Sunday 23 June 2013

My Second Caning


The slight blog on My First Caning has proved so popular I thought I would do another one. In a flash of unexpected imagination I have decided to call it My Second Caning. My creativity knows no bounds. It’s a bit different from the first in many ways. That one, for those with short memories, was three unmemorable strokes across my clothed backside by an ineffectual art teacher when I was still under the heady age of twelve. The offence was spitting at classmates, the punishment more noteworthy for occasion than execution. It smarted but caused little distress. The second one, in the same school year, was marked in the mind for more interesting reasons. It was four strokes this time, it was delivered by a master of the art of caning boys, and it was on my bare bottom. Modern folks don’t believe it but in the late 1950s whacking bare backsides was no big deal. Done more at home than at school but, either way, none complained. You did what teacher said and, other than a smarting bottom, you thought little of it. It was as much a part of growing up as putting on your first pair of long pants or having your first cigarette. You certainly didn’t talk about it afterwards, except to curious and eager schoolfellows. Bottoms turned up for whackings was a constant fascination in those innocent times.

This second caning involved four of us, all aged about twelve. We tried to skip hated swimming lessons by conveniently forgetting our trunks. It worked most of the time. But on one particular day this particular master was having none of it. Something must have pissed him off. That’s my theory. Swim naked he said, in the pool starkers he said, and flounced off. Or whatever the equivalent of flounce is in very athletic and frightening schoolmasters. We disconsolately made our collective way to the changing room and, mouths open and clothes divested, waited. Waited for what we did not know. He, the teacher, had told us to swim naked. But if we dutifully stripped we showed no collective inclination to join thirty odd schoolmates in the pool. Would rather frolic with a shoal of piranhas was our view. School showers were bad enough. We would be easy and irresistible targets for grabbing hands on exposed and vulnerable parts. All cloaked in the anonymity of covering water. No, jumping in the pool was not a serious option. Standing naked in the changing room, four shivering twelve year old boys, was. So we did. Until he came back.

Hindsight tells me that our pissed off teacher had gambled that the raucous noise of classmates splashing around would kill any intention of obeying his unexpected order. He was ready for it. Swim as you are, he said, or take the cane. Four strokes each on four bare backsides. The choice was ours. Collective gulps and we all agreed to be whacked. Teachers know their boys and his pending and customary disciplinary evil was an almost gratefully received alternative. He left to fetch the cane and we waited, all willing to take twelve strokes with barbed wire across our bare bums rather than succumb to the unseen rabble. A fleetingly smarting bottom scored over a constantly and mercilessly pulled penis any day. He knew that. We knew that. So we waited. Naked, forlorn, scared, relieved.

He returned, cane in hand, and summoned the first trembling boy to him. All hopes of a reprieve were dashed as the naked boy walked past the twin rows of lockers to the open area suitable for unexpected chastisement. The rest watched in awe as the boy bent down and received four tell tale marks on his backside. They were hard, but not vicious, and ankles remained clasped throughout. To enhance his fun or to teach us a greater lesson, I leave you to choose, the boy’s naked behind was pointing to us. We saw every whack, heard every groan, saw every emerging mark on flesh. None would have any illusion when their turn came. Memory confuses details but I know I was consumed by inner excitement and fear. Too young to understand conflicting emotions; old enough to know the situation inexplicably thrilled. Even though it all happened many years ago I have never forgotten my long walk to the top of the changing room. I have never forgotten my bending over, naked and unashamed, and grasping my ankles. Never forgotten the touch of that cane on my bare bum. And never forgotten the relief that the pain, when it came, was bearable. The four strokes stung and my warm bottom was well rubbed as I walked back to my fellows. We all had small tears but none were in total distress and, when he left, we all admired our individual marks. Boys in the 1950s recovered their composure pretty quickly. We were just glad that we had not been made to swim naked. We had paid the price for this and, on our naked bottoms, had the schoolboy badge that proved it.

I do not know to this day why that teacher took the action he did. Do it today, four twelve year old boys made to strip completely for a bare bottom caning, and he would be in clink quicker than you could say bend over. But he wouldn’t do it today. The past is a different country, as greater minds than mine have said. And in that strange and lost terrain such things mattered not a jot. Boyish behinds, bare or clothed, were whacked with abandon. And none complained. You didn't in those days. Alfred Roy

 

A fuller version of this true event is told in my piece Tomorrows Child (available on this blog – April 2012). I often wonder if the other three boys, cannot remember who they were, got the same taste for the cane that I eventually did. If they didn’t then, based on my adult experiences, it is their loss. I still silently thank that teacher. And I have never forgotten him. If he is still alive, I would doubt it, I wonder if he still remembers me. He ought to given that he gave me another more memorable caning a couple of years later. Some teachers knew your bottom better than they knew your face. I reckon he was one of them.