosis,
his collar points
stood at attention while his neck
purpled and pulsated visibly,
threatening to snap his essex
golf and Country Club tie. He
then laid on with a jihad-like vengeance:
six on each, unheard
of in the annals of corporal punishment
in the Ontario public
school system.
Howard could easily have become
a folk hero had it not been
for his otherworldly screeching
and blubbering that accompanied
the strokes. Howard did
not react to the individual blows.
He wailed a prolonged bleat
that rose in volume and pitch to
be guttered in chest-crunching
sobs.
My turn was of no consequence.
Two on each, delivered
by a pale and wheezing principal.
I didn’t even bother to run
water from the cold fountain
over my hands.
HOWaRD MIsseD sCHOOL
the next day and when he returned
he wasn’t the same. He
looked and acted like a marginal
character in Night of the Living
Dead. He recovered most of his
faculties after the summer holidays,
but the scars of Mitchell
justice were not easily salved
or quickly forgotten. Howard’s
mirth at games and jokes
seemed strained or fraudulent
like a recently released mental
patient trying to prove that the
therapy had worked.
The strap is a thing of the past
nowadays, and that is a good
thing. It did nothing for me save
make me resentful and suspicious
of authority. I’ve lost touch
with Howie, but I’ll guarantee
you that strapping still stands
out in his memory.
Like a loogie on a lapel,
I’ll wager. n
Jim Austin, a regular Voices
columnist, can be reached at
jim@commonsnews.org.
Reading — and thinking —
through life in Vermont
Williamsville
In graduate school, I worked
my way through elizabethan
Drama, the British
Novel and the Romantic poets
at the rate of two to three books
a day. In addition, I read innumerble
critical works as well as
The New York Times, The New
Yorker, and The New York Review
of Books. I spent most of
my days reading.
Occasionally, I’d come up for
air to meet with the professor
directing my graduate work. I
remember well one overcast,
autumn day. I arrived in his disheveled
office, cluttered with
books. The place appeared dim;
it’s quite likely the windows
hadn’t been washed since the
publication of george eliot’s
Middlemarch, in 1874.
The professor sucked on his
pipe as he listened to me recite
the titles of my week’s reading,
and then, in a grand puff of
smoke, cleared his throat and
said, “Reading ain’t thinking,
you know.”
This is the sort of enigmatic
education one receives in a prestigious
Ivy League graduate
program where, in return for a
job teaching insolent freshmen
(Columbia didn’t go co-ed until
1983), one receives just enough
cash to stay marginally housed
and fed.
I understood what the guy
meant: he wanted me to write
papers, proving I could not only
read but think. so write I did. I
Saxtons River
mY KaRMa ran over
my dogma.” That
was one of my favorite
bumper stickers years ago
(along with “Uppity Women
Unite”). The clever tagline resonated:
I was a post-adolescent
struggling with The Meaning
of Life (especially mine), and
somehow the slogan spoke to
me in a way that suggested I
should be less serious in my
quest for my personal Nirvana.
I have been thinking about
karma a fair amount since finding
myself back in asia, and to a
lesser extent I’ve also been contemplating
dogma. This happens
when I am in a Buddhist environment,
so to a certain extent
this reflection constitutes a reprise
of an essay I wrote back in
2005 when I lived in Thailand.
This time, however, I am in Indonesia
— a primarily Muslim
nation — at the site of its answer
to Cambodia’s angkor Wat and
Burma’s pagan. That is to say, I
have just visited Borobudur, an
extraordinary 9th-century Buddhist
temple ruin that rises out
of the earth like a huge sand
castle. It has withstood earthquakes,
time, and terrorism,
and its survival speaks to the
very essence of Buddhist philosophy,
which underscores a
kind of grace, acceptance, and
forbearance.
dEBORAH
LEE
LuSKIn
wrote a dissertation, “Jane austen
and the Limits of epistolary
Fiction.” I received my ph.D.,
which is like being admitted to
a highly secretive club of pipesmokers
who spend their days
in cluttered offices with dirty
windows.
THIs pReTTY WeLL describes
my current office, except for
the pipe smoking — and the
students. I’ve been fortunate
enough to slide out of the mainstream,
and to have patched
together a job teaching literature
to a much wider audience
than is generally found in an
institute of higher learning. I
teach lifelong learners — ordinary
Vermonters from all walks
of life who like both to read and
to think.
It may have taken me 20 years
to understand what my professor
meant by “reading ain’t
thinking,” but the people who
attend any of the programs I
teach for the Vermont Humanities
Council understand that we
can read and read and read and
never feel sated, never fill up —
and never move on. To make
reading meaningful, we need to
Reflections on balance
ELAynE
CLIFT
THe THINg that got me thinking
about karma and dogma
and the possible relationship
between the two from a Western
perspective was our guide’s
explanation of the symbolism
in the carved stone friezes
that wrap around the temple of
Borobudur.
These amazing sculpted episodes
recount the story of
Buddha’s journey to enlightenment.
They are laden with
lessons of patience, rightful
thinking and behaving, and the
continual search for balance.
The idea of life’s cycles — large
and small — is preeminent.
It stuck me quite powerfully in
contemplating the eastern view
of the cycles of life that we in the
West may have things all wrong.
eastern philosophies seem
to emphasize the search for
balance — yin and yang or whatever
— as a natural part of life.
For them, it’s an ongoing search
in the daily course of things to
get it right. For us, every upset
is a crisis.
In the east, it seems to me,
people don’t agonize all the time
think about it.
The readers who attend the
VHC’s Reading and Discussion
programs already know this.
That’s why they come. While
reading is something we each
do alone, thinking is something
we need to do together. and this
is what I’ve witnessed in 20-odd
years of Reading and Discussion
programs: Neighbors coming
together to think through what
it is they’ve read, to discover and
clarify what it is they think.
sometimes, readers come in
with questions and uncertainty,
and sometimes, readers come in
with attitude. as a facilitator, I always
hope for a mix of both. and
if we have a really good discussion,
the questioners leave with
a little more certainty, and those
with attitude leave with a little
less. everyone gains.
FOR THe pasT YeaR, a group
of intrepid readers has tackled
brick-sized biographies of
american presidents and met
monthly to discuss the presidency.
This year-long enterprise,
sponsored by the Vermont Humanities
Council and Brooks
Memorial Library, has led us to
a better understanding of american
history, the political process,
and the evolution of presidential
power. By talking and listening
with others, we have been
able to develop our own understanding
of presidential politics.
Ultimately, this study has made
us better-informed citizens,
about the big Cycle of Life stuff,
or for that matter about the simple
cycles we all go through,
whether in terms of job stresses,
family dynamics, or romantic
relationships. They just get on
with it and hope to regain their
balance when things get out of
whack.
We, on the other hand, make
a major megillah of life’s every
challenge. We agonize, articulate
angst, vent our anger. We
read normal, temporary imbalance
— the dips of daily living
— as deviant, depressing, a recipe
for despair. We get way out
of proportion when all we really
need to do, maybe, is get a grip
and get on with it.
I DON’T MeaN to suggest that
no one in asia is ever depressed
— nothing breeds depression
like poverty and powerlessness
— or that there’s no such thing
better able to participate in the
political process.
In anticipation of the upcoming
election, our reading and
discussion group will end this
month with the Declaration of
Independence on Oct. 22, and
the Constitution on Oct. 29.
Vermont has a national reputation
as a state of independent
thinkers and voters. I don’t know
if it’s Vermonters’ independence
that accounts for our ideas or
if it’s our interest in ideas that
makes for our independence. I
do know that Vermont’s a small
state; nevertheless, the Vermont
Humanities Council sponsors
close to 2,000 programs a year.
a lot of them happen in Brattleboro,
the cultural center of
perhaps the most independentthinking
county in the state.
In addition to programs at
Brooks Library, the Vermont
Humanities Council will sponsor
a program on Robert Frost
at this month’s Brattleboro
Literary Festival (www.brattleboroliteraryfestival.org)
and
will partner with the Brattleboro
Community Justice Center
to pilot a Justice and Literature
Reading and Discussion series
to be held at the Brattleboro
savings and Loan’s Community
Room.
Building on the idea that reading
literature primes people’s
minds, we’re going to read stories
which deal with the issues
of justice and revenge.
Detective fiction, murder mysteries
and courtroom drama
are all popular literary genres;
people like reading about murder
and mayhem — as long as
law and order are ultimately restored.
Using archer Mayor’s
Open Season, Castle Freeman’s
Go With Me, and David guterson’s
Snow Falling on Cedars,
as deviance from social norms in
this part of the world.
I’m just wondering if our penchant
for pathology and personal
introspection isn’t leading us
away from the very thing they
endlessly scrutinize — a sense
of balance about the world and
our place in it. Maybe we place
too much emphasis on the
dogma of our psychology gods
and not enough on the karmic
lessons of the larger cosmos.
we will discuss issues of justice:
what it is, how it works, what
happens when it doesn’t, how
society metes it out, how society
might do better. In short, we’ll
read imaginary literature and
we’ll think about hard issues.
This model of using literature
to start important conversations
about difficult issues is being
used in health care as well, not
only in Vermont, but nationally.
Until recently, there was a Literature
and Medicine program for
health-care workers at Brattleboro
Memorial Hospital. It was a
well-attended and highly appreciated
oasis of humanity for all
members of the medical establishment,
where they gathered
to discuss aspects of health care
outside the crucible of patient
care.
Unfortunately, the program
has not been funded for the
coming year. In a health-care
system taken over by the beancounters,
there’s little place for
anything that doesn’t generate
revenue, like the humanities.
I know: I went to graduate
school to figure out how to read
for a living. Twenty years later,
I’m still trying to figure out
how to support myself. In the
meantime, I’m reading — and
thinking — my way through a
very rich life indeed. n
Deborah Lee Luskin (deb@
commonsnews.org) is a regular
Voices columnist. For more
information on the Vermont
Humanities Council programs,
visit www.vermonthumanities.
org. Check out the programs at
the Brooks Memorial Library at
www.brooks.lib.vt.us.
places like Borobudur make
you think about such things.
It’s a great venue to visit. Who
knows? You might even decide
you’d like to “live” there. n
Elayne Clift, a regular Voices
columnist, has just returned
from three months of traveling
and writing in Thailand and
Indonesia. She can be reached
at elayne@commonsnews.org.
Professional Video
Production
• Superior Shooting & Editing
• DVD Production & Authoring
• Web & CD-Rom Video
• DVD Duplication & Replication
• Format Transfer Services
(802) 254-2800